In the complex landscape of global labor rights, meaningful change requires looking deeper than surface-level compliance. Verité’s workplace assessments are grounded in a worker-centered approach, enabling us to uncover systemic labor challenges and expose their root causes.
Throughout Asia, Verité’s comprehensive Foreign Migrant Worker Assessments employ rigorous, triangulated methodologies that translate into tangible worker protections. By employing forensic, investigative techniques our team uncovers complex, financial exploitation associated with migrant workers’ recruitment experiences.
The most significant contributor to the ongoing presence of debt bondage or forced labor in global supply chains is the burden of recruitment fees and expenses on migrant workers. Many employers and recruiters in high risk global supply chains build business models on charging unskilled and low-skilled workers fees for employment. Specifically, employers pay no or insufficient professional service fees to the recruitment agents they engage to find them workers. Rather, they knowingly allow agents to recoup revenue and the significant legitimate expenses associated with international labor migration—such as government approvals and travel costs—from the workers themselves.
Working to End Forced Labor for Cotton Workers in Central Asia | New report on forced labor goods and Department of Defense (DOD) commissaries and exchanges | Commission sets out strategy to promote decent work worldwide | More than 2 billion workers make up the informal economy
Through generous funding by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), Verité is continuing to support workers navigating risks in new labor markets between Uttar Pradesh, India and the Gulf States. This project focuses on building capacities of partners to provide guidance to workers during the recruitment process in Uttar Pradesh, and to safely navigate systems for addressing any exploitation they may encounter during employment in the Gulf.
