Nordic Initiative: Training to launch in Thailand to help educate migrant workers on human rights

The digital training will be available in Khmer, Burmese, Thai and is designed to promote ethical recruitment practices for migrant workers and improve working conditions in factories in Thailand.

- We’re all excited about the next phase in the project. Helping and aiding the migrant workers have been our focus for some years now, and it feels great having the training and films made available in their native language. And we are proud to be leading this charge to help our suppliers combat the challenges of modern slavery, and to constructively engage their workers in ensuring decent working conditions. Joint statement Nordic Initiative Partner Companies.

The QuizRR digital training is a modern, interactive and inspiring way for employees to learn about workers’ right and responsibilities. It uses training films, with actors from Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia playing different factory roles, followed by related quiz questions. The employees learn at their own pace and in their own language. The training consists of three modules and will be available for factory workers and factory management:

• Employment practices contains topics like recruitment, contracts and retention of documents.
• Workplace policies includes training in wages and benefits, working hours and overtime.
• Workplace dialogue cover the topics of having worker representatives and proper grievance channels.

A diverse mix of ten selected factories in the Thai food sector will begin implementing the new training in December 2018, starting with an initial baseline measurement of the level of knowledge in the factories. A follow-up measurement in late spring 2019 will then help to evaluate the impact of the first wave of training on knowledge, awareness and attitudes. 

The issue of migrant workers in Thailand
More than three million men and women have migrated to Thailand to work in the food sector, during a time when a multitude of international reports criticize the industry for instances of bad working conditions. Despite this, enormous quantities of fish, fruits and process foods are continually imported into Europe. Millions of migrant workers, mainly from Myanmar and Cambodia,risk exploitation and exposure to discrimination and human trafficking.

About the Nordic Initiative
The Initiative was born in 2017, when a collection of leading Nordic food companies was in search of new solutions and approaches relevant for their supply chains in Thailand. QuizRR was engaged to conduct a pre-study to explore the potential to use digital training tools for migrant workers’ rights and responsibilities, targeted to factory workers. The Nordic Initiative is cooperatively run and overseen by Axfood, Axfoundation, Coop, CPF Denmark, ICA, Martin & Servera, Menigo, Norvida, S Group Finland, Unil Norway and QuizRR. The project has been generously funded in part by Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovations Systems (Vinnova).