Senderos — works with government, the private sector, and civil society to improve adherence to international standards on child labor, forced labor, occupational safety and health, and other acceptable conditions of work in the agriculture sectors in Jalisco and Nayarit. The project is building government capacity to enforce labor laws in agricultural supply chains, improving private sector awareness and compliance with labor laws, and increasing farmworkers’ knowledge of labor rights and grievances mechanisms.

Vamos Tejiendo aims to reduce the risk of child labor, forced labor, and other violations of labor rights by empowering vulnerable women and girls working in the production of unrefined brown sugar (panela) and the cut flowers sector and promoting a better understanding of labor rights.

This project works to improve the implementation of social compliance systems that promote acceptable conditions of work and the prevention and reduction of child and forced labor in palm oil supply chains in Colombia and Ecuador. It also disseminates best practices in social compliance systems in these and other palm oil producing countries, particularly Brazil and Peru.

This project enhances governments’ capacity to create, implement, and monitor the application of labor laws by working with ministries of labor, labor judges, and other judicial labor authorities. It seeks to use data collected from labor inspections to identify gaps that facilitate violations and to support legal reforms to address them. The project also uses data analytics to identify and combat labor inspection corruption, waste and inefficiency, and identifies regional inspection units in need of training and capacity building.

Promoting acceptable working conditions in trade partner countries helps the U.S. create a fair playing field for its own workforce and for U.S. companies that play by the rules. This project seeks to ensure that workers in the agricultural export sector in Guatemala, with whom the U.S. has a free trade agreement, receive at least the minimum wage, work within legal hours of work limits, receive due compensation for overtime, and operate in a safe working environment. A particular focus is on improving the capacity of the labor inspectorate and judiciary to become more efficient and effective in investigating violations regarding acceptable conditions of work in the agricultural export sector.

Workers and civil society organizations help to supplement and support government labor law enforcement efforts by proactively identifying potential labor violations and filing justiciable complaints with the appropriate authorities.  This project works in U.S. trade partner countries to improve labor law enforcement, as well as compliance with labor-related U.S. trade provisions, by improving the involvement of workers and civil society organizations in this process.

This project helps businesses establish systems to prevent, detect and eliminate child labor and other forms of labor exploitation from their supply chains. It is assembling a powerful coalition of coffee buyers to collectively incentivize compliance among suppliers. In doing so, the project promotes supply chains that are free of exploitative labor and helps to create a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.

This project supports the Peruvian government and other labor stakeholders to build their capacity to prevent, detect, and eliminate forced labor and labor trafficking from workplaces in Peru. By bringing together the Ministry of Labor, regional and local governments, law enforcement officials, and the judiciary branch, the project aims to encourage better enforcement through consultation and consensus building.

The Reducing Incidence of Child Labor and Harmful Conditions of Work in Economic Strengthening Initiatives (RICHES) project integrated the issues of child labor alleviation and acceptable conditions of work into women’s economic empowerment initiatives. By putting a new toolkit directly in the hands of policymakers and service providers who work with women entrepreneurs, RICHES helped to ensure women-led enterprises can improve livelihoods responsibly without resorting to child labor or other harmful labor practices.

This project will improve enforcement of minimum wage, hours of work and occupational safety and health laws in the agricultural export sector in Costa Rica. By strengthening legal and administrative mechanisms of enforcement while engaging employers and workers to improve compliance in the workplace, the project will help promote supply chains free of exploitative labor and a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.