This page presents all relevant good practice case studies that showcase how business have addressed the Migrant workers dilemma. Case studies have been developed in close collaboration with a range of multi-national companies and relevant government, inter-governmental and civil society stakeholders. We also draw on public domain sources, including the UN Global Compact's own published Communications on Progress through which signatories are required to report on their performance against the Ten Principles.
The case studies explore the specific dilemmas and challenges faced by each organisation, good practice actions they have taken to resolve them and the results of such action. We reference challenges as well as achievements and invite you to submit commentary and suggestions through the Forum.
IN-DEPTH (Print seperately) Marks & Spencer: Improving controls on migrant labour providers
IN-DEPTH (Print seperately) Maple Leaf Foods: Labour shortages and migration
IBLF and the IHRB: The Business and Migration Initiative – Global
The Business and Migration Initiative - a partnership project between the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) - seeks to foster greater business involvement, facilitate dialogue, strengthen the debate and support private-sector led initiatives to raise standards in relation to business and migration. Over an initial three-year period (2010-12), four separate roundtables will be convened in developed countries and emerging markets, focussing on issues that are relevant locally to the businesses and other parties who are participating. Companies, public sector policy-makers and civil society partners will be invited to participate. Emphasis will be given to practical action and to achieving attainable policy objectives.
Manpower: Providing language programmes to migrant workers - Global
Manpower conducts language programmes in nearly every country that it operates in. In Mexico, for example, Manpower works with the Mexican Institute for Migration to provide Spanish-language lessons to candidates alongside other training. Candidates from Congo, Haiti, Sri Lanka and other locations rely on these lessons to help prepare them for work with Manpower Mexico clients. Similarly, in collaboration with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the company is working in Thailand’s Mae La Refugee camp to provide programs that help 50 refugees who have been accepted for settlement in the United States to learn English-language skills.
Apple: Ensuring supplier responsibility for recruitment practices – Global
Apple’s Supplier Responsibility 2009 Progress Report highlighted that the recruitment of migrant workers by its suppliers posed the most serious challenge to the company. Apple’s suppliers use multiple third-party labour agencies to source workers from other countries. The fees that migrant workers paid at six of the 83 suppliers audited amounted to around US$852,000. In its 2010 report , Apple noted that as a result of audits and corrective actions, migrant workers have been reimbursed over US$2.2 million in recruitment fee overcharges since 2008. In addition to demanding reimbursement of the recruitment fees, Apple updated its Supplier Code of Conduct and issued a standard for Prevention of Involuntary Labour. Apple suppliers are required to take responsibility for the entire recruitment process of direct and contract workers, including for payment of all fees. The standard for Prevention of Involuntary Labour limits recruitment fees to the equivalent of one month’s net wages and specifies management practices regarding contract requirements, grievance processes, agency management, and the handling of workers’ passports, as well as other stipulations for managing foreign contract workers.
Unilever/ACWF: Assisting children left behind by migrant workers – China
Unilever partnered with the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) in June 2009 to provide assistance to the children left behind by migrant worker parents in 10 Chinese provinces. The initiative is expected to benefit around 600,000 families. Under the programme, ‘love cards’ and parent-child telephone cards will be issued, along with practical guidance to families with children left at home while their parents migrate from rural to urban China for work. The initiative is designed to facilitate regular communication between migrant workers and their families.
Timberland: Providing life skills training to migrant workers – China
Timberland partnered with global labour rights advocate organisation Verité in 2003 to provide life skills training to its workers in China. Skills training included enhancing computer literacy, tailoring/sewing skills and cultural knowledge. Part of this training was directed specifically at migrant workers, with a particular emphasis on Cantonese language skills.
Western Union: Providing assistance to migrants through education – Global
In 2007, Western Union launched a five-year US$50 million giving program ‘Our World, Our family.’ The programme is founded on four pillars: ‘create global giving circles’ (social investment to benefit marginalised communities); provide education programmes and tools to migrants, with a particular focus on community orientation, basic language skills and careers advice; support entrepreneurship and personal finance to potential migrants, and; engage global leaders on the issues that affect migrant communities.
MAS Holdings: Locating factories in rural areas to avoid migration– Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan apparel manufacturer MAS Holdings has taken the strategic decision to base many of its factories in rural villages rather than free trade zones in order to minimise relocation of female workers away from their families (it is common for Sri Lankan women in their mid-twenties to migrate from rural villages to free trade zones). This also reduces their exposure to risks associated with migrant workers in Sri Lanka, including sexual abuse. Company buses pick up workers from nearby villages and drop them at the factory gate to minimise safety concerns.
Bata: Locating factories in rural areas to avoid migration into cities – Thailand
Canadian footwear company Bata partnered with the Thai Business Initiative in Rural Development in 1991 to develop a sewing program in the rural Thai village of Ban Nong Bod, Buri Ram province. In 1992, Bata supported the development of a sewing cooperative in the province, which now produces more than 1,000 pairs of shoes per day. In 1994, the workers were paid more than double the prevailing agricultural wage. The Bata project has focussed primarily on employing women, who are most at risk of exploitation if they leave the villages. An evaluation of the Bata project shows that two thirds of the women employed at the cooperative factory are former migrants who have returned from Bangkok.
Nike: Providing direct remedy for violations in the supply chain - Malaysia
In August 2008, an investigation by an Australian television channel alleged the exploitation of around 1,200 migrant workers from Bangladesh, Vietnam and Myanmar in a Hytex Group factory in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Hytex factory makes t-shirts for Nike, among others. Although the factory met minimum wage requirements, workers were housed in sub-standard accommodation, had their passports withheld and had excessive and unfair monthly wage deductions. The practice of withholding passports was allegedly used by the factory to compel workers to pay their own employment-permit fees, ordinarily paid by the company. Nike immediately investigated and confirmed the claims and implemented an immediate action plan to protect the rights of workers in its Malaysian supply chain. Nike required Hytex to make the following non-negotiable and immediate changes: (1) Reimburse migrant workers for fees associated with employment (e.g. recruitment and work permit fees); (2) Pay all future fees associated with employment as a cost of doing business; (3) Provide a return airfare for workers wishing to return home, irrespective of contract requirements; (4) Move workers into new Nike-inspected and approved housing (5) Provide workers with immediate and unrestricted access to their passports; (6) Provide workers with access to a 24-hour Nike hotline to report violations. Nike also committed to review its entire Malaysian contract factory base and require factories to institute these same policies. In addition, Nike has engaged with a local NGO, Tenaganita, to implement management training programmes in Nike supplier factories, targeting improved treatment of migrant workers.
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