29 April 2015, Devex Two years after the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh killed more than 1,100 workers and injured 2,515 — the deadliest garment factory accident on record — donors and entrepreneurs are calling upon the power of data to prevent forced labor worldwide. Labor trafficking is becoming harder to track as companies’ […]
Can data help end forced labor? Read More »
19 February 2015, Aljazeera America Qatar announced Thursday that it was introducing labor law reforms to aimed at ensuring that thousands of migrant workers building venues for the 2022 World Cup are paid on time. The news comes months after the U.N. urged the Gulf nation to amend its labor practices and only a few days before
Qatar to introduce pay reforms for migrant workers Read More »
18 February 2015, Open Democracy There has been lots of talk about multinational corporations’ responsibility for fuelling forced labour. But what about the labour market intermediaries who recruit and supply vulnerable workers to these firms? In many people’s minds, words like trafficking and modern slavery are associated with sexual exploitation, especially of women and children.
The role of labour market intermediaries in driving forced and unfree labour Read More »
18 February 2015, Bloomberg View Human rights observers applauded last week when Apple announced its most ambitious effort yet to stamp out labor abuses among its Asian suppliers. Recruitment agencies in Asia are no longer allowed to charge fees to factory workers who make Apple products, and Apple vowed to scrutinize its supply chain to ensure that its new rule
Is There an App for Ending Forced Labor? Read More »
18 February 2015, Southern Poverty Law Center A federal jury in an SPLC case today awarded $14 million in compensatory and punitive damages to five Indian guest workers who were defrauded and exploited in a labor trafficking scheme engineered by a Gulf Coast marine services company, an immigration lawyer and an Indian labor recruiter who
14 February 2015, The Economist Working abroad is no bargain BROKERS’ billboards outside Tan Lieu, a poor rural community in northern Vietnam, advertise “Labour Export”—jobs abroad. Vietnam’s youthful population of 90m adds up to 1.5m each year to the growing work pool. But economic growth, at 6%, is not fast enough to keep all of
Going to debt mountain Read More »
11 February 2015, PC World Apple has forced its suppliers to end a form of “bonded labor” that saddled assembly line workers with unnecessary hiring fees, and put them in debt to third-party recruiters. The requirement went into effect starting this year, the company said on Wednesday in its latest supplier responsibility report, which examines
Apple ends system of recruitment fees that tied labor to contractors Read More »
Migrant Workers’ Rights on Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates: 2015 Progress Report, Human Rights Watch, 2015 SUMMARY “Migrant Workers’ Rights on Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates: 2015 Progress Report,” is the third Human Rights Watch report on migrant worker abuses on the Saadiyat Island site. The report details how, five years
10 February 2015, City Paper Migrants working legally in the U.S. on temporary visas can end up as virtual slaves. They can’t change jobs, they’re often paid less than minimum wage for 80 or more hours a week, and they can’t usually return to the U.S. to sue their employer in court—there’s no visa program
4 February 2015, FMT News PETALING JAYA: The use of independent agencies in hiring workers is a major hindrance to ensuring decent working conditions in the Malaysian electronics industry, according to the Washington-based Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC). Because the agencies are in reality the employers, it’s difficult for the companies belonging to the coalition
Agencies curtailing better labour practices Read More »
