Ethical Recruitment
The Situation
One in four victims of forced labor is a migrant, and overseas labor migration, critical for the global economy, is also associated with high debts and risk of exploitation.
Labor recruitment is a common thread throughout the Fund’s programs. An entire multibillion-dollar global industry of labor recruitment exists to connect employers and laborers. The form this industry takes ranges from multinational recruitment agencies to informal kinship networks, with complex interlinks from top to bottom. Although better onsite treatment of workers by employers is an important part of interventions, it is not enough to prevent modern slavery. Modern slavery can and does occur during and as a result of the recruitment process. Low-skill, low-wage workers — those in domestic work, construction, manufacturing, etc. — are particularly susceptible. Workers, desperate to improve their lives, are deceived into taking on crushing debt to pay exorbitant fees to migrate illegally and work under abusive employers. Even fair employers may not know that their workers have been exploited during the recruitment process due to the highly opaque system behind it.
What We're Doing
GFEMS is working to transform labor recruitment systems and drive the growth of the ethical recruitment movement, emphasizing efforts both on overseas and domestic labor recruitment.
Labor recruitment spans all sectors. Consequently, the Fund’s work on ethical recruitment overlaps considerably with our other sector-specific efforts including domestic work, construction, manufacturing, and hospitality. GFEMS is working to establish end-to-end ethical recruitment channels. To develop a successful model requires intervening with stakeholders across the recruitment process, from aspiring labor migrants and sub-agents in source villages to large employers and authorities in destination countries.
To reduce the supply of vulnerable labor recruits, GFEMS is intervening in communities to address root economic vulnerabilities, raise awareness of illicit recruitment practices, and ensure that workers and their families are properly prepared for safe recruitment and migration.
To reduce the demand for exploitative recruitment and increase demand for ethical recruitment, GFEMS is contributing to the growing ethical recruitment movement by creating and supporting ethical recruitment agencies, changing the behaviors of employers, and equipping all stakeholders with tools that make ethical recruitment more impactful and attractive.
To address the enabling environment, GFEMS interventions are improving relevant written criminal laws and regulations pertaining to recruitment and equipping stakeholders to enforce the law and better implement regulations — all of which can end the impunity of bad actors and incentivize the rest of the market to adopt better practices.
We foster ethical recruitment to multiply safe pathways for migrants to seek work and to put exploitative recruiters out of business.
Program Spotlights
GFEMS addresses Ethical Recruitment in source countries and high prevalence industries. We currently work in:
The Philippines (domestic work and hospitality),
Bangladesh (domestic work, construction, and hospitality)
India (domestic work and construction)
Vietnam (manufacturing)
OVERSEAS BANGLADESHI WORKERS
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis migrate overseas for work. While remittances are a major contributor to the Bangladeshi economy, they are accompanied by a steady stream of returning victims of modern slavery. Many Bangladeshi migrants take jobs in construction, domestic work, and other low-skilled, low-wage sectors in the Persian Gulf region. Bangladeshis are known to pay among the highest fees for overseas jobs, regularly in excess of $3,000 USD, excluding the inescapable interest for financing it, for a job that may only pay a few hundred dollars per month. Unethical recruitment is a critical piece of this system, and ethical recruitment is a critical piece of the solution.
REFORMING THE RECRUITMENT SECTOR AND MEETING DEMAND FOR ETHICALLY RECRUITED WORKERS
GFEMS supports a range of interventions to reshape the labor recruitment industry, spanning employers, recruitment agencies, informal sub-agents, and migrant communities. On the demand side, major recruitment agencies will be trained on ethical recruitment and will pilot new ethical recruitment corridors. Extensive engagement with sub-agents, some of the first work of its kind, will see the generation of much needed evidence and the creation of strategies and action plans — in close collaboration with recruitment stakeholders themselves — to address entrenched problems in the highly pervasive yet critically overlooked informal segment of the recruitment industry. Additionally, on the supply side, the Fund’s partner is developing and piloting a behavioral change communication campaign to drive community-level awareness of pathways for ethical recruitment.
A consortium of partners, ELEVATE, with Diginex and Winrock, is developing a trusted, transparent and auditable technology platform that can function as a “digital backbone” for the Bangladeshi migrant labor system with functionality including e-learning, document storage, and grievance reporting. More features will be added over time, and the system can be transferred to other countries. Such advances will bring much needed efficiency, transparency, and integration to a legacy system that is currently characterized by inefficiency, opacity, and fragmentation — all traits that encourage or enable exploitative practices and that serve as bottlenecks to the growth of effective ethical recruitment. GFEMS continues to assess regulatory policies in Bangladesh and key destination countries to shape future interventions to address the enabling environment.”
GFEMS continues to assess regulatory policies in Bangladesh and key destination countries to shape future interventions to address the enabling environment.
REINTEGRATING RETURNING VICTIMS OF FORCED LABOR
A consortium of CAFOD, Caritas Bangladesh, and Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) is delivering high-quality, holistic reintegration services for over a thousand vulnerable migrants and returning victims of modern slavery. They are looking beyond the immediate impact of these reintegrations and generating robust evidence on the best practices of victim reintegration. Such evidence can then be used to improve reintegrations on a much larger scale. They are also engaging with the government to develop a strategy to scale up and sustain reintegration efforts so that all victims can receive high-quality care.
ACCESS TO DEBT-FREE WORK OPPORTUNITIES IN INDIA
Providing safe work opportunities to vulnerable communities
GFEMS is working with Seefar to launch and pilot The Ethical Recruitment Agency (TERA) India. TERA India will provide safe work opportunities abroad to vulnerable communities in Uttar Pradesh (UP), allowing workers to find and access debt- and exploitation-free work opportunities. In this pilot, GFEMS and Seefar are generating evidence on the effects of ethical recruitment and adhering to international ethical recruitment standards. The long-term outcomes of this project support the Fund’s thematic areas of supply and demand: an increased demand for and access to ethical recruitment services and increased interest in ethical recruitment among key stakeholders.
addressing source side vulnerabilities to Build safe migration ecosystems
The Association for Stimulating Know-how (ASK) is collaborating with GFEMS in delivering a project aimed at building a safe labor migration ecosystem for aspiring and returning migrants in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, India. The project will deliver migrant services to reduce source-side causes of vulnerability to forced labor by increasing awareness of the recruitment system, training unskilled workers, and providing financial services. ASK will work with Mitrata to provide financial health services to migrants and improve financial literacy. By accessing these services, migrants will be able to make sound decisions backed by financial knowledge and be less vulnerable to economic shocks. The ASK project aims to de-fragment support services by taking a cohesive approach to supporting aspiring and returning migrants.
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