(Verité) - Global NGO Shows Evidence of Widespread Abuse in Multiple Sectors and Across Nations including United States

Verite, the Global non-profit organization known for its state-of-the-art, ‘worker interview’ social audit, CSR training, labor rights research and supply chain expertise, launched a ground-breaking initiative today entitled HELP WANTED: Hiring, Human Trafficking and Slavery in the Global Economy.

As part of the HELP WANTED initiative, the organization released a major report from a year-long investigation that illustrated the prevalence of forced labor and human trafficking across multiple sectors, and widespread throughout the globe. In addition, the group launched a website to help direct the many stakeholder groups with the questions needed to ask and steps needed to take in order to eradicate forced labor and slavery in supply chains around the world. To download a copy of the report and visit HELP WANTED, visit www.verite.org/wellmade.

“Our findings in this report illustrate that human trafficking and forced labor in our modern lives and across the global economy are very alive and well,” said Dan Viederman, Executive Director of Verite. “HELP WANTED was designed to highlight where this process begins – in the hiring stage – and to offer the tools, methods and solutions that need to be adopted by many groups in order to solve these widespread labor abuses; we look forward to guiding these groups through this process in the coming months,” Viederman added.

Verite’s HELP WANTED report and website, verite.org/wellmade, offers the key questions needed to be asked by anyone who is connected to migrant workers and global supply chains. A key finding of the research and a focus of the site is the function of labor brokers in supply chains. The presence of labor brokers in the recruitment and hiring of migrant workers signals a heightened risk for forced labor, and whether you are a multinational brand, investor, government or advocacy group, you can have a role to play in lessening these trends and abuses and incorporating efforts to reduce trafficking and forced labor.

Verite, unlike labor advocacy groups, brands, or governments, offers an independent view – focusing on the conditions on the ground, in the factory or farm and from the voice of the worker. The organization is solutions-driven, working with all of these groups to solve labor issues so that workers have safe, fair and legal conditions. HELP WANTED will engage all of the varied groups who are linked to supply chains worldwide and will work through workshops and seminars in late 2010 and 2011 to deliver specific tools to help reduce human trafficking and forced labor abuses.