Reflections from 3 years of remediating 280,000+ labor abuses

For NGO leaders in the human rights space these days, there’s no time or money to waste - so having robust and reliable metrics is critical for understanding what’s working and what’s not. For Issara Institute, many of our key metrics and that of our local NGO and trade union partners are publicly tracked and reported in near-real time on the Inclusive Labor Monitoring (ILM) Community Dashboards at www.workervoices.org/community-dashboard. 

Recently, one of the most reported and discussed metrics has been our main remediation metric - 282,619 workers receiving remediation over the past 3 years (2022-2024) for labor abuses reported to Issara Institute and civil society partners in the Inclusive Labor Monitoring Action Network. From www.workervoices.org:

282,619. That’s a lot of workers suffering labor abuses. That’s also a lot of remediation effort. Most of these cases occurred in Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia, to workers of Bangladeshi, Burmese, Cambodian, Nepali, and other Asian nationalities working in industries such as apparel and footwear, electronics, food and beverage, and seafood. A smaller number of cases were sexual harassment, exploitative recruitment, and human trafficking from Asia (primarily Nepal) to countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and UAE in the Middle East, and Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, and the United Kingdom in Europe. Some cases impacted thousands of workers, though the majority of remediation cases were individuals, or impacted tens or hundreds of workers.

The majority of worker-reported labor abuses were remedied in partnership with the workers’ employers. These employers - factories, farms, plants, plantations - are also often suppliers within the supply chains of one or more of Issara’s Strategic Partners. Issara Strategic Partners are businesses that provide an annual charitable contribution to support the work of the Institute. Many of these supplier sites are Tier 1 and Tier 2 sites exporting goods from Myanmar, Malaysia, and Thailand, subjected to audits on a regular basis. Social audits, however, are finding few if any of the labor issues that workers are reporting to us and the ILM Action Network.

In one factory recently, for example, workers had reported to Issara 16 different issues, each impacting hundreds of workers, within a span of a few months. Yet the factory had just passed a recent round of social audits, which apparently detected none - zero percent - of the issues raised by workers to Issara’s independent worker voice channels. This is a very typical situation in our day to day work. And it is also increasingly being recognized by media such as in this recent Radio Free Asia reporting and various Business & Human Rights Resource Centre articles. 

TOP 5 QUESTIONS ABOUT REMEDIATION IN SUPPLY CHAINS. At this point we are often asked a number of questions. The Q&A often goes like this:

1. What kind of labor abuses are reported to independent local NGOs but not auditors, or NGOs working for auditors…and why?  The top labor abuses reported by workers of different nationalities in different countries and industries can be explored at www.workervoices.org in the ILM Community Dashboard, Ethical Supply Chains tab. You can see that it is a mix of different issues, from late or missing payments to physical abuse by line supervisors to issues with workloads. Why are workers reporting vastly more cases to independent local NGOs vs. auditors? The answer is clear: workers trust us because we are collaborative but independent. We educate and safeguard workers, and our aim is to help workers get their issues remediated, no matter where they work or whose supply chain they are in. Why would a worker trust a social auditor - a stranger they have never met, who most often does not speak their language, interferes with their time on the line and ability to meet targets, and has no direct line to or commitment to remediation? If you were a worker in a factory far from home, would you share your grievances with someone you’ve never met and will probably never see again? If your supervisor was your abuser and they saw you talking to an auditor, what concerns would you have, and what could that auditor do to protect you from reprisal in the weeks and months ahead?

   
   

2. Why wouldn’t the workers just go to the human resources department of their employer? This is an important question we ask regularly because, ideally, this is the goal - people with issues at work should be able to go to their employer’s human resources department or use the internal grievance mechanism and feel confident and safe that their grievance will be handled swiftly and professionally. And indeed, when workers call us, we ask them if they have contacted human resources for help - if not, why not, or if so, how did it go and how can we help further? What we learn from workers is that, essentially, many internal grievance mechanisms are far from fair and functional. We are actively working with progressive suppliers on strengthening their internal grievance systems…but some have no interpretation services for workers. Others have issues with unchecked retaliation. Yet others are simply unresponsive, or quietly discouraging of lodging grievances. A number of Burmese and Cambodian worker leaders came together last year and made a really lovely, eye-opening 10-minute video entitled Why are Safeguards So Important in Grievance Mechanisms? - please check it out!

   
   

3. How serious were these issues, are they really legit labor abuse cases? Yes these are legitimate labor issues being raised. Some issues are urgent threats to worker well-being while some are not. Some are violations of law and some are not. Some are constellations of violations that would amount to forced labor or human trafficking, and some are not. But they are all legitimate labor issues and it is actually extremely productive when worker voice channels and grievance mechanisms receive not only serious cases but also less serious ones before they escalate.

   
   

4. Are workers really capable of using apps and such to report issues? I didn’t think unskilled workers were so educated or tech literate. Absolutely, many are. Our receiving 10,000-20,000 calls and messages per month from male and female workers across a range of nationalities, ethnicities, and ages attests to this. As noted above, the great majority of labor exploitation cases identified and remediated are sparked by workers understanding their rights and reporting issues to trusted people - these issues are not found by audits or survey tools. An important way that workers understand their rights is through grassroots and online outreach and empowerment - such as that led by the Burmese worker mobilizers in the photo (below left), convening in Thailand on their day off to strategize on how to best reach, educate, and empower more workers and communities in global supply chains (such as the worker community shown, below right) so that more labor abuses can be detected and remediated. 

   
   

   

   
   

5. How are these cases getting remediated, and how are you so sure? We raise these worker-reported issues with the suppliers/employers, they respond, and workers are updated regularly on the progress of remediation. Most often, issues are remediated without too much drama. However, if there is any reticence we may escalate to the suppliers’ customers that are our Strategic Partners, and/or consult with the government for guidance and support. We also know when worker-reported issues are remediated because the affected workers validate their experience and satisfaction with the remediation. It’s worth pointing out that when the quality of remediation is validated by workers, rather than just the suppliers themselves, it can yield dramatically different data than what is typically self-reported by suppliers to prove and close out a corrective action plan (CAP) triggered by an audit. 

   
   

THE ETHICAL DILEMMA OF REMEDIATION. As you read this, or look at the data outlined by on-the-ground actors on www.workervoices.org, take a moment to reflect on how you feel about it. What’s happening in your gut? Do you feel good about so many issues being detected and remediated due to the bravery and empowerment of workers, and the collaboration of engaged suppliers? Or do you feel bad about there still being so much exploitation in global supply chains?

Both? Yes…us too. If you run hotlines and/or seek to uncover worker grievances, you have a duty of care to act upon that information and not put workers at risk in the process.  Remediation can be an extremely labor intensive process, especially if suppliers are reticent and their customers do not reinforce their ethical sourcing policies and expectations. We answer hotline calls and worker voice messages at nights, weekends, and around the clock - talking to workers when it’s convenient for them, typically during off-shift hours.

I recently walked through our Bangkok regional office and asked some colleagues, “Hey! In the past 3 years we have helped 282,619 workers get their labor abuses remediated - how does that make you feel?”  Here is a summary of how several colleagues responded:

We all need to talk a lot more seriously about prevention. 

Prevention is where we want to be. Of course, prevention of modern slavery in supply chains is what you would expect a human rights NGO person to advocate for, because we have a duty of care and want to prevent any person from unnecessarily suffering harm. But are we getting closer to prevention being what you would expect companies and governments to rally around and invest in as well? With finite resources to spend on human rights due diligence, social compliance, and slavery in supply chains, what are these resources best spent on in 2025 and beyond? Actually, it is estimated that nearly US $20 billion/year is spent by businesses on social audits, and this figure is expected to increase to over US $82 billion/year by 2033 - thankfully, not a trivial amount. So let’s start ideating how to generate more positive human rights impact and modern slavery prevention - and business improvement, and better data - from this spend.

Imagine, if you will…

Independent worker voice channels run by networks of locally based NGOs, collaborating with local suppliers and recruitment agencies to detect and remediate issues and their root causes. Progressive suppliers and recruitment agencies are also running better grievance mechanisms and investing in training of their staff. These networks are detecting issues such as illicit brokers in origin countries, intervening before workers leave their countries indebted and extorted - thus rooting out illegal broker fees from international recruitment processes, which is otherwise extremely difficult for suppliers in destination countries to do. This, in turn, means that brands and retailers don’t need to audit so aggressively for unallowed recruitment fees, and that suppliers don’t need to pay such high recruitment remediation costs  -  thus levelling the playing field for saving millions of dollars for suppliers such as those running large export-level manufacturing sites, as we have in Southeast Asia.

Good news! This already exists. It’s called Inclusive Labor Monitoring. Independent worker voice channels run by locally based NGOs (like us) that workers trust get the real picture of what’s happening in recruitment corridors and in worksites. And through partnership with and technical support to suppliers and recruitment agencies, we translate this to targeting and addressing root causes - from entrenched local brokers to understaffed, undertrained interpreter teams, and everything in between. 

This is all absolutely achievable, right now. We have the models and the technologies to scale up. My proposal: if social audits are a $20 billion/year industry and growing, money that business is already spending to meet business and human rights standards and requirements - can we crowd in more companies in 2025 to go beyond audits, to support independent worker voice mechanisms that are trusted by workers and that yield reliable data and measurable, positive impacts for businesses across supply chains as well as for workers and communities?