Together with the international trade union umbrella organizations ITF and IUF, the Dutch Trade Union FNV has established the Road Transport Due Diligence Foundation (RTDD). RTDD recently published a research report into the conditions of Central Asian truck drivers working in Europe. For this research they interviewed 166 drivers. The research offers a glimpse into the world in which truck drivers experience exploitation at the hands of the companies they work for do not provide the working conditions that were intended for these drivers and to which they are entitled.
Despite the fact that clear regulations apply to the European transport market, drivers have no access to the law and they seem to live in different world. Their working conditions are kept vague, they are underpaid, pay is withheld and they are working and living in their trucks for months at a time. Several cases in this study describe instances of coercion labour. They receive no protection, while the transport companies at the top of the supply chain do not detect any signals of this human rights violations. This report further explains these situations the light and how companies in the supply chain benefit at the expense of drivers. See here also a summary of the report.