While millions of workers emigrate in search of a better life for themselves and their families, far too many are trapped by false promises made by unscrupulous recruitment agencies. Whether it's bogus jobs, low wages or dangerous working conditions, they can find themselves trapped in forced labor, debt bondage and other forms of modern slavery.
A new digital platform has been set up to help protect migrant workers from abusive employment practices by providing them with peer reviews of recruitment agencies in their country of origin and destination.
The Recruitment Advisor platform , developed by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) with support from the ILO's Fair Recruitment Initiative , lists thousands of agencies in Nepal, the Philippines and Indonesia.
The platform allows workers to post comments on their experiences, rate recruitment agencies and learn about their rights. Currently available in English, Indonesian, Nepalese and Tagalog, it will soon be developed in other languages.
Governments have provided the list of approved agencies, and a network of trade unions and civil society organizations from all the countries concerned ensures the platform's sustainability by raising awareness among workers of their rights. Ultimately, Recruitment Advisor will promote recruiters who respect a fair recruitment process, based on the ILO's General Principles and Operational Guidelines on Fair Recruitment, and provide useful feedback to governments on the practices of approved recruitment agencies, which can be used to complement more traditional monitoring systems.
Recruitment is a delicate stage because migrant workers are highly vulnerable to abusive practices. "Unscrupulous recruitment agencies take advantage of governments' failure to enforce legislation or the simple fact that workers are unaware of their rights," deplores ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow. "It's time to give workers the power to rate recruitment agencies and show whether they are delivering on their promises of jobs and pay."
Many workers are generally unaware that they should not have to pay recruitment fees to get a job. This principle is fundamental and has been identified as one of the ILO's general principles for ensuring fair recruitment.
"This platform can help migrant workers make decisive choices when planning their path to work abroad. We know that when a worker is recruited fairly the risk of ending up as a victim of forced labor is drastically reduced," explains ILO Technical Officer Alix Nasri. "We urge workers to share their experiences so that others can learn from them. We need a critical mass of evaluations to make the platform truly useful to migrants."