CH2M, in collaboration with five other leading engineering and construction companies, launched a new industry group to protect the rights and welfare of workers worldwide, “Building Responsibly.” Tawny Chritton, CH2M’s Director of Social Impact, was elected chair of the organization’s Steering Committee. CH2M places great importance on ensuring the health, safety, and welfare of workers involved in our projects, and we have worked closely with fair labor expert, Verité, to implement our own worker welfare policy and foster industry collaboration.
As the minutes ticked by on the afternoon of April 28, 2015, Harold Vilches watched stoically while customs officers at Santiago’s international airport scrutinized his carry-on. Inside the roller bag was 44 pounds of solid gold, worth almost $800,000, and all the baby-faced, 21-year-old college student wanted was clearance to get on a red-eye to Miami. Vilches had arrived at the airport six hours early because he thought there might be some trouble—he’d heard that customs had recently seized shipments from competing smugglers. But Vilches had done this run, or sent people to do it, more than a dozen times, and he’d prepared his falsified export paperwork with extra care. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have any trouble. While he waited, he texted his contacts in Florida, telling them he’d already cleared customs. The plan was to hand off the gold at the Miami airport to a pair of guards, who would load it into an armored truck for the short trip to NTR Metals Miami LLC, a company that buys gold in quantities large and small and sells it into the global supply chain.
In Thailand thousands of “sea slaves,” held captive in shoddy fishing vessels, trawl for cheap forage fish used in canned pet food. In Pakistan, children as young as five are sold or kidnapped and forced to stand knee-deep in water, packing clay into molds to make bricks. In Ghana, poisonous dust and exposure to toxic chemicals and mine collapses threaten the health and safety of children who work in the artisanal gold mines.
Nestor Molina has made a living looking for Honduran workers to pick fruit in Florida. Now, some of the workers he recruited, their lawyers, and the U.S. government are looking for him. Molina, 53, is among the middlemen hired by companies to help bring foreign workers to the United States for temporary jobs. The jobs span almost every industry, from agriculture to hospitality, and the numbers of foreign workers brought to the United States have swelled in the past two decades. In the fiscal year ending last August, the government issued more than 350,000 temporary work visas.
The official blogs of clothing retail chains tend to be filled with little more than ideas on how to combine various items of this season’s range for a great layered look. Outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia broke the mould when it announced in its company blog in July 2015 that labour brokers in Taiwan were charging migrant workers $7,000 for factory jobs, creating a form of debt akin to modern slavery. Furthermore, it continued, this was happening “in our own supply chain”.
