Photo by Domenec on iStock
March 5, 2025
Authors
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Associate Director, Consumer Sectors and Human Rights, BSR
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Associate, Consumer Sectors, BSR
Key Points
- Against a backdrop of labor shortages and persistent challenges with existing legislation, the state of migrant labor across the American food, beverage, and agriculture (FBA) sector is at a precipice.
- While the United States has typically been classified as a low-risk country for labor rights abuses, businesses in the FBA sector are struggling to manage a vulnerable workforce with inherent child and forced labor risks.
- BSR shares recommendations for managing human rights risks for migrants in US FBA supply chains.
The global agricultural sector is inextricably linked with migrant labor. According to the United Nations Network on Migration, of 281 million international migrants, 169 million work across agricultural value chains. This is particularly true in the United States, where around 70 percent of farmworkers are immigrants, of which 40 percent are undocumented. While many businesses in the food, beverage, and agriculture (FBA) sector depend heavily on migrant workers, both workers and employers are currently facing great uncertainty as the new US administration implements severe measures to curb migration and enact mass deportations. Amidst fierce debates that span national security, job preservation for Americans, ongoing labor shortages, and persistent challenges with existing legislation like the H-2A program, the state of migrant labor across the American FBA sector is at a precipice.
The United States has typically been classified as a low-risk country for labor rights abuses, but with increasing visibility of labor abuses in the US, businesses are struggling to manage such risks. Some of these stem from the failures of the H-2A visa program, a temporary work program established to address labor shortages in American farms. H-2A workers have experienced severe labor rights violations, including wage theft, illegal fees, and unpaid hours.
Despite a 50 percent increase in H-2A visa holders from 2018 to 2023, labor shortages in the FBA sector persist. These shortages have even contributed to cases of child labor, since youth, most of whom are migrants, may end up filling cheap labor jobs that power American food production. Migrants take on these jobs because there has been a steady decline of Americans working in agriculture, and the intensive work and exposure to the elements are not the only reasons behind this decrease. Farm workers have notoriously been unprotected by fundamental rights, including overtime pay, minimum wage protections, workplace safety protections, and the right to unionize, which are guaranteed to other workers in the US. Even when labor standards exist, agencies enforcing them are underfunded, meaning that worker safety, poor living conditions, or missing pay are rarely addressed. Due to farm labor shortage, US growers have lost US$3.1 billion in additional fresh produce sales per year.
A dramatic increase in migrant deportations may worsen two interconnected characteristics of the agricultural sector: labor shortages and poor working conditions. Enforcement-only approaches to immigration, such as border security and deportation, will severely reduce labor availability in the agriculture sector and could lead to a 1.5-9.1 percent increase in prices overall for consumers. Due to their fragile legal status, the threat of deportation also makes migrants more vulnerable to exploitation in the form of wage and safety violation, sexual harassment, violence, and more. The impact of these deportations is likely to ripple further throughout the economy, with an anticipated rise of 3 percentage points in inflation and a 7.4 percent reduction in GDP by 2028.
Despite some efforts to address migrant labor risks like protecting H-2A visa holders from employer retaliation, there have been significant pushbacks, including recent roll backs of child labor and other labor protections in agriculture. The failure to evolve legislation to ensure rights for workers unfortunately puts the onus of managing a vulnerable labor force, with inherent child and forced labor risks, onto farmers and FBA companies rather than government regulators.
For companies navigating this turbulent time, investing in human rights due diligence and staying in alignment with the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Responsible Business Conduct are key to meeting these evolving challenges. Even as administrations change and regulations shift, these frameworks provide a consistent long-term approach to navigating human rights risks that could otherwise have legal, reputational, and even financial implications.
For more immediate action, here are several recommendations for managing human rights risks for migrants in your US FBA supply chains:
- Rapidly assess the labor risks in your sourcing and production regions based on areas with a high prevalence of migrant labor. It is also worthwhile to identify states and/or regions where labor law and enforcement for agricultural workers are weak, potentially another indicator of greater risk. Monitor high-risk areas and employ locally relevant interventions as needed. Useful tools to help prioritize your efforts are Farmworker Justice’s evaluation of worker compensation by states, the Pew Research Center’s research on undocumented immigrants in the US, and Oxfam’s Best States to Work.
- Evaluate your management systems for human rights risks with US operations and suppliers. This includes reviewing your Supplier Code of Conduct and audit efforts. Consider the discrepancies that may exist between your company policies and local state laws. If you haven’t already, conduct a human rights assessment to identify your salient human risks. Create more opportunities for dialogue with suppliers to discuss labor challenges and conduct more site visits to farms and facilities. When risks are identified, work with local stakeholders or a labor rights partner to determine the best course for remedy.
- Recognize and address the limitations of current audit practices through targeted initiatives. Consider engaging with programs like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program, which employs a worker-driven social responsibility model to ensure humane wages and working conditions for farmworkers. The Equitable Food Initiative offers a rigorous social responsibility certification, implementation programs, and public tools, and its labor standards were developed by a multistakeholder group of unions, consumer groups, employers and retailers in 2013. It is aligned with the Ethical Charter on Responsible Labor Practices, an initiative to collaboratively strengthen labor practices in US fresh produce value chains that are already supported by a number of leading American retailers and producers.
- Pay particular attention to issues of forced labor, child labor, freedom of association, and living conditions for workers in agricultural supply chains. Inform your procurement team of these issues and make sure it is a topic that they are raising with suppliers. Learn how to engage with suppliers to address risks. For instance, UNICEF USA’s recent report on child labor in the US provides guidance for companies on addressing child labor violations in US supply chains, including a compliance framework and recommendations that can help companies stay aligned with both international standards and US regulations.
- Engage with industry and multi-stakeholder initiatives. AIM Progress has a working group on child and forced labor in US food manufacturing that recently produced an e-learning course with Verité that is being used to build capacity with American suppliers. The Consumer Goods Forum’s Human Rights Coalition works on responsible recruitment and employment, human rights due diligence, and collaboration between companies. Two BSR Collaborative Initiatives, the Human Rights Working Group and the Global Business Coalition Against Human Trafficking, also support companies in navigating emerging human rights risks.
BSR is already partnering with its members on specific approaches to address human rights risks in the FBA sector, and it continues to support efforts for broader exchange and engagement. To discuss these issues and discover opportunities to engage, email hello@bsr.org.
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