Migrant Workers Jump Online to Spread the Word on Bad Recruiters and Employers Sonia Singh - Labor Notes
go to original November 2, 2015

CDM has rolled out a website and smartphone app that intend to operate as a sort of Yelp for migrant workers, called Contratados.org.

Thousands of workers who come to the U.S. and Canada on temporary guestworker visas arrive not knowing if the job they have been offered actually exists. Many are forced to pay an illegal recruitment fee, and often they don’t know what wage they will be paid.

More than 100,000 workers come to the U.S. every year on H-2 visas, working in low-wage, seasonal jobs such as harvesting, landscaping, and seafood processing. And nearly 600,000 more come through a complex web of other temporary visa programs, including a growing number of professionals such as nurses and teachers.

“We’ve heard stories of people who paid recruiters to go to the U.S. and were promised a job that pays $15 an hour, with free housing, and upon getting to the U.S. find they are paid $3 an hour, with no housing,” said Alissa Escarce, a staffer at the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (Center for Migrant Rights, CDM), a bi-national organization based in Baltimore and in Mexico City and Oaxaca, Mexico.

A new website launched by CDM hopes to change that. Called Contratados (Spanish for “Contract Workers”), the site gives migrant workers tools to share Yelp-style reviews, in Spanish or English, of bad recruiters and employers - or good ones.

Workers can tell whether they were charged a recruitment fee, what work they were offered, and whether they got paid as promised. Recruitment fees are illegal for H-2 workers, and regulations vary for other visa categories. It’s also possible to report treatment on the job, such as discrimination, confiscation of documents, reprisals, or assault.

Workers can rate the recruiter or employer with one to five stars, and search for reviews by employer, recruiter, state or province, industry, or type of visa.

Read the rest at Labor Notes

Contratados: A 'Yelp' for Migrant Workers (cdmigrante)

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