Fair Fish: Fostering Accountability in Recruitment for Fishery Workers

Results

The project has: 

• Increased seafood processing companies’ and workers’ knowledge of the vulnerabilities of migrant workers to exploitation in the seafood processing industries, leading them to take important steps to prevent abusive recruitment.  
• Produced and disseminated a study mapping recruitment supply chains from Burma and Cambodia into Thailand, which demonstrated that there are different challenges to responsible recruitment, depending on the worker’s country of origin. 
• Conducted factory visits and drafted detailed document reviews of the participating companies’ social compliance management systems. Based on these findings, implementing partner, the Food School then helped the companies draft a set of policies and procedures related to recruitment. The Food School also delivered 55 support sessions to the companies on how to improve their compliance with international responsible recruitment standards.
• Adjusted its strategy in response to new challenges from civil unrest to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite civil unrest in Burma and Thailand, as well as restrictions on business operations and border closures imposed by Thailand’s pandemic response policies, the project has found effective ways to communicate and connect industry representatives and recruiters to learn and share good practices with one another through regular video conferences on key topics. For example, the project created channels for migrant workers to continue to communicate and access responsible recruitment information through social media and texting apps.  Moreover, it has shifted strategy from initial plans for in-person trainings for recruiters in Burma and Cambodia to an online platform that will deliver courses in a modular, on-demand format.