MODERN SLAVERY:

THE DARK SIDE
OF CONSTRUCTION

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 1

Published by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)
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2 MODERN SLAVERY:
THE2015DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION
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CIOB

MODERN SLAVERY:
THE DARK SIDE
OF CONSTRUCTIONCONTENTS
Foreword

4

Modern Slavery

6

The Global Picture

8

Changing Legislation

12

CASE STUDY: New York University Campus,
Abu Dhabi UAE (2010 – 2014)13

VIEWPOINT: Qatar one year on

16

Next Steps

19

Appendix

22

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 3

FOREWORD
BY CHRIS BLYTHE,CHIEF EXECUTIVE, CIOB

Construction is a bipolar industry. On the public side,
we create inspirational buildings, pushing the boundaries
of architecture and technology; solving ever moredifficult challenges.
The dark side - the systematic exploitation of millions ofvulnerable migrants - is rarely acknowledged, even by theclients and multinationals that commission and create
our shiny new cities.
Our sector is rife with human rights abuses. Bonded labour,
delayed wages, abysmal working and living conditions,withholding of passports and limitations of movement
are all forms of modern slavery.
And our business models must take a large part of theblame: the global trend towards outsourcing and cut pricecontracting makes it easy for main contractors to duck outof their responsibilities. The plight of the most vulnerable
gets lost among the long and complex supply chains.
It’s too convenient to blame the subcontractor or poor
local legislation.
You might think that modern slavery is not a problem
where you work. Think again. Human exploitation isa global issue, embedded both in the developed anddeveloping world. And it’s just as prevalent in construction
as in other industries, from Northern Canada to New
Mexico, from Japan to Jaipur, from Europe to the UAE.
Slavery is also a problem on UK construction sites. Home
Office officials tell me that many in positions of influenceand power are turning a blind eye to obviously forgeddocuments, even on large scale projects. In doing so, they
are not only colluding in exploitation, they are supportingorganised crime.

4 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTIONAt present, global attention is mainly focussing on highprofile projects for world events such as the FIFA World
Cup in Qatar, or next year’s Olympics in Brazil. In the future,
it will be more difficult to hide abuses in any country. New
legislation, such as the UK Modern Slavery Act, will force
large organisations to report annually on human rights issues
within their supply chains both at home and overseas.
Our business model is predicated on passing risk down the
supply chain. But these risks are never passed down in reality,
they remain ethically and morally the responsibility of thepeople at the top. So it’s time to change the business modeland to start facing up to our responsibilities. Not taking
action now could lead to untold reputational damage andcommercial risk.
CIOB is at the heart of this debate. Last year’s Members’
Forum in Qatar was a watershed moment as we discussed
CSR and the respect for people agenda in the region. We
also signed a memorandum of understanding with thegovernment client, the Qatar Foundation, encouraging
uptake of their migrant worker welfare initiative through
CIOB membership.
We’ve since been working with a range of organisations
including Amnesty International, the Institute for Human
Rights and Business, the Home Office, the Department
for Business, Innovation and Skills and Engineers Against
Poverty, as well as other industry bodies, to find a way
forward internationally.
This paper is intended to kick-start discussion on what we,
as individuals and organisations, can achieve. It’s easy to feelpowerless against what seems like relentless commercialpressure and global trends. But you would be surprised
at what is possible.
As managers on some of the world’s highest profile projects,
CIOB members are in a unique position to influence forgood. If we work collectively, we can make a difference.

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 5

MODERN SLAVERY
There are an estimated 36 million enslaved people
globally. Modern slavery has been found to exist
in 1671 countries.
The Index ranks the UK 124th out of 167 countries,
with an estimated 8,300 people in modern slavery.
However, Home Office figures suggest that this number
could be considerably higher – up to 13,000 people.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) divides
the issues into three broad categories:
Unfree recruitment:• Deceptive recruitment, when a person is recruited withfalse promises about work and employment conditions,content or legality of employment contract• Forced recruitment, when someone is forced towork for the employer against their will.
Work and life under duress:• An excessive volume of work

• Tasks that are beyond what can reasonably be expected
within the framework of national labour law• Situations of coercion, degrading living conditions;limitations on freedom• Forced overtime

Impossibility of leaving an employer:• Being excessively dependent on one employer• Use of threat or financial penalty that make it
impossible to leave• Confiscation of identity papers/passport andtravel documents

1

The Global Slavery Index, 2014

6 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

“The difficulties facing construction workers, andespecially migrants, have always existed but the scale
and intensity has increased in the last 10 to 15 years
alongside increased outsourcing, the growth of agency
labour and bogus self-employment.
Construction work is hard and where workers have a
choice - mainly in the more developed parts of the world- many prefer not to work in the sector. The gap
is filled by migrants from low wage economies travellingto richer countries in the hope of lifting their families
out of poverty. Due to wage differentials, we’ve seen
people with PhDs labouring on construction sites. But
the balance of power is never in their favour. Every
delayed payment or dispute can have devastatingconsequences for the labourers.
Contractors are often oblivious to unscrupulous labour
agents or subcontractors that are withholding money,or forcing employees to work at a lower than previously
agreed rate. Some workers are not paid for months,
years, or even until the project is completed. Many are
literally starving while continuing to send as muchmoney as possible back to their families.”
Jill Wells, Senior Researcher, Engineers Against Poverty

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 7

THE GLOBAL PICTURE
It’s easy to get a distorted picture of slavery and bonded
labour. Media stories tend to be triggered by high profile
prestigious projects, such as Qatar’s work for the FIFA
World Cup, or by tragic accidents such as the 23 cockle
pickers who died in Morecambe Bay in 2004, or thecollapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh, wheremore than 1,000 garment workers died and a further
2,500 were injured.
But human rights abuses are prevalent across the globe,
and workers can be just as vulnerable in their own countries
as they are abroad, as the following construction-related
examples illustrate:

CHINA

Low-skilled temporary migrant workers account forroughly four fifths of the workforce in China, which is
expected to overtake the USA, becoming the world’s
largest construction sector by 2018.
“Because the vast majority of construction workers aretemporary migrant workers, often without the right ofresidence in urban areas, they have been subjected to various
forms of exploitation. By 2011 there were almost 45 million
peasant workers employed in the sector, the vast majority
labouring outside their own township...”“...The majority do not receive written labour contracts andoften only have verbal agreements with subcontractors. Thus,
when their wages are delayed or are never, in fact, paid, they
have little direct formal recourse.”
Development Viewpoint 77, Centre for Development Policy andResearch, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), June 2014

INDIA

“In the greater Delhi area, 99 per cent of the [construction]
workers are migrants from other regions... living conditions ofworkers (and sometimes their family members) are poor, whether
they reside in worksites or labour camps. Toilet and water
facilities are inadequate and space is highly congested. Electricity
supply is limited during both mornings and evenings.”

8 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

“More than half of construction workers complained aboutwork-related health problems... They wear no protection of any
kind at work yet face major health risks, such as pervasive dust
particles and the constant danger of accidents...”Development Viewpoint 80, Centre for Development Policy andResearch (SOAS), July 2014

CANADA“The Canadian government has dramatically increased its
Temporary Foreign Workers programme over the last decade,leading to an influx of predominantly unskilled workers from
Mexico and Latin America.”“Because of the constraints of their temporary visas, unskilledmigrant workers are highly dependent on their employer.
Fear of being sent home prevents them from voicing concern
about working conditions and health risks. Unlike their skilledcolleagues, they are largely unable to join or form unions.”“The plight of migrant workers has been made worse by major
cutbacks in the public sector. These have led to a significant
reduction in the number of government inspectors that canhold employers to account.”
Dr. John R. Calvert, Faculty of Health Sciences,
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, 2015

“Alberta currently has the highest per capita use of migrant
workers, largely due to the oil sands projects – 22 times
higher than the rest of the Canada – and their situation
reveals troubling rates of mistreatment. As a 2010 audit
by the Alberta Ministry of Employment and Immigration
discovered, 74 per cent of migrant workers were mistreatedby their employers, who typically violated labour laws on
overtime, holiday and vacation pay.”
The Invisibles: migrant workers in Canada,
Alberta Federation of Labour, 2013

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 9

THE GLOBAL PICTURE
UK“Labour exploitation is the second most common formof modern slavery exploitation in the UK, after sexual
exploitation – 37 per cent of potential victims referred to the
National Referral Mechanism in 2013 had experienced thisform of modern slavery...The most common forms of labour
exploitation reported by victims identified by the National
Crime Agency Strategic Assessment in 2013 were in the block
paving, agriculture, food and construction sectors...”Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, 2015

USA

“Unskilled migrants, predominantly from Mexico andCentral America, account for approximately 25 percent of
the construction workforce in the USA. Undocumented andlargely working without union representation, they are highly
vulnerable to exploitation.
Across the country, the biggest problem that construction
labourers face is wage theft by unscrupulous subcontractors.
There have also been cases of workers trapped in lockedfacilities, forced to work in slave-like conditions.
Compared to their skilled colleagues, migrants are also exposed
to higher levels of risk on site. A recent study by the Labour
Occupational Health programme in California found thatinjury and fatality rates were disproportionately high among
Latino workers, compared to the sector as a whole.”
Dr Susan Moir, Director of the Labour Resource Centre,
University of Massachusetts, Boston

10 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

THE GULF

The following extracts are from an International Labour
Organisation (ILO) report on migrant workers in the Gulf:“...27 per cent [of migrant workers in the UAE] said theirmonthly salaries had been fluctuating or irregular over theprevious 12 months... 38 per cent had not received all the pay
due to them from work in the previous three months because
the employer had held back wages; of those, 90 per cent wereconstruction workers.”“Throughout the region, migrant workers complained
about unacceptable living and working conditions. Afghan
construction workers in the UAE said: ‘15 of us sleep in a roomof 25 metres square and at times we can be up to 25’.”“Employers [in the region] frequently use threats and insults...
An Egyptian construction worker in Lebanon admitted: weare often blackmailed by the employer’.”“Another Egyptian worker in the country added: ‘Most of thetime, when you have a sponsor, he controls everything... We don’t
have the option to leave our sponsor because it’s very difficult tofind another one... If you leave, you become illegal and will haveproblems with the authorities who will detain you’...”“For low-skilled workers, passport retention is widespread andworkers frequently have to pay to get their passports back...
A Nepalese community leader in the UAE admitted:‘Companies will sometimes keep the passports of low-skilledworkers, but never the middle and high skilled ones’...”
Helen Harroff-Tavel and Alix Nasri, Tricked and Trapped,
Human Trafficking in the Middle East,
International Labour Organisation (ILO), 2013

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 11

CHANGING LEGISLATION
Pockets of legislation are taking effect around the worldthat will force larger companies to be more accountable for
their supply chains. As these laws will force organisations
to take responsibility for human rights issues both at home
and abroad, their influence is likely to be far reaching overthe longer term.
• The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act 2010that came into effect in January 2012 requires certain
companies to report on their specific actions to eradicate
slavery and human trafficking in their supply chains.
• The European Non-Financial Reporting Directive
will come into force in EU countries in 2016, forcing
organisations with more than 500 employees to file annual
reports on a range of non financial aspects including
human rights, bribery and employee working conditions.
• The UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015, which received
Royal Assent in March 2015, covers slavery, servitude,
forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking.
Similar to the Bribery Act of 2010, it will apply to
all large businesses carrying out business in the UK,
including partnerships and companies registeredoverseas, and their worldwide operations.
Significantly, the act makes it clear that the consent of
the victim is not an automatic defence. Under the act,a commercial organisation must prepare a slavery and humantrafficking statement for each financial year detailing:• The steps the organisation has taken that year to ensurethat slavery and human trafficking is not taking place –in any or its supply chains or parts of its business.
• Or a statement that the organisation has taken no such steps.
Although the act will not mandate organisations to publish
details of their activities, CIOB believes that social andshareholder pressure will increasingly force them to comply.
Failure to report will put the organisation at reputationaland financial risk, and could damage relationships withkey stakeholders.

12 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

CASE STUDYNEW YORK UNIVERSITY CAMPUS,ABU DHABI UAE (2010 – 2014)

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 13

How do projects go wrong, even when
the client is trying to act responsibly?
CASE STUDYNEW YORK UNIVERSITYCAMPUS, ABU DHABI UAE(2010 – 2014)

New York University (NYU) Campus project in Abu
Dhabi, UAE, is a salutary lesson of how a client can failto protect to workers rights, despite setting out withthe best intentions.
Recognising the difficult working conditions and abusive
labour practices that labourers often encounter in theregion, client NYU published a set of fair employment
guidelines before construction work began on site, also
implementing a compliance monitoring regime.
NYU’s original intention was to ensure that the guidelines
should protect all 30,000 workers engaged through the
lifetime of the construction programme. But theuniversity campus quickly began to attract negativeand damaging headlines.
Among the accusations in The New York Times,
The Guardian and The Times articles and NGO reports
were that workers had paid exorbitant recruitment fees (anillegal practice in the country), and were earning lower thanagreed wages and living in poor quality accommodation.
Workers had also been forced to give up their passports
to their employer, in contravention of NYU guidelines.
What had gone wrong?
A report produced by independent investigators Nardello& Co. for NYU (published in April 2015) found thata major source of the problem was not the guidelines
themselves – which they described as ‘admirable’ andlargely being complied with - but that the contractors
and monitors were redefining who would fall within
their parameters.
For practical reasons, exemptions to the guidelines had
been introduced to a narrow group of workers whose
involvement in the project was more peripheral - such as
vendors delivering goods to site. Unknown to the client,contractors on site began to expand the exemptions toother areas: subcontractors whose work fell below

14 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

CASE STUDYNEW YORK UNIVERSITYCAMPUS, ABU DHABI UAE(2010 – 2014)

US$1 million; workers who were on site for less than
31 days at a time, or had gaps of 30 days between visits.
There was a lack of clarity among monitors about how theexemptions should be applied and interpreted.
As a result, subcontractors were financially incentivised
to break the contracts into smaller sizes, reducing theirlabour costs, and increasing profit. Nardello estimated thatbetween 30 and 35 per cent – or around 10,000 workers,
were ultimately not protected by the guidelines.
The most prevalent violations of the guidelines, according
to Nardello, were payment problems. NYU has sincepledged to reimburse workers’ recruitment fees.
Aside from the human misery that the exemptions created,
the international scandal was highly damaging to thereputations of international contractors, monitors andclient. As modern slavery stories move higher up thenews agenda, it’s likely that prestigious projects such as
this will receive increasing international attention withmore scandals to follow.
The Nardello report’s recommendations include:• Abolishing exemptions so that all workers are protectedby the same guidelines• Simplying the compliance monitoring regime fromseveral parties to one central party• Stronger penalties for compliance violations• Increased number of worker interviews and payroll audits• Monitors to have control over a segregated bankaccount for compliance –related pay and to directly pay
workers that have not received wages or, alternatively,
to pay the subcontractor when proof is provided thatworkers have been paid.

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 15

VIEWPOINT: QATAR ONE YEAR ON
BY STEPHEN LINES FCIOB,SENIOR COMMERCIALMANAGER, QATAR RAIL

Last year’s Members’ Forum in Doha, Qatar shone thelight on the unique human rights challenges faced bythis tiny Gulf State. Qatar’s migrant workforce now tops
1.6 million, easily accounting for 85 per cent of the
population. An estimated half a million foreign workers
are working within the construction sector, predominantly
on major infrastructure and stadia programmes aheadof the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
In full glare of the global media, human rights violations
on Qatari projects have been well documented, from late or
missing payments, to poor living and working conditions,or being forced to work for lower than agreed wages.
As is the case in most of the Gulf region, workers are left
vulnerable by the kefala system, which ties them to an
employer who keeps their passport, leaving them
powerless to protest at their treatment, or leave theirjob without repercussions.
But change is happening fast, under the country’s MigrantWorker Welfare Initiative – locally known as Karama(meaning ‘dignity’). New legislation has forced a stepchange in payment mechanisms. On all projects money is
now transferred electronically to individual bank accounts,
and the practice is spreading rapidly.
Employers must issue regular statements declaring how
much they have paid their workers each month. Companies
that don’t pay on time are increasingly like to get a call orvisit from a government official: Qatar’s Ministry of theInterior has taken on an additional 250 inspectors overthe past six months to ensure that standards are upheld.

16 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

The Qatar Foundation has also set up a confidential hotline
for workers. It’s easy to write this off as a PR stunt, but
I have anecdotal evidence that the service is being used,
and that workers trust that their complaints willremain anonymous.
New higher quality accommodation blocks have been
constructed with some 2,000 workers now housed in
conditions befitting a healthy existence and space for
25,000 due to open shortly.
The government is taking steps to do the right thing.
As an example, new legislation has been passed to install air
conditioning on workers’ transport. But it cannot act alone.
Support from professionals working at the top of the supply
chain is essential to ensure that good practice is upheld andenforced among all teams. We need to be mindful, also, thatanyone working without documentation in Qatar’s informal
economy will receive no protections whatsoever.
I’ve been working in the Gulf for 13 years. Every day I’ve
seen expats turn up to site in their air conditioned SUVs
or luxury cars, witness violations and abuses, and driveaway from the problem.
We need to start changing attitudes not only inside Qatar
but through the entire region. Improving the lives ofvulnerable workers should be the responsibility ofanyone who is a CIOB chartered member.

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 17

“...enterprises, regardless of their size, sector,
operational context, ownership and structure, should
respect human rights wherever they operate. Respect forhuman rights is the global standard of expected conduct
for enterprises independently of states’ abilities and/or
willingness to fulfil their human rights obligations, anddoes not diminish those obligations.”
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, 201118 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

NEXT STEPSCreating viable and effective frameworks and assurance
schemes seems to be the logical next step towards
protecting human rights within our industry’s
supply chains.
But, as New York University’s experiences in the UAE
illustrate, such schemes must be developed, embedded
and monitored with care. They should be a central part ofthe business, not something that is arbitrarily bolted ontoa CSR report. Contractors should be prepared to open
their supply chains up to independent scrutiny. The process
will not always be comfortable, but it will be an essential
catalyst for driving genuine change.
CIOB is currently in discussion with a number ofgovernment and non-governmental organisations, as wellas tier one contractors and industry bodies. Our ultimate
aim is to provide a toolkit to help organisations become
more socially responsible.
We now need your help. CIOB members are working insenior roles across the globe: your collective experienceand views will be invaluable as we navigate this difficultand emotive topic.
Tackling human rights issues may feel overwhelming in aninternational context, but organisations don’t need to act
alone. We can work faster if we collaborate together.
Act with us now. Don’t get left behind.

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 19

“When monitoring their operations to detect possible
human rights violations, there is sometimes a tendency
to turn the process into a box-ticking exercise, but
companies should avoid this. They should carry out
genuine due diligence using international standards– such as the OECD guidelines on multinational
enterprises – to guide them, rather than hide behind
contracts or inadequate local legislation to defend
a lack of action.
Amnesty International has seen cases of main
contractors and clients reluctant to send a sack of rice
to workers employed by subcontractors, who were
struggling for food, apparently because they did notconsider that the workers were their direct responsibility
and that this would set a precedent. Within the context
of multimillion – or billion – dollar developments,
which often provide generous rewards for foreign
professionals and skilled labour, this position is not only
untenable and out of line with international standards,
it betrays a loss of perspective of the real human impactthat labour abuse can have.
Companies need to think through the consequencesof their actions. They may feel, for example, that they
have done their duty by terminating the contracts of
subcontractors that are not paying workers. But if they
fail to put the right protections in place, they could
be leaving labourers in an even more vulnerable andprecarious situation than before.”
James Lynch, Head, Business and Human Rights Team,
Amnesty International

20 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTIONCIOB would like tothank Engineers Against
Poverty, Amnesty
International, BIS,
Institute for Businessand Human Rights andthe European Instituteof Construction Labour
Research for helping us
research this document.

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 21

APPENDIX
The following Dhaka Principles for migration with dignity,
published in 2011 by the Institute for Human Rights andBusiness, are a good basis for starting discussions:Core Principle A:

All workers are treated equally andwithout discrimination

Core Principle B:

All workers enjoy the protection of
employment law

Principle 1:

No fees are charged to migrant
workers

Principle 2:

All migrant worker contracts are clear
and transparent

Principle 3

Policies and procedures are inclusive

Principle 4:

No migrant workers’ passports or
identity documents are retained

Principle 5:

Wages are paid regularly, directly andon timePrinciple 6:

The right to worker representation isrespected

Principle 7:

Working conditions are safe anddecentPrinciple 8:

Living conditions are safe and decent

Principle 9:

Access to judicial remedy/credible
grievance mechanisms is provided

Principle 10:

Freedom to change employment isrespected and safe, timely return tohome country is guaranteed.

22 MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION

MODERN SLAVERY: THE DARK SIDE OF CONSTRUCTION 23

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