They Made 10,000 Workers Pay for Their Own Jobs – Now They Reimburse Them

An electronics company in Thailand is reimbursing its Burmese workers after illegally charging them high recruitment fees in a practice known to trap migrant workers in debt and modern slavery.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation has exclusively revealed that Cal-Comp Electronics – a supplier to HP and other tech giants – is repaying at least 10,000 workers with an estimated total of around $10 million in compensation.

The practice of imposing fees to workers seeking jobs abroad is globally condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations.

Cal-Comp Electronics is a subsidiary of Taiwan’s New Kinpo Group – a member of the Responsible Business Association which supports workers’ rights and has a zero-fee recruitment policy. Yet according to Thai charity Migrant Workers Rights Network, workers had to pay average of $660 in recruitment fees, a number over six times higher than the legal limit in Myanmar.