Freedom from Fear-Based Immigration: Ten Years on Dhaka Principle 2

Ten years ago, the launch of the Dhaka Principles helped companies envision ways to protect migrant workers and create systems of accountability in our increasingly interconnected global food supply chain.

When we founded CIERTO a few years later to recruit, train, and place skilled, qualified, legal migrant workers with farms in North America, Dhaka Principle 2, in particular, served as a guiding light. Its call for contract transparency and understanding was a valuable gut check as we established our mission, and created our standard operating procedures.

Without a clear understanding of what is expected of them – and what is owed to them – migrant workers are vulnerable to scams, blackmail, extortion, violence against their families, and slavery. What’s less well-known is that without clarity and a mutual understanding and trust, these issues can bite growers and farms as well, with legal and financial fallout.

Dhaka Principle 2 – All migrant worker contracts are clear and transparent,  is critically important to this process.

Economic hardship and lack of opportunity in their home countries drive many migrants to leave their families and travel north to work the apple, lettuce and strawberry fields of the West Coast of the United States. A tragic result of this economic hardship is that workers in need of a job are often forced to use informal recruitment networks to get to the US.

The Mexico-United States migrant corridor is the source of a massive flow of workers. Currently, about 1.1 million undocumented workers, often recruited through informal networks, are believed to be working in the agriculture industry. In addition, approximately 317,000 workers in the US have arrived through the formal H-2A agricultural guest worker program. The H-2A framework allows growers in the US to hire workers from Mexico and Central America to work their farms, provided they meet certain criteria. Astonishingly, even among workers who have taken part in this program, a majority continue to be recruited “informally.”

Without a clear understanding of what is expected of them – and what is owed to them – migrant workers are vulnerable to slavery. What’s less well-known is that without clarity and a mutual understanding, these issues can bite growers and farms with  financial fallout.

Informal recruitment networks are linked to a wide variety of human rights abuses, including in extremis, modern slavery. Workers who enter the US this way typically come without a contract in place. Basic information, such as what job they’ve been hired to do, pay and conditions of that job, living arrangements and even where it’s located, is withheld from them.

These informal recruiters coerce workers into paying fees for transportation to their employers’ farms, and for the right to claim their new jobs. Consequently, they arrive deep in debt and vulnerable to exploitation. A vulnerability often exacerbated by threats and intimidation to their families back home.

This debt bondage or debt peonage is a scourge upon the entire food supply chain, creating the conditions that allow fear-based migration to take hold and presents a danger up and down the food supply chain as well.

By using Dhaka Principle 2 as a guideline when developing and implementing recruiting practices, and working proactively with like-minded growers, retailers, and NGOs, we have begun to combat this destabilizing force.

Clear contracts benefit good business

When fear-based migration is allowed to take root, it erodes trust between farmers and their employees. It makes workers vulnerable to exploitation, and it represents a tangible risk to the growers who work with these informal recruiters.

CIERTO collaborates with growers to create ethical, efficient H-2A recruiting programs that treat contract transparency as a core value. We’ve made great strides by kicking off the recruitment process in worker communities of origin with training sessions specifically designed to clarify contract terms.

We’ve found that migrant workers who are responsibly and legally recruited, who have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, and what they can expect in return – that is workers who are free of fear-based migration – are significantly more productive, and more likely to align their own self-interest with that of the farm.

In turn, the growers we work with are shielded from the legal and financial consequences of participating in the exploitation, trafficking, and slavery that plague global supply chains. This benefit is passed up the supply chain to retailers like Walmart or Costco who are protected from the public relations disasters, legal risk, and loss of market share that can result when these human rights violations are revealed and prosecuted.

Short Term Gains Vs. Long Term Return on Investment (ROI)

As Norma Encinas, CIERTO’s H-2A Program Director often notes, someone is paying for these workers to be recruited, and if it’s not the company, it’s likely the worker him- or herself. Allowing recruitment logistics to be subsidized by migrant workers paying for their own passage looks like an opportunity for a grower to save some money. Ultimately, this often ends up backfiring, because that employee is now in debt to someone who is probably at least unsavory, and at worst dangerous.

When employees are more concerned with paying off debt to criminal gangs in order to protect themselves and their families, than with fulfilling the terms of a contract they may not have even seen, let alone understood, the farm’s ROI for hiring that worker is threatened. For example, in order to make their piece work quota – and to ensure they’re paid full wages so they can pay off their debt – a worker in this situation might look the other way at food or worker safety violations during the harvest, exposing the grower to unnecessary legal and financial risk.

We’ve found that the most effective way to short circuit the self-subsidizing of recruitment is to step into the process in worker communities of origin. Once we have a contract with a grower, we’re able to meet and get to know workers before they get sucked into informal recruitment networks.

This gives us the opportunity to find, vet, and train the best workers for the job at hand, and to take care of logistics when they leave their homes. This includes verifying food and transportation vendors, who can exploit workers left to their own devices. It’s a value add for both the worker and the employer. The new worker is protected from trafficking and abuse. The employer can be confident their new employee will arrive legally, on schedule, free of debt, and knowledgeable about their jobs.

We find this to be valuable to employers because of the labyrinth of state and federal regulations and policies that require workers to sign documents stating that they fully understand and accept their contracts.

When employees are more concerned with paying off debt to criminal gangs in order to protect themselves and their families, than with fulfilling the terms of a contract they may not have even seen, let alone understood, the farm’s ROI for hiring that worker is threatened.

One way we ensure that we understand and are compliant with these rules and regulations is through certifications like IRIS Ethical Recruitment, the flagship ethical recruitment initiative created by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and a host of other government and private sector organizations. Our clients value this because they don’t necessarily have the bandwidth or staff to tackle the ins and outs of the regulatory framework, but they still need their new employees to show up, ready to focus on their work.

When this isn’t the case, workers are less likely to trust their employer. Any issues or unknown factors become corrosive to an efficient, productive relationship between them

Meeting Workers Where They Live

We make progress in part by meeting workers literally where they live, collaborating with organizations already embedded in communities of origin, like churches or civic groups. By working with community members the workers know, speaking to them in a language with which they’re comfortable, we make sure the new employees are fully informed of the details of their contracts.

This kind of intense networking helps us build trust with the workers, who feel much freer to ask questions and get clarity on their rights, where they are traveling to, and what their responsibilities will be. They feel confident that any decisions they make are fully informed and in good faith.

In turn, it demonstrates our commitment to ethical and fair recruitment. Building trust in communities of origin means that we are welcomed back season after season, because the community knows we’re acting in the best interest of their husbands, sons, daughters, and cousins, empowering them to turn away from fear-based immigration “opportunities.”

The Snowball Effect

As more employers get on board with this model of responsible recruitment, guided by the Dhaka Principles, we will start to see a snowball effect as accelerating, positive change takes hold in the agricultural industry.

There is still much work ahead to open safe spaces where workers are free to exercise their rights and demonstrate the level of expertise they bring to their jobs. By ensuring a clear understanding of contracts and safe passage to their job, migrant workers will finally be able to bring their expertise to the workplace, and fully dedicate themselves to the job at hand, creating a viable life plan, or a career.

As more employers get on board with this model of responsible recruitment, guided by the Dhaka Principles, we will start to see a snowball effect as accelerating, positive change takes hold in the agricultural industry.

On the business side of the equation, growers will further benefit by building trust and loyalty among a skilled workforce that is eager to return to work at farms that treat workers with human dignity and respect for their rights, and that value their expertise.

This trust and increased employee engagement will prove much more valuable in the long run than the short term savings gained by working outside the bounds of clear and transparent contracts.

The Dhaka Principles move companies towards accountability as our globalized society becomes ever more interconnected.

When companies treat agricultural guest workers as professionals, with dignity and respect for their skills, and when employers listen to their voices, then human rights principles will be realized.

They will have formed the foundation of a healthy culture for migrant workers and the companies that hire them.

The application of these principles through training and capacity building will help spread the wealth created by this global culture beyond the companies who have reaped these benefits in the past, including:

• Brands who need a stable workforce to secure our food supply chain;
• The often impoverished communities from which these migrants are recruited and;
• Consumers who depend upon safe, fresh, high-quality produce to feed our families

And finally, and most importantly, the benefits will be felt by migrant workers themselves.

This month’s expert is Joe Martinez, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of CIERTO.
Joe has worked closely with NGOs and governments to address migrant worker recruitment and labour practice issues in the US and Canada. A key component of CIERTO's work is to recruit, train and dispatch farmworkers to agricultural employers in the United States and migrant workers to Canada from Mexico and Guatemala. CIERTO's model aims to offer a safe recruitment and labour compliance assurance system that protects workers from fraud, trafficking and forced labour conditions, while protecting growers and retailers by ensuring transparent and ethical labour standards and continuity of supply. Joe has dedicated his career to creating frameworks that allow for communication and cooperation between Mexican State governments, worker communities of origin, North American growers, international retailers and labour representatives.