Time for action on migrant workers

Abdelilah, a 28 year old Moroccan, works in the Spanish agricultural town of El Ejido, on the coast of Andalusia.

Here, not far from the swarming tourist resorts of the Costa del Sol, mile after mile of white plastic greenhouses stretch as far as the eye can see. Beneath their roofs, tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco, Romania, Mali and Senegal pick tomatoes, fruit and vegetables in the soaring heat. With close to 27,000 hectares, the site exports one third of Europe's fresh fruit, mostly to Germany, France and the UK.

We thought Europe was going to be the El Dorado that would give us what our own country and government never could. Instead, I live in conditions I could never have imagined at home.

In common with one in four of his fellow workers, Abdelilah is undocumented. He is given the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs to do, such as spraying chemicals, for which he receives 20 Euros a day. At night he dosses down in an overcrowded barn. His countryman, Mousaid, who has a law degree, lives nearby in a makeshift plastic shack. He says:

"We thought Europe was going to be the El Dorado that would give us what our own country and government never could. Instead, I live in conditions I could never have imagined at home."

Migrant workers like these are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Cut off from their loved ones and support networks; often unaware of local laws, languages and customs; and frequently denied the same rights as local workers, migrants are seen as easy prey by unscrupulous agencies and employers.

This exploitation often starts before they've even left home. In many poor countries, unregulated recruitment agencies target the vulnerable, demanding huge loans to cover their fees for arranging travel and placing them in work.

Once in their host country, for many, hopes soon fade when they realise they must plough the majority of their wages into loan repayments. Their situation is compounded by widespread discrimination in pay, employment status and promotion opportunities, while in some countries, national law prohibits even legal migrants from joining trade unions. Given this lack of protections, it's little wonder that in the EU, twice as many migrant workers die or are injured at work than local workers.

Most major UK companies accept that they have a clear moral obligation to do all they can to prevent, detect and eliminate the exploitation of migrant workers in their supply chain. No less clear are the risks, in terms of both material and reputational damage, that such abuses pose to their business; high street brands that fail to address this issue do so at their peril.

At the Ethical Trading Initiative, we support our member companies to tackle some of ethical trade's most intractable problems. We know from the experience of our members that getting to grips with the presence of migrant workers in a supply chain is fraught with difficulties, not least their virtual invisibility: as they are usually contracted through a long chain of different labour brokers, it is often very difficult to find out where they are employed, let alone how they are treated. Another challenge arises from the fact that exploitation often starts at the point of recruitment, in countries of origin. Audits of workplaces may not pick this up.

Despite these challenges, companies are beginning to find innovative ways to promote responsible and ethical recruitment and employment practices toward migrant workers. For example, some retailers have introduced codes of conduct for their suppliers that refer explicitly to migrant workers. These include safeguards against the most common forms of abuse, such as ensuring that the employment contract is in the language of the migrant, and is between the worker and the employer, not a third party; and that migrant workers' salaries are paid directly to their bank accounts and not via recruitment agents.

Equally vital are longer-term capacity building measures, such as actively encouraging the establishment of freely elected migrant worker committees, or training supervisors and factory managers so that suppliers can proactively share in the company's commitment to addressing violations of migrants' rights.

Yet while there is a great deal that companies can do in their own supply chains to root out exploitation of migrant workers, this remains at bottom a global, systemic problem.

Without more engagement from governments and much firmer regulation, even the best collective efforts of retailers will have limited impact.

In many countries that rely heavily on migrant labour, legal safeguards to protect migrant workers are either absent from the statute books or poorly enforced, if at all. As a result, abusive practices become endemic. Companies quite rightly feel that this "governance gap" crucially undermines their own risk mitigation strategies. Ultimately, without more engagement from governments and much firmer regulation, even the best collective efforts of retailers will have limited impact.

Retailers urgently need a means of linking the practical steps they are taking in their own businesses with a wider, co-ordinated collaboration between companies, government and civil society aimed at influencing international policy.

Action to create a space in which this can happen is already underway. The Ethical Trading Initiative is working alongside the Institute for Human Rights and Business and the International Business Leaders Forum to organise a series of roundtable meetings designed to galvanise key players. The first of these, in March, brought together 35 representatives from global retail brands, the recruitment industry, NGOs, and international trade unions.

As a first step, all agreed on the need to develop a common set of guidelines on good practice, out of which will come practical tools to help brands and suppliers manage risk, identify migrant workers' needs and recruit and employ ethically.

In parallel to this forum, we hope to build the foundations for an international multi-stakeholder alliance that can engage governments and lobby collectively for stronger protections for migrant workers.

Further discussions will be needed in source countries to ensure our goals are rooted in a wide range of perspectives, including those of recruitment agencies and suppliers at every level of the supply chain.

Complex and challenging as the issues are, momentum is gathering; there is now a growing conviction among a wide range of stakeholders that together we can act as effective catalysts for change.

By using our collective influence where it counts, we can promote policies and practices that positively harness the vital contribution that migrant workers make to business and the global economy, while granting them the respect and dignity they surely deserve.