This brief provides an summary of findings of an RTI International investigation into immigrant workers and labor trafficking in the construction and hospitality sectors within four communities.
This brief provides an overview of key findings of an RTI International investigation into labor trafficking in construction and hospitality studying whether workers in these industries share or report their experiences of labor abuse and exploitation and how they seek help, if at all, as well as what barriers to help-seeking they experience. The study found that (1) among surveyed workers, those who had experienced a significant number of types of abuse and exploitation were more likely to disclose their experiences or seek help, yet only 28.5% of workers who had experienced any workplace abuses ever disclosed it or sought help; (2) workers are much more likely to disclose their experiences to friends, family, and co-workers than to formal sources of help; and (3) barriers to help-seeking include fear of law enforcement, fear of deportation, lack of evidence about the mistreatment they faced at work, and a lack of understanding of worker rights and options for reporting workplace exploitation. Although law enforcement and community interest in human trafficking has increased tremendously since passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, most anti-trafficking efforts by law enforcement and community-based organizations have focused on sex trafficking. Labor trafficking, when prioritized at all, is often conceptualized as a single phenomenon—the variation in industries in which labor trafficking occurs and the variation in victim experiences within these industries are sorely overlooked. The objective of this study was to explore how the recruitment, control, concealment, and needs of labor trafficking victims vary across industries in two sectors: construction and hospitality (i.e., restaurants/bars and hotels/resorts). The study included primary data collection activities in four communities: Denver Metro Area, CO; Summit County, CO; Chicago Metro Area, IL; and New York Metro Area, NY.