Most employment laws regard these virtually forced servitude situations to be voluntary in nature. In other words. if the worker doesn't like it, they are typically free to leave and get another job elsewhere. Problem is, it can be quite difficult to find a similar job that fits the same set of job skills that will offer an outcome that is any different. Plus, you are not all that likely to get a good recommendation toward future employment if your boss thinks that you are leaving because of dissatisfaction. Change careers? A possible cure, but then again, what about of all the time and money spent getting that education and work experience?
There are hundreds of thousands of high tech workers in these "gulags" right now. Is there anyone organizing them? When workers in skilled trades were being abused by employers, they started unions and are better off. As fewer workers join unions, guilds, trade associations and professional associations, the employers increase abuse to the point of threatening their jobs if they complain.
Instead of the first concern being that jobs are scarce, it should be to organize, so that highly skilled workers are treated with the respect and rewards that they deserve. Their unions can lobby to get laws and rules passed so that their jobs can't be so easily outsourced, and businesses are rewarded for keeping jobs here instead of moving jobs and/or plant outside the country.
Unlike people who are captured and forced into slavery, the high tech workers choose that for themselves because they're too "proud", short-sighted, uninformed, disconnected, to organize. Hotel workers organized and improved their lot, why not programmers? As long as they're ordinary employees or contractors [as opposed to having a written, defined, fixed contract] and not on par for negotiating with employers, the situation won't change and could get worse.
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