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May 05,2022
Meredith Dank Co-Authors Report on Labor
Trafficking in Construction and Hospitality
Director of Human Exploitation and Resilience, Meredith Dank, and her co-authors have published Labor Trafficking in Construction and Hospitality Topical Brief: Barriers to Help-Seeking, a report produced with funding from their National Institute of Justice project, “Labor Trafficking in Construction and Hospitality: Analyzing Victim Recruitment, Exploitation, and Service Needs to Identify Strategies for Prevention and Intervention”:
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.