A Message from Our CEO, Shawn MacDonald:
Standing Firm in Challenging Times

Dear Friends and Partners,

We find ourselves in increasingly volatile and challenging times for human rights and labor rights globally, with hard-won protections facing new challenges every day. Now, we face a critical and systematic dismantling of worker protections: the elimination of the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) programs through deliberate, far-reaching cuts. This devastating action destroys decades of progress by gutting 69 essential programs—representing more than $500 million—that fought child labor, forced labor, and other labor abuses across 40 countries.

This abrupt termination shatters decades of bipartisan commitment to fighting exploitation. Republicans and Democrats alike have stood against forced labor and child labor and in support of core labor rights. More troubling, however, is how these cuts will directly impact the workers these programs were created to engage and protect.

What this means for workers

The human cost of these cuts goes beyond statistics and policy debates.

For workers, these cuts translate to unpaid wages, debt bondage, harassment, and other abuses in factories and farms producing the goods we use every day. Migrant workers will face increased deception during recruitment, trapping them in cycles of debt and exploitation without support networks and legal protections. More children will be forced into dangerous work harvesting the food that ends up on our tables.

Many in the business community share our alarm and deep concern over this harmful action. The funding cuts, while presented as supporting an "America First" policy, will harm American businesses and workers. Therefore, it is crucial for more businesses to speak out and correct this misconception.

ILAB's work hasn't just protected workers—it has ensured countries maintain labor standards and fair wages that level the playing field for American workers and businesses and prevent a brutal race to the bottom. The math is simple: cut these programs, and exploitative businesses face less accountability while ethical companies fighting for workers' rights face unfair competition.

Our Shared Achievements

It is important to recognize the substantial impact of our partnership with ILAB for over 20 years. Together, we've pioneered numerous highly impactful initiatives through which we have done ground-breaking research and created free, open-access resources that will continue to live on Verité’s website long after the projects have ended, including our most recent joint efforts:

The Forced Labor Indicators Project (FLIP) has developed free educational resources on forced labor and has strengthened the capacities of over 320 organizations in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Benin to combat forced labor and human trafficking. Moreover, FLIP has fostered coalition-building among government, private sector, trade unions, and civil society organizations, bringing together over 630 diverse stakeholders to raise awareness, influence policies, and drive regional-level change.

The Cooperation On Fair, Free, Equitable Employment (COFFEE) project engaged diverse stakeholders in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, building a hub for dialogue, best practices, and tools. These resources include the comprehensive COFFEE Toolkit, which includes 28 open-access tools and 14 online training modules in English, Spanish, and Portuguese for actors at all levels in the coffee supply chain to eliminate forced labor and child labor in the Latin American coffee sector.

Through the Supply Chain Tracing and Engagement Methodologies (STREAMS) project, we created innovative resources like the Supply Chain Traceability Matrix, helping businesses, governments, and CSOs to leverage traceability to meet human and labor rights goals.

Over the past six years, the Senderos Project has been building the capacity of private sector and government actors to identify, prevent, and eliminate child labor and forced labor in key agricultural sectors in Mexico. We partnered with agribusiness companies to strengthen their human rights due diligence practices, including improved ethical recruitment protocols and grievance mechanisms. Through Senderos, we engaged more than 5,000 farmworkers in Mexico, informing them about their fundamental labor rights through open-access awareness-raising resources for sugarcane and tobacco workers.

Also in Mexico, the LOCAL Project, which was just launched last year, implemented stakeholder mapping and research on labor conditions in the coffee, cocoa, and sugarcane sectors and developed collaborative networks among stakeholders to address child and forced labor in the agricultural sector through evidence-based action plans.

Standing Firm and Forging Ahead

Despite these funding challenges, we will continue to partner with private sector leaders, governments, policymakers, and advocacy groups to eliminate the most serious labor and human rights abuses in global supply chains. We remain unwavering in our commitments to:

• Strengthen business capabilities to embed human rights into core management systems, elevating workers’ needs from peripheral to central business priorities.
• Bring workers' voices to the heart of due diligence efforts.
• Push for systemic change through policy advocacy to drive stronger worker protections, effective corporate due diligence, and trade regulation across the globe.

Upholding the rights and dignity of workers transcends national borders and specific industries. How we treat workers creates wider effects that ultimately determine the sustainability of our shared prosperity and future. Recognizing this fundamental truth compels us to remain steadfast in our vision of a world where all people work under safe, fair, and legal conditions. I invite you to continue standing with us in this critical work.

I invite you to continue standing with us in this critical work.
 

Sincerely,

Shawn MacDonald
CEO, Verité