Employers around the world are creating precarious forms of work to destroy unions, cut labor costs and avoid being held responsible for their own employees. Precarious work is created when permanent, regular jobs are replaced by subcontracted labor and temporary, short-term jobs. Workers around the world are uniting to call for permanent, decent jobs.

This document provides a number of case studies of how US corporations abuse of contract labor and how women and migrants see the effects.

On June 11, 2009, representatives from human rights organizations, the international trade union movement, international institutions, companies and governments came together in Geneva to discuss forced labor and child labor in Central Asia. A particular focus was on the continued use of forced child labor in the cotton industry, especially in Uzbekistan. The discussion was timed in coordination with the International Labor Conference, the International Labor Organization's annual conference.

This open letter from a group of Uzbek civic activists calls for a boycott of cotton from Uzbekistan due to the widespread use of forced child labor in this sector.