Interactive Workshop: Our two-day technical workshop introduces our Fair Hiring Toolkit and how to apply it through the Verité Systems Approach (VSA) for managing the critical risks inherent in employing contract, or brokered, workers. The Toolkit derives from our Help Wanted initiative, which is based on years of in-depth global research on the complex mechanisms that lead to debt-bonded and other forms of forced labor. Our holistic Systems Approach focuses on the everyday business processes where the right risk controls can avoid these and other labor abuses.
1. ORGANIZATIONAL/MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS LEVEL: INTENT
First, review your company’s written policies. Do they include a policy prohibiting forced labor? Do they also prohibit debt bondage and trafficking? Do they apply to all levels of operation and labor, manufacturing and materials supply chains? Do they apply to all geographic areas where your company has operations?
Verité’s Help Wanted initiative – a research and advocacy effort – aims to clarify and publicize the ways in which current labor recruitment practices can lead to the human trafficking and forced labor of migrant workers; and to provide concrete approaches by which the private sector, civil society, and governmental institutions can address this key point of leverage to reduce the risk of a worker ending up a victim of modern-day slavery.
Our Help Wanted Primer articulates the risk to multinational companies of forced labor and resulting debt-bondage caused by labor recruitment, and identifies the places within a company’s sourcing practices where recruiters present a reputational and legal liability.
Use this report to identify the needed changes in corporate practices and ways that brands and their suppliers can take action.
Many companies have the means and mechanisms to respond and react to non-conformance issues surfaced during social audits, but they may not be well-positioned to anticipate and avoid these problems in the first place, or to prevent them from happening again. Taking a reactive approach to problems can be more costly in the long run, and facility audits have shown that social responsibility problems tend to persist when remedial or corrective actions are either poorly maintained or are not implemented at all.
This tool sets out the steps that companies can take to develop and implement plans to address identified cases of forced labor and human trafficking in their supply chains. These steps are contextualized in the example of “Company ABC” and its approach to remediating issues of passport retention, deposits and forced savings.
The material herein is drawn from Verité’s in-depth training on Problem Solving and Decision-Making for Social Responsibility.
Robust and open communication between workers and management is essential for promoting trust and understanding in the workplace, enhancing performance, and generating the active participation of the workforce. Such communication is also essential to allow for problems and grievances to be raised, discussed, and resolved.
All workers, and migrant workers in particular, should have access to grievance mechanisms that allow them to voice concerns without fear of punishment or retribution. The provision of these mechanisms by the employer is particularly crucial for migrant workers.