22/04/2021 Salary Abuses Facing Migrant Workers Ahead of Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 | HRW companies from relying on recruitment agencies who demand fees regardless of where the DONATE NOW Summary transaction takes place. According to an ILO white paper, companies in Qatar circumvent local labor laws and increase their competitiveness by outsourcing the payment of recruitment fees to contractors and subcontractors.[36] Contractors can omit recruitment costs in order to minimize expected expenses in tenders they submit bids for to companies.[37] They then pass the buck to recruitment agencies in countries of origin, which charge migrant workers to pay for their own recruitment costs. The ILO also found that workers are often forced to pay additional inflated fees to the local agency. These fees are partly used to provide kickback payments to the employing company personnel and placement agencies in Qatar.[38] These kickback payments are often a way that private agencies in countries of origin are able to secure labor supply contracts. Recruitment fees play a large part in keeping debt-laden workers working for abusive employers. When workers owe thousands of dollars in recruitment fees, cannot switch jobs without employer approval and without having to go through the process of paying the fees all over again, and do not have custody of their own passports, the situation can amount to forced labor.[39] How Supply Chain Payment Policies Punish Workers Most Some companies in Qatar withhold, delay, or deny worker’s wages for additional profits. But other companies, typically small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction industry where long and often complex subcontracting chains are the norm, may be unable to pay workers in an accurate and timely fashion because of payment disruptions higher up the chain that lead to insolvency and encourage businesses paying onwards only when paid. Some of these subcontracting companies, while based in Qatar, may be owned and staffed by migrants from low-income companies. Such problems are not unique to Qatar and are inherent in the structure and operation of the construction industry worldwide.[40] A 2018 Engineers Against Poverty three-part report focused on addressing the prevalent issue of delayed and unpaid wages of migrant construction workers in Gulf countries. It looked at the ways current systems in the GCC were failing to protect the wages of vulnerable workers and recommended measures through which to ensure workers have an additional source of payment to fall back on if their immediate employer cannot – or will not – pay their wages.[41] They reported that wage delays exist because “under the current business model, extensive subcontracting and outsourcing of labor has increased the distance that interim payments https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-without-wages/salary-abuses-facing-migrant-workers-ahead-qatars 17/62