Portside

India's labor market primarily operates within the informal sector and is fraught with the most precarious of conditions, but in an environment where workers can lose their jobs for speaking out, most keep quiet to survive.

A growing number of German construction and public works companies are using labor subcontractors. They are not genuine construction firms. They look like it on paper, but their only activity is to supply labour at a low cost. They often only pay wages for the first few months. They then stop paying and expect the workers to keep going until the job is finished, in the hopes that they will be paid at the end of the contract.

One in thirteen workers in the Lone Star State - nearly one million - are employed in the booming construction industry. But large numbers of these workers are undocumented and unorganized, and employers are taking advantage.