Working Conditions

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the agricultural sector employs 1.3 billion workers worldwide and is one of the three most dangerous sectors for workers when measuring the frequency of fatalities, injuries and diseases contracted at work. At least 170,000 agriculture workers are killed on the job each year globally, and millions more are seriously injured in workplace accidents. As a result of the informal nature of labor in agricultural production, proper measurement and mitigation of dangerous and hazardous work is difficult.

Of the billions of workers employed in agriculture, the sector has the largest share of child laborers. Of the 152 million children in child labor globally, 107.5 million (71 percent) are working in agriculture.[i] An estimated 2.2 million people worked in forced labor situations globally in 2016 in agriculture, fishery and forestry.[ii]

In many countries, including the U.S., agricultural workers are exempt under most national labor laws, and may have few social protections that other employees enjoy, particularly wages, overtime pay, freedom of association and collective bargaining. Without these protections agricultural workers tend to have low pay, few benefits and little recourse for grievances, making them vulnerable to economic and physical exploitation.

Migrant agricultural workers in particular are at risk for exploitation by labor brokers who may employ unethical practices such as recruitment fees, passport retention, and contract fraud to lure them into forced labor schemes and use threats of deportation to keep them from reporting abuses.

Food and agriculture companies face considerable exposure to labor rights violations among suppliers, many of whom are based in countries lacking basic worker protections. Forced and child labor in food company supply chains can cause reputation damage when “bad actors” tarnish the image of an entire industry or sector and subject companies to lawsuits. Discovery of forced labor and child labor may also cause the cancelling of contracts and loss of market access due to the ever-changing landscape of legislation globally. In addition, social conflict can cause disruptions in agricultural supply chains and low worker retention.

Audits are often the first step a company takes to monitor working conditions in their extended supply chain, but the United Nations Global Compact and other global agencies are pushing companies to change the nature of their relationships with suppliers. The most egregious forms of human rights violations are mostly hidden and are often missed during audits.[iii] Systemic, lasting change requires that companies partner with their suppliers, establishing mechanisms for worker voices to be heard.

Grievance mechanisms can play this role by establishing connections between workers throughout a supply chain to downstream companies. The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights sets global expectations that companies should establish and manage effective grievance mechanisms. Grievances from workers are likely in any company’s operations – by establishing a mechanism through which workers and other stakeholders can communicate issues to companies, companies can proactively manage risk and effectively remedy situations before they pose any damage to reputation or result in litigation. Learn more in our new Investor Primer on Grievance Mechanisms.

Among the most commonly sourced commodities profiled in Engage the Chain, impacts related to livelihoods and working conditions are significant in the production of cattle, palm oil and sugarcane.

The following summarizes how the production of cattle, palm oil and sugarcane contribute worldwide to impacts on livelihoods and working conditions, demonstrating how these deeply entwined issues can cause grave financial and physical risks to workers, farmers and communities. It is important to consider that the scale of the impacts depends on the practices used by individual producers, as well as regional and local conditions.