Shaping a Fairer Future for Migrant Workers in Global Supply Chains: Reflections on GFRR 2023
Sometimes it takes a few weeks to have the time to reflect on the impact a particular event has had on you. And so it was with the Global Forum for Responsible Recruitment (GFRR) hosted by the Institute for Human Rights in Business in mid-June, in New York. Having not attended this event in previous years, I was able to experience it without the mental clutter of comparisons. I have found over the years - now been attending professional conferences for 30 years - that a powerful event provokes as well as enables and inspires, and in this sense GFRR certainly delivered.
The event focused on bringing together practitioners mostly from non-profit organisations active in the responsible recruitment space and businesses whose supply chains are extensive and lean heavily on the labour of migrant workers across a raft of sectors.
In the responsible sourcing and business and human rights space, many events aim to drive improvements in workers and amongst those migrant workers’ lives, but often this is done by competent professionals who speak about migrant workers’ experiences and needs. Frequently such workers themselves are either absent from the proceedings, or passive participants able only to challenge suited panellists or ask incisive questions like “but will this make a difference to the realities for workers on the ground?”. GFRR was different. It was clear that a concerted effort was made to centre debates and balance the voice of providers and brands with the voices of migrant workers and organisations dominated by migrant workers themselves.
This provided a welcome counterbalance to some very ambitious visions of transforming global recruitment of migrant workers mired by exploitative practices into a force for good. Organisations not representing migrant workers, but established and led by migrant workers were able to remind the gathering in sessions and in the corridors of the need to address the persistently harsh realities of most migrant workers in sectors like agriculture, domestic work and shipping. This created a very healthy and somewhat functional tension, that left me with the sense that while the potential to transform recruitment is indisputably needed and needs to happen now, it cannot displace or cannibalise the funding and attention needed to urgently address three fundamentals:
migrant workers past and present require remediation - for many this has been a financially, psychologically, physically and socially damaging experience,
most recruitment agencies remain untouched, invisible, unheard and unchanged (and indeed not at the GFRR) in their practice of irresponsible recruitment, and;
to be a sustainable business and run a responsible recruitment agency is no walk in the park - much work needs to be done to initially incentivise and subsequently identify and support such agencies to get recruitment right.
Finally, it was clear from all the panels, workshops and corridor conversations that responsible recruitment requires that we all work together - from data providers who can measure when remediation is and isn’t happening, and what needs to change, to the brands whose supply chains require and support the growers and suppliers and the shipping companies who employ the migrant workers, certification systems and audit companies, non-profits, funders and regulators. We all need to work together.
Collaboration - the recognition that there is no silver bullet and we need to prioritise joined-up efforts that speak to a systems approach rather than competitive silos of activity or one-stop shop-type solutions - was the chorus throughout. After the past few centuries of violent and damaging recruitment, we recognise the scale and complexity of the problem and the need to do this together.
But with this sense of community, arises another healthy tension. All present tacitly agreed: we have not gotten the recruitment and treatment of migrant workers in global supply chains right yet. This means that there is also a cultural consensus, I believe, that there are no heroes. So when the final session of Day 1 - not a panel but an interview that was entitled Learning Lessons from the FIFA World Cup Qatar - seemed to claim successes, there was palpable unease in the room. Sadly there was no opportunity given for questions or debate about the subject, so the unease filtered into multiple conversations I witnessed or was in after our first day together.
Day 2 was more focused on in-person workshops on metrics and a critical evaluation of the potential of different laws when it comes to materially improving migrant workers’ lives, and provided a welcome shift into a deeper participation in collaboration and debate.
I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to participate on the panel on Day 1 reflecting on how best to amplify the voices of migrant workers, and working with my panellists, Amy Lehr from Mars, Mark Taylor from Issara Institute and Gerardo Reyes Chávez from Coalition of Immokalee Workers. We were able to offer our audience a clear sense that simple grievance reporting and helplines were insufficient. The panel raised that anonymity (a safe space), grower and employer as well as worker education, retailer commitments to no-tolerance towards irresponsible recruitment and clear reliable and continuous systems for scalable worker engagement and worker voice were needed. It was clear that the old-school approach of offering a toll-free helpline was seen as grossly inadequate, especially for those categories of migrant workers most vulnerable to the most exploitative practices.
All in all I found the GFRR to be an excellent forum for taking the responsible recruitment agenda forward, practically and collaboratively. Thanks to IHRB for pulling this all together and to all those who contributed in conversation, on stage or in workshops. For in this event, all were actively involved and heard, and that was arguably the greatest achievement.