20 FORGING A BETTER FUTURE “The depth of the (COVID-19) crisis has left enterprises and workers “scarred”, making a recovery more difficult. Unemployment, underemployment, inactivity, and the rise in poverty have disrupted the work trajectories of millions… New behaviours adopted during the pandemic will negatively affect workers and firms in certain sectors and may persist afterwards to some extent. For example, the increase in online purchases has disrupted the wholesale and retail sector, while the increase in telework arrangements could lead to a decrease in business travel… The recovery of working hours will be dominated by the return of furloughed workers, rather than by the creation of new jobs. Enterprises will attempt mainly to raise working hours for furloughed workers before recruiting new workers… Working hour and job losses have resulted in increased poverty and vulnerability in a region where social protection systems are weak…” – ILO (2021), World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2021 The above quote provides very concerning prospects if the manner of operation of stakeholders continues to be based on existing foundations, proven to be unbalanced in the current context. The focus and energy of all must be directed towards ‘Building Back Better’. ---The previous Justice for Wage Theft reports sought to explain and observe the various dimensions of wage theft and its root causes. Wage theft is an umbrella term for a variety of wage and benefit-related violations committed against migrant workers by employers and recruiting agencies. Migrant workers, who commonly navigate multiple legal-policy frameworks in the country of origin, destination (and at times, in transit), found that during COVID-19, few mechanisms created to protect them worked in their favour. Their vulnerability and state (and employer) perceptions of the same, led to ad-hoc decision making. Civil society actors and international observers provided relief and support but further noted that existing international, bilateral, and national mechanisms of emergency support, grievance redressal, labour reforms, and of migrant protections were seldom used to guide such efforts as well. Disclaimer: The figures, statistics within the report are based upon the limited documentation of cases submitted to the JFWT platform or separately to MFA. It does not intend to implicate any country, government, industry, employer, etc.