Category: Uncategorized

LaMP Flights: Discovering how tech-solutions help indigenous communities’ migration in the coffee sector in Costa Rica

Posted on January 24, 2023 by - Uncategorized

FAVORITE QUOTES: 

 “Coffee business is a family business”- Farm manager in “Hacienda Río Negro” 

 MAIN TAKEAWAY: 

The “Sistema de Trazabilidad Laboral Migratoria” (SITLAM) is a tech-based solution for the agricultural sector in Costa Rica that has allowed regularization, tracing and inclusion of indigenous workers and their families in an innovative and streamlined way. SITLAM started to operate as a system with three components. (1) A web platform for the government to register information at the border and issue an ID card in real time for migrant workers. (2) The SITLAM ID card has a QR code to help them track and access an array of services such as medical, social security and banking (3) Additionally, SITLAM provides an app for employers to register worker’s entries and exits. Most employers and workers have seen systemic improvements and reduced frictions since its implementation in 2020, as a result they have been using it for three consecutive years. However, SITLAM’s success story does not rely entirely on technology development – it is part of a whole ecosystem that facilitates regular and orderly migration for coffee harvests that rely on indigenous workforce from Panama and Nicaragua to maintain their exports. This ecosystem includes a legal instrument, a specific migration category, housing, transportation, and childcare provided by the employer. 

 

LaMP TEAM REFLECTION: 

As the last scoping trip of 2022, LaMP team went to Costa Rica to collect information and learn more about SITLAM. Our goal was to understand how this tech-based solution works in practice and what are the conditions for replicability in other industries, countries, and migration corridors as an occupation-based and streamlined model. The coffee sector has been a champion in SITLAM’s implementation and  use of the system. The LaMP team visited two cities in Costa Rica. First, we went to San José to meet with public institutions including the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Agriculture; and then we had the opportunity to go to San Vito, in Coto Brus, a canton specialized in coffee production at the border with Panama where we were able to witness in real time the process and talked with local authorities, employers and workers. Learnings from this trip will help us think through replicability and best practice insights.  

Coordinated efforts and activities among different public organizations, the technical assistance from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the private sector’s influence and the COVID-19 pandemic leverage were the key drivers to design and implement SITLAM. Every year, Costa Rica receives tens of thousands of foreign seasonal workers to support the coffee sector. Most of them come from Panama’s ethnic minority: the Ngobe Bugle. As a result of COVID-19 in 2020, they faced labor supply strain due to the border’s closure and temporary halt for sanitary reasons. SITLAM was the solution that emerged to solve this shortage and address political pressures from the coffee sector through the business association Instituto del Café Costa Rica (ICAFE). The system started as a multi-institutional coordinated effort between the IOM, the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Migration Office; however, as a migratory status it now officially sits under the Migration Office.  

There are context-specific features to highlight in this initiative, including positive attitudes around migrant workers, perfect circularity, family inclusion within the migration process and direct recruitment. A culture of migration is palpable in San Vito as the city was established by Italian migrants and now relies on indigenous migrants to work for annual coffee harvests. There is a long-standing flow of Ngobe Bugle workers to San Vito which are the preferred workforce for coffee producers. For example, some people have been working for 20 consecutive years in the same coffee farm. Furthermore, the local authorities have established a local labor migration policy that promotes a regularized setting for current and future flows. Another key element from this migration process is that it is perfectly circular: all workers come to work at the beginning of the coffee season and return home at the end of it. Family inclusion is also an important aspect of the coffee sector. Employers allow workers to bring their families, which results in the family earning more income, workers come for a longer time, and this increases the retention in a single workplace. Finally, we learned that the coffee sector recruitment process is based on employer-worker bonds, especially with community leaders that work alongside the rest of the community in the coffee field. There are minimum cases where intermediaries have been part of this process. 

There is a lot of expansion potential and interest for SITLAM, looking beyond the agriculture sector in Costa Rica, thinking about a trinational system or replicability to other migratory corridors. Within the agricultural sector, other product farmers including palm oil, pineapple and banana have started using SITLAM for migrant workers from Nicaragua. One key difference from the coffee sector, as this one has a common investment fund managed by ICAFE to ensure social security for the workers. Other sectors such as transportation, construction, private security, and domestic work have shown interest in using SITLAM.  The government, in coordination with IOM, is exploring the legal feasibility of piloting SITLAM in these sectors. Additionally, IOM is analyzing the feasibility of creating a trinational SITLAM for Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua, as the migration flows are frequent between the three countries. Moreover, other countries in Central America have approached Costa Rica to learn from this initiative. 

Currently LaMP team is assessing different ideas for projects aiming to improve the current system in Costa Rica, ranging from new features in the system to incentives and mechanisms to promote a better use; or to replicate the system in other places and contexts around the region where circular migration schemes are in place. SITLAM has clearly shown that tech-solutions can drive positive impact by reducing frictions for different stakeholders, however a comprehensive evaluation for the three harvests in Costa Rica using SITLAM is needed to learn how this solution has changed the behavior of workers, employers and government and has helped in different productivity and social outcomes.   

Interested in this work? Feel free to contact us! Stay tuned for more details about this project as well as other LaMP’s work by signing up for our newsletter and following us on twitter!   

2022 at LaMP: A Year in Review

Posted on December 19, 2022 by - Uncategorized

For years now, we have described labor mobility as an idea ahead of its time. What 2022 showed us clearly is that the time has come.

Labor scarcity has entered the public consciousness in a way we have never seen before – as of summer 2022, the world’s largest 30 economies had a record number of job openings. While the temptation of policymakers is typically to open doors only to highly educated migrants, the fastest growing openings by far are for workers in trade and service sectors. We have all felt the pain of these shortages in the last year – think of all the long waits at the airport, the breakdown of supply chains driving inflation because there are not enough truck drivers and port workers.

This pain goes beyond airport lines and supply chains – according to a report recently launched by friends at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), these labor shortages are costing us all $1.3 trillion per year or $3-5 billion every day. This is just the tip of the iceberg as demographic decline truly sets in; without creating opportunities for new workers to come, these daily losses will get much larger over the coming years of our lives.

For us at LaMP, in the words of da Vinci, we have spent 2022 “impressed with the urgency of doing.” We expanded our operations and our team to cover all continents, working with many of you to reach new geographies and explore new barriers to mobility. We launched several portfolios of work focusing on solutions to these barriers, with the support of new partners from the Howard Buffet Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. You can learn more about this work on this new website we launched in December, which offers more information on our current programming. Following on commitments we made last year, we also worked to expand the perspectives and skill sets of our team and Board, recognizing the importance of understanding and reflecting the views of a wide range of stakeholders in our work.

Here are the top takeaways from a momentous year of growth:

  1. The tide is turning. 2022 made labor scarcity a ‘household name,’ and we are already seeing policy and dialogue shift accordingly. In November, Canada set its highest immigration target in its history (1.45 million immigrants by 2025), and announced changes allowing workers in trade and service sectors to more easily come. Germany is exploring changes to reduce barriers for workers in these sectors, having already expanded its migration system to include all mid-skilled occupations and a number of lower-skilled occupations, and the US plans to issue the highest number of H-2B visas in history while the Secretary of Labor warned that not letting in immigrants would lead to economic ‘catastrophe.’ We’re also seeing broader recognition from the public that we need migration into a wide range of sectors – the British public, which only so recently voted to pull out of the EU due to fears over higher immigration, now favors increased recruitment of migrants with the largest positive shifts in attitudes being on low-paid sectors struggling with shortages, such as catering and construction.
  1. LaMP picked up huge momentum, especially in forming the right relationships and opening opportunities. In last year’s reflections our CEO Rebekah Smith asked two questions: could we be a global organization while being embedded in local contexts, and could we become a trusted advisor to all of the different types of actors we need with their very different interests? The answer this year has been a resounding (and reassuring) yes. LaMP became a known name and trusted advisor in some of the highest levels of decision-making. We have formed strong relationships with key actors we couldn’t have dreamed of a year ago, from governments to industry to donors. The sector-based approach we committed to at the end of 2021 has worked  – our team has been deliberate in meeting employers where they are at, embedding ourselves in industry convenings for the care, cruise ship, and trucking sectors. We’ve found that the best way to get the trust and buy in of all stakeholders is simply to take their own interests seriously, as seriously as if they were your own, and to find a design that meets all of their goals (we call this the ‘applesauce principle’ among ourselves, but you’ll have to reach out to find out why!)
  1. We still struggle to turn this momentum and relationships into actual programs. If labor mobility’s time has come, what may be missing is the doing. The da Vinci quote continues: “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” This year we have seen dramatically increased recognition of the need for labor mobility, but solutions lag far behind. For our part, in 2022 LaMP has generated significant interest in new solutions and expanded pathways, but so far this has only resulted in one operational program aimed at improving worker experiences – far from what is needed. 2023 will be a key moment in seeing whether we can translate interest into actual programs – we have several pilots that would create new migration opportunities in the pipeline, and a goal of moving 50,000 workers by 2025.
  1. We need to act quickly. LaMP’s mission is to create better job opportunities for half a billion workers from low-income countries by 2050, which would fill only half of the need from demographic decline. That’s less than 30 years to triple the number of migrant workers in the world, which leads me to two conclusions for our work moving forward:
  • While we are currently taking an incrementalist approach, which is a necessary starting point, we need to be looking for big unlocks that lead to exponentially scaling migration. We are currently working on incubating new solutions – like innovative financing approaches – that would allow us to scale existing migration systems in a sustainable way. But if we are to meet this goal, we need solutions that transform the way migration works and is viewed.
  • It’s time to pair technical solutions with a movement of powerful voices calling for large-scale change. Technical solutions can only ever lead to incremental change; to achieve transformative change, we need to fundamentally shift the understanding of the role of migration in our society. We have exciting plans to begin building this movement over the coming year, including an inaugural convening of powerful advocates and thought leaders to amplify the voices of workers from the Global South and are creating partnerships working towards concrete commitments for mobility pathways and solutions within the aged care sector by the G20 governments to be announced at next year’s G20 summit.

As we at LaMP think back on our work in 2022, we are reminded of a quote from Angela Davis: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” This year, the LaMP team has gotten to work every day believing that it is possible to radically transform the world, and dedicated each day to striving for that transformation. This field requires hard and arduous work, but we believe that we are beginning to see the fruits of that work, and that the next few years will bring critical leaps forward in the role mobility plays in our societies.

We are grateful to all our partners, stakeholders and supporters for all the ways they strive with us, and look forward to working on further developing these as well as new partnerships in the coming year for a more just and prosperous world where more people have the opportunity to move!

 

Wanted: New Partner Countries for Germany’s Labor Migration Policy 

Posted on December 5, 2022 by - Uncategorized

The German economy is in dire need of immigrant labor. A study by the  German Federal Employment Agency (BA) estimates that Germany will need to attract 400,000 net immigrants to its labor market by 2050 to sustain its current growth levels. The problem is that Germany’s traditional source countries for immigrant labor in southern and eastern Europe face the same demographic shifts as Germany, meaning their populations have also been aging.

Most countries with booming demographics are developing countries, for which labor migration bears potential for development. Studies estimate that only 60% of people in developing countries are likely to find jobs above the poverty threshold. For these countries, emigration alleviates the pressure on their ailing job markets. This is accomplished with the new skills and knowledge brought by returned workers as well as remittances that often make up large shares of the developing countries’ national GDPs.

Germany has already laid most of the groundwork needed to attract missing workforce: a broadened legal framework, strong political commitment, technical expertise, and public awareness. But how can it move up the next gear? How can we scale up a decade of piloting? Where do responsibilities lie between government actors and the private sector? And where will the immigrants of tomorrow come from?

This blog seeks to address at least some of these questions. Parts of the answers lie with the need for Germany to strengthen cooperation with new and future source countries through labor migration partnerships.

Roadblocks ahead

In Germany, two main roadblocks stand in the way of prospective migrant workers.

First, learning German poses a significant challenge. German is not widely taught in schools due to its limited perceived global practicality. Language training is costly and takes on average 12-18 months of full-time training to reach the desired B2 level to be attractive to German employers. Most employers currently pay for the language cost at the match-making stage before the worker embarks on the language training journey, which creates a lot of “investment” risk. Finding sustainable solutions to bridge this payment/timing gap will increase attractiveness and make hiring of foreign workers easier.

Second, the uncertainty of visa procedures may discourage potential candidates. Visa policy is often a sensitive topic, but there are ways to increase the predictability and visibility of visa applications and processes for candidates and employers. For example, it can be accomplished through facilitated schemes for specific skills levels, occupations, or nationalities, such as the Australian Pacific Labor Migration (PALM) scheme and innovations in the US H2A scheme with Mexico and Guatemala. Another option is to change the visa design. Recent Spanish reforms have proposed a 4-year circular visa program to increase predictability and security for employers and migrant workers. The issue particularly with circular schemes, however, is the power they give to recruiting agencies in origin and employers in destination countries, creating a potential for exploitative behaviors. To address these power imbalances between stakeholders, ethical circular schemes should come with proper vetting of employers, responsible recruitment agencies, and the ability for migrants to change employers within their sector or occupation. The systems should also provide proper feedback channels for the workers to evaluate employers.

The next set of challenges await immigrants upon arrival. Integration is often complicated, especially for those who have yet to master the German language. Skills recognition is another issue given that requirements for the same professions vary by states. Sectors with difficult working conditions and unattractive remuneration, such as health and aged care, also struggle to retain migrant workers who turn to less burdensome professions. Additionally, employers are not always prepared to welcome international workers and manage multi-cultural and multi-language teams, especially in smaller cities and rural areas. Discrimination and racism are a reality that pushes some migrant workers to cut short their stay in Germany and move onward to another destination. While the issue of integration of migrant workforce is at the core of Germany’s minister for integration, it should also be addressed in unison with the private sector and employers across job sectors.

On top of that, many introduced pilot programs have been set up in a way that is difficult to scale and finance in a sustainable way. Over the past 10 years, Germany has piloted several projects through skills and labor mobility partnerships. These pilot projects have been key to push forward innovative models and identify challenges and bottlenecks. But pilots score poorly when it comes to the actual numbers of migrant workers they have channeled into Germany. As comprehensive as they are, these schemes tend to be very costly if not properly scaled. This raises the question of a fair sharing of costs between private and public actors. Employers, who already bear the risk of hiring candidates unfit for the job, are understandably wary of taking on additional financial expenses. At the same time, the government alone cannot subsidize labor migration but should act as an intermediary for private employers that are often not experienced with hiring foreign workers. Results-based financing (RBF) models, in which payments are connected to pre-agreed and verified measurable performance targets, may provide a solution to this issue, helping the government, employers and ultimately the workers to ease off the burden.

Cooperation outside; coordination within

It is clear that labor migration partnerships rely on strong cooperation with sending countries at the technical as well as political level. At technical level, the cooperation should achieve some degree of coherence on training requirements and skill recognition. At the political level, partnerships are sustained by their perceived added value – a determinant that may change over time and with successive governments.

As many of the traditional sending countries age, it is time to build new and strengthen existing partnerships with the emerging source countries. As an example, although most skilled workers come to Germany from India, Germany’s visibility and attractiveness as a destination country pales in India in comparison to other global competitors.

To gain visibility abroad, Germany needs to increase the coordination across responsible ministries and build a coherent messaging – from the Foreign Office to Development and International Cooperation, Home Office, Labor and Social Affairs, Health, and the Chancellery. Ultimately, effective labor migration will require strong cross-sectorial partnerships among a variety of stakeholders – from relevant ministries to states and communities, private employers, and host communities – asking for enhanced communication, coordination, and coherence.

Lots of new developments are currently taking place in Germany when it comes to improving the processes and attractiveness of Germany as a destination country. But Germany needs to do more to overcome the hurdles of language and attractiveness, focusing on its ‘unique selling points’, for instance by communicating about the non-monetary benefits it offers and that are too often not spelled out to migrant workers: health and retirement benefits, family reunification, speedy access to citizenship, and others. Within the EU, Germany is leading a solitary race for labor migration. This alone should give Germany an edge to attract more labor migrants.

This blog is based on outcomes of a discussion among representatives from German ministries, development organizations and the private sector hosted by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) in October 2022.

LaMP Flights: Understanding needs and challenges of Mexico’s transportation industry

Posted on December 2, 2022 by - Uncategorized

FAVORITE QUOTES: 

“I want to become a driver because I want a better future for my family” 

“I want to become a driver because it has the privilege of combining responsibility with sunsets and unimaginable landscapes” 

– Students at training centers

MAIN TAKEAWAY: 

Labor mobility can help address the current labor shortage in the Mexico’s trucking industry, particularly for heavy freight transportation. Coordinated and scalable efforts to professionalize the country’s long-haul truck drivers may be one of the first steps towards such endeavor. The industry demonstrates several important ingredients necessary to build a bigger and stronger labor-force, such as organizational capacity, motivated and talented leaders and teams, well-developed processes and procedures, willingness to invest from the private sector, and competitive salaries. However, underlying conditions such as crime and insecurity, supply chain industry configuration, informal practices, insufficient control and monitoring and health concerns present important challenges as the industry works to attract new workers.   

 

LaMP TEAM REFLECTION: 

After trips to Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, the LaMP team traveled to another target destination of our Ibero-America scoping project – Mexico. This trip allowed us to assess Mexico’s potential and appetite for circular labor mobility within its heavy freight transportation industry. Our focus on Mexico stems from its position of representing both – a receiving country of workers from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, also known as the Northern Triangle, as well as a sending country of trained workers to the United States and Canada, which face similar labor shortages in the sector.  

The LaMP team met with a broad variety of stakeholders including government actors at different administrative levels, private sector, and labor organizations, collecting various perspectives and getting familiar with the existing initiatives. Although many of them shared experience with Mexican truck drivers eventually leaving to work for US employers and expressed concerns about this issue, just a few stakeholders have considered binational coordinated circular labor mobility schemes as a solution helping to meet labor demand of employers in both countries. Still, most stakeholders agree that more cross-border collaboration, such as joint efforts with the United States to align incentives for the two nations’ employers, is necessary to address the workforce gap. And yet, while most of the stakeholders we encountered during this trip expressed positive attitudes towards foreign workers, they have been more focused on attracting and training Mexican workers, including young people and women, as a first straightforward response to the industry’s needs.   

The workforce gap for the long-haul freight transportation sector is a complex challenge, but the industry is highly motivated to address the issue. The LaMP team will build on this energy to explore possible labor mobility solutions tailored to the sector’s needs. We are currently assessing the feasibility of different labor mobility initiatives, including financing mechanisms, to unlock current barriers to job training, and cross-border coalition building. Specifically, we are analyzing Central America’s long-haul transportation workforce needs and starting to explore bilateral or multilateral collaboration opportunities in the US side.  

Interested in this work? Feel free to contact us!

Stay tuned for more details about this project as well as other LaMP’s work by signing up for our newsletter and following us on twitter!  

 

Applying innovative finance solutions to sticky challenges 

Posted on December 1, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Significant attention is paid to how policies drive outcomes in migration systems; however, there is little attention paid to how the financing models behind them influence behaviors of key actors.  

Policies and regulations are important tools, but in the context of migration which by definition crosses legal boundaries, there are limitations to the effectiveness of enforcement. Where regulation is limited to what can be enforced, financing systems can be designed in creative and complex ways which reinforce policy goals by connecting payments to the desired outcomes.  

In results-based financing (RBF), payments are connected to pre-agreed and verified measurable performance targets. Ideally, these targets map directly to the desired outcomes, such as well-prepared workers moving into good jobs.  

RBF is a critical part of LaMP’s toolkit to improve labor mobility systems. As a tool, RBF has potential to quickly grow while helping workers, employers, governments and other labor mobility actors. RBF can: 

  • Reduce the burden on government systems as it increases accountability and embeds transparency without the need for increased regulation or enforcement 
  • Increase focus on results instead of activities and learn what actually works, encourage innovation at an individualized, localized approach to the needs of workers and employers. 
  • Optimize the use of commercial as well as public resources since payments are only made for successful programs.  

LaMP has a large portfolio applying RBF to different challenges and contexts within labor mobility. 

 

For more information, contact:

Sophia Wolpers

swolpers@lampforum.org

 

 

Kim Geronimo

kgeronimo@lampforum.org

Innovative language training solutions helping migrant workers and employers alike 

Posted on December 1, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Language requirements are part of most mid-skill labor visas and play an integral role in how well a migrant worker can exercise their job, advance and integrate in the destination country. Therefore, it is not surprising that governments around the world are hesitant to lower this entry requirement. At the same time learning a language while working, as often required, is time and cost-intensive for potential migrant workers and often not affordable without financial support.  

At the same time, employers willing to hire migrant workers due to ongoing labor scarcity do not want to pay months and years in advance for a worker who may or may not arrive.  

This timing and risk challenge can be solved through a mixture of well-integrated technology and results-based financing innovations if partners across education, tech, financing and recruitment come together.  

Throughout 2023, LaMP will be coordinating and working with a range of partners to cultivate and design a new multi-step language training model. This model will couple low-cost application-driven language learning with innovative funding solutions further increasing its quality. The goal is to equip the most dedicated workers with the skills required to enter and succeed in labor markets abroad, while reducing costs and risks.  

Lowering the structural hurdles to language skill acquisition for workers in low-income countries will expand the opportunities for workers to find the best possible jobs abroad to maximize their income and support their families, communities and economies.  

 

For more information, contact:

Sophia Wolpers

swolpers@lampforum.org

 

 

Creating new pathways for essential workers to enter Canada

Posted on December 1, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Expected demographic shifts caused by rapid aging of Canada’s population is likely to lead to labor scarcity in sectors and occupations across all skill levels; therefore, Canada needs to start building a robust labor market to prepare for the consequences. 

At LaMP, we seek to address the growing worker scarcity by improving occupational migration programs, creating opportunities for workers and solving problems for employers. We have been working at both the federal and provincial level to identify opportunities to address Canada’s worker shortages in essential sectors, such as aged care, construction and hospitality.  

In 2021, we published a high-level policy proposal on designing a pathway that would allow new workers in certain trade and service occupations recognized as essential to come to Canada from abroad, a change for the Canada’s current model favoring “high-skilled” workers.  

Since then, we have been working with partners at provincial as well as federal levels on designing “development-centric” regional pilot for essential workers from historically-excluded sending communities, to demonstrate poverty alleviation potential and economic benefits of admitting migrant workers without a bachelor’s degree to individual provinces and Canada as a whole. 

 

For more information, contact:

Zuzana Cepla

zcepla@lampforum.org

Building sector-specific migration programs in the elderly care 

Posted on December 1, 2022 by - Uncategorized

The high-income countries are aging – the number of people older than 80 in the 37 OECD countries
is expected to climb from over 57 million in 2016 to over 1.2 billion in 2050.[1] As a result, the working age population has been shrinking, creating shortages that are already growing into inevitable labor scarcity across sectors. However, the aged care sector’s shortages have been even more elevated due to the increasing number of seniors in need for care. To maintain the current worker-per-patient ratio across OECD countries, the sector will need additional 10 million personal care workers by 2040.[2]  

Therefore, OECD governments and industry associations around the world have been paying high-profile attention to labor mobility within the aged-care sector.  

Together with partners, LaMP is engaging G20 governments on the issue of labor mobility for elderly care, creating an opportunity to translate the political attention into concrete actions and commitments. Besides our advocacy work, LaMP provides actors within the G20 and others such as the European Commission and Global Aging Network with technical expertise and tools necessary to design and introduce new migration programs for the sector. 

As a result of this work, LaMP seeks to secure breakthrough commitments by key actors to address elderly-care labor scarcity through cross-border labor mobility. Our goal is to support emergence of concrete policy changes and investments that create more and better elderly-care job opportunities for foreign-born workers. 

 

[1] OECD (2020), Who Cares? Attracting and Retaining Care Workers for the Elderly, OECD Health Policy Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/92c0ef68-en. 

[2] OECD (2020), Who Cares? Attracting and Retaining Care Workers for the Elderly, OECD Health Policy Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/92c0ef68-en. 

 

For more information, contact:

Salvatore Petronella

spetronella@lampforum.org

 

 

Zuzana Cepla

zcepla@lampforum.org

 

 

Responsible Recruitment is key to the future of U.S. Agriculture 

Posted on December 1, 2022 by - Uncategorized

LaMP is executing on a portfolio of work to strengthen responsible labor recruitment in the U.S. H-2A seasonal agricultural worker visa program. The H-2A program currently provides visas to over a quarter million migrant workers each year to work on farms in the United States. When H-2A works well, the program represents a critical solution to growing labor shortages in U.S. agriculture and an often life-changing source of income for migrant workers and their communities.  

However, the promise of H-2A is threatened by perverse incentives built into the labor market and the program’s design, which can lead to poor recruitment practices and poor employment conditions. Meanwhile, major produce retailers and high-profile brands are turning up the pressure to find solutions to keep labor supply chains clean. 

Our work focuses on strengthening responsible practices in the earliest stages of recruitment, as the first step in a worker’s journey can have a cascading effect on their well-being throughout their migration and employment experience. 

We work alongside leading H-2A recruitment agencies, growers, produce retailers, and other stakeholders in the supply chain to design and pilot market-friendly initiatives that improve the competitive advantage and value proposition of recruitment agencies that strive towards responsible practices. We focus on shifting the economic incentives and financing structures that shape market behavior so that good practice is good business. 

LaMP’s work on the H-2A recruitment industry has received support from the Walmart Foundation and the Western Union Foundation. 

To learn more about our specific projects related to responsible recruitment in U.S. agriculture, please, visit:

 

For more information, contact:

Kim Geronimo

kgeronimo@lampforum.org

Innovative Financing Models: Funding the Future of Responsible Recruitment Practice

Posted on November 3, 2022 by - Uncategorized

 

PANELISTS

Jane Newman, International Director at Social Finance, UK
Rupal Patel, US Senior Program Manager at Stronger Together and Founder & Principal at Good Scout Capital
Elicia Carmichael, Senior Advisor at Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP)

 

MODERATOR

Anbinh Phan, Director, Global Government Affairs and Business Diplomacy at Walmart

 

ABOUT THE EVENT

This session was part of the Global Forum for Responsible Recruitment convened by the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB). The session featured emerging innovative financing tools to incentivize responsible recruitment practices and explore the potential impact and benefits of these models for workers, recruiters, and employers. Specifically, the panelists focused on the outcomes-based smart subsidy model recently introduced by Social Finance and the outcomes-linked favorable finance model explored by the Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP). The goal of the session was to encourage participants to explore how financing solutions may be relevant tools to foster responsible recruitment in their contexts.