The Governing Body of the International Labour Office called for an “employment oriented” response to the global economic crisis based on policy measures set out in the ILO’s Global Jobs Pact. In their conclusions, Governing Body members said “A more balanced economic growth pattern must not lose sight of the need to urgently address large-scale unemployment, underemployment and rising income inequality. These issues deserve the same high level political priority that has been given to the rescue of financial institutions.”

“Getting those who have lost their jobs back to work and ensuring that the millions of young women and men who start looking for work each year get a good start in their working lives is a vital first step for recovery and sustainable growth and development,” the Governing Body concluded. “Making the transition then from crisis response to stronger, more sustainable, equitable development and a fair globalization will need an employment oriented framework for the medium and longer term.”

The Governing Body stated that the ILO’s Global Jobs Pact adopted by the Organization’s tripartite constituents in June contained “a policy package of practical measures to counteract the immediate crisis and set a course for sustainable recovery,” and called the response of the multilateral system, including the United Nations, the G20, the G8 and other international and regional organizations encouraging.

“It is time to apply the same efforts and policy creativity to create jobs and support enterprises that was deployed in saving banks and rescuing the financial system,” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “This is a fundamental yardstick by which the future evolution of this crisis will be looked at”.

The Governing Body requested the Director-General of the ILO to deepen support for countries applying the Pact, seek additional resources to fund policy initiatives within the framework of the Pact, and increase the Office’s capacity to respond to constituents’ requests, including through South-South cooperation. It encouraged the Office to further develop its cooperation with multilateral financial institutions.

The Governing Body also discussed the impact of the global economic crisis on various economic sectors and wages, and technical cooperation in support of the ILO’s response to the crisis, as well as a new ILO-UNDP led United Nations Policy for post-conflict employment creation, income generation and reintegration.

The meeting considered developments in Myanmar with respect to forced labour on the basis of a report by the ILO Liaison Officer in Yangon. In its conclusions, the Governing Body noted that full compliance with the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention, No.29 (1930), had not yet been achieved. Noting the Government’s cooperation regarding the complaints submitted under the Supplementary Understanding between the ILO and Myanmar, it recalled the need to strengthen the capacity of the ILO to deal with complaints throughout the country.

Delegates were deeply concerned about the continued imprisonment of a number of persons who have complained of being subjected to forced labour or who have been associated with such complaints in total contradiction with the Government’s commitments under the Supplementary Understanding. The Governing Body called for the immediate release of all persons currently detained being complainants, facilitators and others associated with the complaints mechanism, as well as for the unconditional release of all imprisoned political and labour activists.

The Governing Body also approved the report of the Committee on Freedom of Association that draws special attention to the cases of Cambodia, Guatemala and the Republic of Korea.

The Governing Body is the executive body of the International Labour Office (the Office is the secretariat of the Organization). It meets three times a year, in March, June and November and takes decisions on ILO policy, the agenda of the International Labour Conference and the draft Programme and Budget of the Organization for submission to the Conference.

It is composed of 56 titular members (28 Governments, 14 Employers and 14 Workers) and 66 deputy members (28 Governments, 19 Employers and 19 Workers). Ten of the titular government seats are permanently held by States of chief industrial importance (Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States). The other Government members are elected by the Conference every three years.

by Gowenius Toka

Accusations between government officials and trade unionists were this week flying thick and fast following the controversial sacking of 25 senior government officials. Trade unionists claim that government is pursuing a secret agenda, saying the sacking amounts to underhand tactics by government, aimed at reversing the gains that they made during negotiations.

They also accused government of adopting a contradictory position by failing to give the real reasons for the latest dismissals, despite professing to be committed to democratization of the workplace. This, they said, has prompted fears that authorities may be planning to effect some drastic changes, which would otherwise be difficult to implement in a fully unionized public service.

Andrew Motsamai, President of Botswana Public Employees Union (BOPEU), said that they suspect that government may be on a calculated campaign to reverse the strategic gains made by the public service trade unions by sweeping issues which would otherwise belong to structures prescribed by the delayed new public service Act, 2008 under the carpet.

University of Botswana lecturer and political analyst, Dr Zibane Maundeni, called on government to reveal the real reasons for the dismissals to avoid speculation and fear in the work place.

“It is unhealthy for people to live in fear, always wondering if they will be next to be given the boot,” he said.

The fact that some of these people were fired shortly after being elevated to more senior positions made the puzzle even more complex. In a previous interview with The Sunday Standard, BOPEU Secretary General, Mbakiso Magola, said that the Permanent Secretary to the President Eric Molale, had previously intimated that some amendments viewed to be in the interests of both parties were envisaged for implementation. He added that Molale opted for silence when pressed to give reasons for the delay in implementation of the Public Service Act, 2008.

Molale would later refuse to comment on the issue when contacted by The Sunday Standard.

“I am not going to respond to that, you are in the habit of chasing after petty issues” he said.

Information passed to The Sunday Standard indicates that government might renege on an initial agreement concerning omission of section 15(3) of the current act (public service act, 1998) for reasons still to be pronounced. The section gives government authority to retire public employees who have reached 45 years. Section 15(3) is not present in the new public act 2008, and there are fears that recent insinuations by government to review the new act are actually meant to re-impose it.

BOPEU has lambasted government for delaying to implement the new act, saying that it is proof that government acts in bad faith when dealing with employees.

“Section 15(3) was removed after mutual agreements that it leaves the fate of employees subject to the whims of powerful individuals, without clear cut definitions of circumstances that could lead to their early retirement,” said Motsamai.

It was also agreed that retiring employees at an age that is not recognized by the Pensions and Provident Fund Act as eligible for pension undermines workers basic entitlements. Government has been accused of breaching International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention no. 158 which calls for the need to give employees a hearing and reasons for being laid off. The latest ILO 2009 report also advised government to implement Convention 1976 (No. 144).

Against this background, said BOPEU, government’s continued adoption of unilateral measures under the guise of improving productivity and delivery falls short of international standards.

(The Sunday standard)

Forced evictions, labour rights, judiciary issues, the role of the EU in Cambodia, as well as political and institutional factors impacting on human rights were among the list of issues discussed during a hearing on Cambodia facilitated by Human Rights Without Frontiers at the European Parliament on 17 November 2009. The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) was invited to speak.

The Hearing was chaired by Niccolò Rinaldi (Vice President of ALDE group) and moderated by Edward McMillan-Scott (VP European Parliament) alongside Willy Fautre (Director of Human Rights Without Frontiers). The panels were composed of representatives from the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (Ms Maggie Murphy, Program Coordinator), Cambodian Government (H.E. Ambassador Mr. Rudi Veestraeten), the United Nations (Prof. Surya P. Subedi, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cambodia), the European Commission (Mr. Seamus Gillespie, Head of Unit), the Center for Development Research and Cooperation (Dr. Prof. Tazeen Murshid), Amnesty International (Susi Dennison, Executive Director), International Trade Union Confederation (June Sorensen), The Cambodian Association for Human Rights (Mr. Thun Saray, President and former political prisoner) and Human Rights Watch (Brad Adams, Asia Director).

Forced evictions, labor rights, judiciary issues, the role of the EU in Cambodia, as well as political and institutional factors impacting on human rights in Cambodia were among the list of issues discussed during the hearing. Panelists shared valuable information on several topics to describe the current status of human rights in Cambodia.

Susi Dennison, Executive Officer of Amnesty International explained how the ongoing violence against women subsequently leading to forced evictions can be traced back to their lack of civil and political rights.

On the other hand, Mr Thun Saray, former political prisoner and President of the Cambodian Association for Human Rights raised deep concerns about the failure of Cambodia’s justice system to provide a political environment that would safeguard fundamental human rights of both Cambodians and its defenders in the country.

The international community is aware of Cambodia’s ratification of 7 out of 8 labour rights laws. However, June Sorensen of the International Trade Union Confederation stressed that the majority of Cambodia’s workforce remains completely unaware of labour rights making it difficult for trade unions to operate in Cambodia.

Mr. Seamus Gillespie, Head of Unit of the European Commission recognized that Cambodia has entered the process of recovery. However whilst the country has achieved some level of stability, as the elections in 2008 showcased, international standards on electoral processes have not been followed. Furthermore, not all violations against human rights in Cambodia are accurately reported especially those committed during the dictatorship. Mr Brad Adams, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, stressed this issue saying that crimes committed in the past should not be forgotten by simply concentrating on the recent ones.

Maggie Murphy, Program Coordinator of UNPO, spoke on four major issues of great concern to the Khmer Kampuchea-Krom and the Montagnards: land rights claims and subsequent forced relocation, religious persecution, violence and torture and forced repatriation.

Ms Murphy reiterated that these issues should be primarily addressed by acknowledging the indigenous status of both the Khmer Kampuchea Krom people and the Montagnards. The unfortunate fact is that Cambodia can sign and ratify all international declarations and agreements pertaining to indigenous peoples but unless the people of Khmer Krom and the Montagnards are acknowledged as such, every declaration is meaningless. Thus, the first step in effecting significant changes to the lives of the marginalized peoples of Khmer Krom and Montagnards is to give them the status of indigenous peoples and then ensure that constant international pressure is applied to Cambodian authorities to ensure that they abide by these international agreements.

UNPO suggests a more active role for EU in Cambodia

There are significant political and institutional factors that impede the forceful repatriation of Khmer and Montagnard refugees from Cambodia to Vietnam. UNPO hopes that the EU will put pressure on Cambodia to sign and ratify the ILO Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, with the aim of respecting the traditions of indigenous peoples in relation to the use of their ancestral lands.

Lack of Political Will

In contrast to the presentations by the majority of panelists, the Ambassador of Cambodia strongly affirmed that the concept of “freedom of expression in Cambodia is very strange” and further elaborated that “freedom of expression is in place”. He contended that this is especially true in the areas of civil and political rights. However, whilst sufficient mechanisms are in place to adequately guarantee the rights of minorities and indigenous groups, the implementation has been severely lacking. Issues addressed in the hearing can only be tackled if the Cambodian government demonstrates a strong sense of political will to ensure that the human rights of the aforementioned groups are safeguarded.

Ms Murphy concluded by explaining that many similar recommendations were made by states and NGOs as Vietnam recently underwent examination under the UPR process. On 24 September the review ended with Vietnam rejecting 45 of the Human Rights Council’s recommendations, which demonstrated a lack of commitment to securing fundamental human rights. UNPO hopes that Cambodia will be more receptive to the UPR process, and that they will facilitate it, rather than obstruct it through rejections and rebuttals. Political will is fundamental to guaranteeing the improvement of the human rights situation in Cambodia.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last Tuesday signed into law Republic Act 9775, otherwise known as the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009. As the law defines it, child pornography is any representation, by whatever means, of a child engaged or involved in real or simulated sexual activities.

The law mandates that child pornography victims be given emergency shelter or appropriate housing, counseling, free legal services, medical or psychological services, livelihood and skills training, and educational assistance.

By signing the law, the President has demonstrated the government’s compliance with different international treaties such as the Rights of the Child; the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography; the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 182 on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor and the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.

The penalties for violating the child pornography law range from arresto mayor to reclusion perpetua and a fine of between P300,000 to P5 million, depending on the gravity of the offense.

Under the law, Internet service providers (ISP) must report to the Philippine National Police or the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) within seven days from obtaining facts and circumstances that any form of child pornography is being committed using its server or facility.

To monitor compliance, the law creates an Inter-Agency Council against Child Pornography to be headed by the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

Members of the council are the heads of the Department of Justice, Department of Labor and Employment, Department of Science and Technology, Philippine National Police, Commission on Human Rights, Commission on Information and Communication Technology, National Telecommunications Commission, Council for the Welfare of Children, Philippine Center on Transnational Crime, Optical Media Board and NBI.

Three representatives from children’s non-government organizations will also be included in the council.

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By Dilshani Samaraweera

Worker’s rights groups in Sri Lanka are asking for mechanisms to be introduced into the EU’s GSP+ trade scheme, to allow trade benefits to reach workers. ALaRM, a grouping of trade unions and non-governmental organisations, today (November 12, 2009), at a press conference, pointed out that the EU’s GSP+ preferential trade scheme has no inbuilt provision to ensure distribution of trade benefits to workers.

ALaRM said the EU’s GSP+ trade scheme has overwhelmingly benefited corporates and employers. While corporate incomes and profits have grown because of the GSP+, workers wages and work related benefits have not kept pace.

“The benefits from the GSP+ are going only to employers and companies at this point. Workers do not get any benefits from the GSP+, the way it is now,” said the representative from the Stand Up Movement, Ashila Mapalagama. Stand Up is a member of ALaRM and is involved in the apparel sector.

“So if the GSP+ is going to be available in future, we say it should have some mechanism to allow benefits to reach down to workers, as well as employers,” said Ms Mapalagama.

In Sri Lanka, workers in garment factories, (the biggest users of the GSP+), have seen job losses and cuts in welfare measures, attributed to recession impacts.

However, trade unions note that despite the recession, apparel exports to the EU have increased and not decreased, but worker benefits have decreased, indicating that benefits from trade growth are not accruing to workers.

According to the Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF), the apparel industry representative body, earnings from apparel exports to the EU, in September, increased by 8.5%, compared to September 2008.

Total apparel export incomes from the EU, for the 9 months of January to September, also increased by 4.3% this year, despite the recession.

Meanwhile, ALaRM is also calling on local authorities to ensure that GSP+ withdrawal will not adversely impact the working masses. The garment industry alone, is estimated to employ around 230,000 people.

http://dilsh.wordpress.com/

By Walden Bello*

The migrant worker experience is one that is increasingly typical. Let’s start with myself. I am now back in the Philippines, but I spent nearly 20 years as a political exile in the United States during the Marcos dictatorship. During that time I survived by working as a journalist, teaching, doing research, and taking on odd jobs in different American cities.

Multiple sites, multiple identities

This experience of multiple sites of work during one’s active years is not too different from that of the Palestinian engineer who returns to the West Bank or Gaza after working in Kuwait, Egypt, and the United States. Nor from that of the Mexican peasant who goes to the United States to work in a variety of jobs, returns to tend to his or her farm in Morelos for extended periods, then heads back to Chicago. Nor from that of the Keralan who alternates between tending a small shop back home built with savings from her overseas work and long stints serving as domestic help in the Gulf countries.

With multiple sites of work have come multiple identities. Over the years, in addition to our original identity, we begin to regard our country of work as our home, indeed even with some affection, even when that country is not hospitable to us. And beyond identities forged by nationality and residence, there is the identity of class—that becoming aware of a condition we share with so many others of different nationalities, that sense of being part of an international working class.

Negative and positive realities

But let us not romanticize the lot of the globalized worker. Instability and lack of security is the condition of many. Capitalism in the neoliberal era destroys jobs at home and creates them elsewhere, forcing many into dangerous transborder journeys to find those jobs. Unregulated as it is today, capitalism is marked by periods of expansion and contraction. When contraction arrives, the lot of the migrant becomes a perilous one, as opportunistic politicians scapegoat him or her for the loss of jobs of workers from the dominant culture. This is the situation in the developed countries today, where discrimination, police repression, and deportation have become pervasive. In Europe, this is accompanied by cultural stigmatization, with migrants of Muslim origin being defined as the “Other.”

But let us not be too negative either about our host societies. These are often democratic societies where there are rights and liberties that are institutionalized. Many migrants, of course, are deprived of a number of these rights and liberties, but in many respects, these polities provide a model of what is possible in our societies of origin, where rights and liberties are fragile if not non-existent and political corruption is pervasive. Women from many developing societies find in their host societies a level of respect and a state of formal equality with men that is sorely absent where they came from. Filipina women, for instance, are afforded in Europe and the United States the means to assert their reproductive rights via contraception which benighted forces make it difficult for them to obtain back home. They also have the right to divorce abusive or irresponsible partners, a course of action they are legally deprived of in the Philippines with its medieval code governing marriage.

Crisis of the home economy

But when all is said and done, most migrant workers would probably prefer to stay and work in their countries of origin if they could find the jobs that would provide them with a decent living. This is why it is important for migrant advocates to understand the conditions which have made emigration from developing countries so pervasive over the last three decades.

Conditions of poverty and economic distress push people out of their societies, but these conditions are not natural. They are created. And in scores of developing countries since the late eighties the prime engine expanding poverty and economic distress has been structural adjustment programs pushed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and trade liberalization promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

Promoted under the guise of bringing about efficiency, these programs have destroyed agriculture and industry in country after country. In Mexico, severe cutbacks in state support for agriculture, efforts to roll back agrarian reform, and Nafta-imposed trade liberalization have made agriculture a losing proposition, forcing Mexico’s peasantry, as the saying goes, to transfer en masse to the United States. In the Philippines, structural adjustment has destroyed the country’s industrial base and with it, hundreds of thousands of industrial and manufacturing jobs, while WTO-imposed trade liberalization has made farming unattractive for peasants whose products cannot compete with the subsidized commodities being dumped by the US, Europe, and other countries. For many of these displaced farmers and their children, relocating to the urban metropolis is followed by emigration.

The remittance economy

So massive has been the unraveling of our industrial and agricultural base wrought by neoliberal policies that it is oftentimes only remittances from migrant workers that keep our home economies afloat—something that can be said without exaggeration of the Philippines. Remittances are critical and our migrant workers are to be complimented for their heroic role, but the remittance economy is no substitute for a vibrant domestic economy. Unfortunately, in the Philippines, our policymakers have made remittances a substitute for domestic production.

Two-front war

Thus, to seriously address the problems they confront, migrants and migrant advocates cannot but be involved in a two-front war. On the one hand, we must struggle in our countries of origin to end the conditions of structural adjustment, trade liberalization, and other neoliberal policies that have eroded our industrial and agricultural base and destroyed millions of jobs. We must tell the US government and the European Union that we do not need aid; what we need is for you to stop imposing bilateral trade agreements and economic partnership agreements on us. What our countries demand is a halt to the structural adjustment programs still in effect in scores of countries in Africa and an end to further liberalization of trade under the WTO and bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. Of course, development has many other requirements, but stopping structural adjustment and trade liberalization is a sine qua non, a condition without which other indigenous development initiatives cannot prosper.

When it comes to the other front, in our host countries, the agenda is clear. We must aggressively assert what is the unvarnished truth: that migrants overwhelmingly make a positive contribution to the economy and culture of their host countries. We must frontally oppose state repression of migrants and confront the right-wing populist groups that scapegoat them. We must demand an end to the deportation of undocumented migrants, the rapid legalization and granting of full citizenship rights to those with papers and their children, and the facilitation of the achievement of legal status of those without papers.

Success in solving the dilemmas of migrants will necessitate progress in both these fronts. There is no guarantee of success in our advocacy, but unless we confront the challenges in both fronts, we are sure to fall short of our goals.

* Member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines representing Akbayan.
Speech delivered at the People’s Global Action Conference during the Global Forum for Migration and Development, Athens, Greece, November 1, 2009.

By Vijita Fernando 

The world has almost forgotten the plight of Rizana Nafeek, the Sri Lankan teenager who was sentenced to death for the alleged killing of her employer’s infant during her three months’ stay as a housemaid in a wealthy Saudi household in 2005.

Rizana’s story is not a pretty one. A Sri Lankan job agent changed her age from 15 to 17, four years ago, enabling her to go abroad as a housemaid. She travelled on this false passport and secured employment in a place entirely unfamiliar to her. There she had to look after an infant of a few weeks who choked on his bottle and died.

Since Rizana had never fed an infant before, she did not know what to do. The infant’s parents handed her over to the police, who got her to sign a confession in Arabic, a language she could not read, and on this ‘confession’ she was summarily tried and condemned to death. The judicial system responsible for this sentence has been condemned by the Sri Lankan authorities, Amnesty International and the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, who were able to get the execution date deferred.

Though the date of her beheading has passed by, Rizana, now 19, has been languishing in jail for the past four years, waiting for her fate to be decided – a pardon from her previous employer, or death.

The stories of Sri Lankan housemaids being ill treated, beaten, tortured and sometimes killed overseas are legion. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), the government agency responsible for all aspects of migration of workers abroad, notes that there has been a tenfold increase in the number of migrants in the last two decades. Current estimates suggest that over one million migrants are working abroad with an annual outflow of about 200,000 men and women. Of this number an average of 54 per cent are women in low skilled domestic work.

The feminisation of the migrant labour force is a unique character of the country with the number of women migrants increasing every year. In 2007, 114,677, or 52 per cent, of the total migrants were women. Generally, women amount to about 54 per cent of migrants. Over the years, foreign employment has generated substantial inflow of remittances, relieved local employment pressures and provided employment especially to women.

The migrant profile is a woman between 18 and 45, uneducated, usually married with children and dependent parents. They hail from low-income communities. The biggest demand for them is from the Middle East – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, Jordan, Jeddah, Lebanon, and from Singapore. There is marginal demand from Turkey, Cyprus and the United States as well.

Unfortunately, while these women go abroad to work housemaids but once they are there the job descriptions includes much more than household chores like cooking and cleaning. “What we find is that we have to look after large extended families, clean two-three storey houses, wash about four cars, care for infants and elderly and sometimes bed-ridden old people. We hardly get any sleep and are always working,” reveals K.P. Millie Nona, 50, who worked in Kuwait for four years.

At 20, Sujeeva Anoma Ranasinghe was a mother of a one-year-old son when she went to Jordan to work as a housemaid. She worked under a kind family fort eight years with a break of one month every two years. She was able to build a house and move away from the slum where she lived. But what she gained in money she paid for with the estrangement of her son and husband. “When I came back four years ago I decided never to go back, forget about the money and see that my son gets on track and goes to school,” she says.

Migrant workers do face many problems, whether it is at their workplace or back home, but their contribution is vital both for the country’s economy and for their impoverished families. Therefore, to ensure that their interests are protected, the newly-created Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare has just released a National Policy on Labour Migration. “The National Labour Migration Policy represents a unique and pioneering initiative for the South Asian region… articulating state commitment to ensuring a labour migration process that adheres to the principles of good governance and the rights and responsibilities enshrined in international instruments to advance opportunities for men and women to engage in decent and productive employment in conditions of freedom, dignity, security and equity,” said K. Rambukwella, Minister for Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare, while introducing the policy.

The policy, which covers all levels of migrants – skilled, unskilled and professional and both men and women – was developed under the overall guidance of the Tripartite Steering Committee (TSC). The TSC consisted of representatives of concerned ministries, the University of Colombo, Vocational Education Commission, Employers Federation, Trade Unions, Economic Research Division of the Central Bank, Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies and Sri Lanka Nidahas Sevaka Sangamaya. Prof. Siri Hettige of the Department of Sociology and Dr Markus Meyer of the Social Policy Analysis Research Centre, University of Colombo, were the advisors.

“The migration policy has been developed with the active participation of all key stakeholder and it outlines Sri Lanka’s commitment to a process of labour migration consistent with good governance, protection of migrant workers and development objectives… Steps have already been taken to appoint the National Advisory Committee comprising representatives of government, trade unions, employment agencies and civil society to ensure proper implementation,” reveals Ramani Jayasundere, Process Manager of the formulation for the Policy.

In view of the problems and travails suffered by women migrants the national policy comes as a vital piece of legislation. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, probing the various forms of abuse suffered by women migrant workers from Sri Lanka, a large percentage of ‘housemaids’, who are employed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates return “in distress”. Sometimes they return mentally disturbed, crippled in wheel chairs and occasionally, in a coffin. “Labour laws in many of these countries exclude migrant domestic workers from the most basic protections – unpaid wages, sexual harassment, overwork,” reports HRW.

The story of Sri Lankan women migrants unfolds startling contradictions. Their migration causes untold problems for their children and family, instances of frittering away of earnings sent home have caused mental trauma. Once they were back, some women have also resorted to prostitution to earn the kind of money they were paid abroad. On the other hand, their earnings have brought better nutrition for their children, higher schooling, better housing, safe water, electricity, gas, telephones and much needed hygienic toilets. The country benefits, too. The 2007 report of the Central Bank states that the inward foreign remittances from migrants were US$ 2505 million that year. On an average this provided 1.45 million households with an additional income of Rs. 16,000 (approx. US$150) monthly. Of this women’s contribution is about 60 per cent.

Already, a training programme to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes of prospective migrants in accordance with international levels has been launched by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Under the national policy other areas of concern such as safety, fair work and fair salaries will also be dealt with. The rationale for the policy is “that the country’s labour migration process has a number of pressing issues, which demand attention. Despite diverse initiatives both by the state and the non-government community, they face a multitude of obstacles at all stages of the process; pre departure, in service and upon return and reintegration. Much of this stems from the fact that the majority fall within low killed and housemaid categories…,” says Jayasundere.

Womens Feature Service covers developmental, political, social and economic issues in India and around the globe. To get these articles for your publication, contact WFS at the www.wfsnews.org website.

By John Moreno Gonzales (AP) 

NASHVILLE — Toribio Jimenez says an asbestos removal company used a guest worker program to trap him in virtual servitude, then fired him when he complained, forcing him to work illegally. Robert Martin believes the same company kept him unemployed by hiring foreigners like Jimenez. The men have become surprising allies in a lawsuit that claims a long-standing guest worker program harms American and immigrant workers alike. The program has issued visas for 22 years amid steady complaints, and both sides of the immigration debate say it warrants close scrutiny as the Obama administration prepares to tackle comprehensive immigration reform next year.

“I don’t blame Latino workers for this at all,” said Martin, 49. “Immigrants don’t own the heavy equipment, the trucks, the warehouses. You have to get mad at the people who own these business and take advantage.”

Jimenez, 32, said he was promised work as a janitor, only to be told on his arrival from El Salvador that he would be removing hazardous asbestos — work that Martin said he would have taken after 13 months of unemployment.

Jimenez was fired after complaining, and losing the job meant he also lost his visa. He said that forced him to work illegally so he can pay back the money he borrowed to make the trip.

“I feel terrible that I may have taken someone else’s job,” he said in Spanish, “only to end up being taken advantage of myself.”

Jimenez and Martin are among a dozen U.S. and immigrant workers who allege Cumberland Environmental Resources Company of Brentwood, Tenn., and Accent Personnel Services Inc. of Baton Rouge, La., discriminated against them by abusing the H2-B nonagricultural guest worker program.

The U.S. Department of Labor issues 66,000 visas a year under the program, but only after certifying that there were no qualified domestic applicants for the jobs. Another requirement is that prevailing wages be paid to guest workers to ensure the program does not drive down salaries for the U.S. work force.

The plaintiffs’ federal lawsuit maintains that the companies lied in documents that stated the U.S. workers turned down job offers. It also contends the companies required workers from El Salvador and Peru to pay illegal fees and accept less than the prevailing wage. If they complained, the men said, they lost the job and their visa.

Both companies deny the charges, and have filed documents blaming each other in the case.

Cumberland’s Nashville attorney, Ben Bodzy, called the plaintiffs “disgruntled former employees and applicants.” He has offered the guest workers partial settlements of about $10,000 each.

Accent attorney Jeff Weintraub of Memphis said that firm has followed all of the program’s rules.

Not everyone does.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, found in a 15-state survey last year that 98 percent of H2-B workers were paid less than the prevailing wage in occupations they commonly filled.

Dan Stein of the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for strict immigration control, believes H2-B should be scrapped because U.S. workers are “incrementally squeezed out of their jobs and their livelihoods.”

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, a Los Angeles-based immigrant rights organization, said rules making the visas non-transferrable should be changed “to ensure guest workers can leave an abusive situation and do not take jobs U.S. workers have applied for.”

A spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer, who is working on a sweeping proposal for immigration reform, declined to comment on the future of H2-B. Schumer, D-N.Y., has said reform should include a commitment to “discourage businesses from using our immigration laws as a means to obtain temporary and less expensive foreign labor to replace capable American workers.”

President Barack Obama has said he expects to see draft legislation for an immigration overhaul by year’s end, with changes to the system waiting until next year.

It’s unclear how many lawsuits have been filed over the H2-B visa program. Current cases include a claim that Kansas City businesses fraudulently obtained visas to fill hundreds of hotel cleaning jobs, allegations that 2,000 landscapers were not properly paid in Arkansas and a charge that a Utah law firm raked in fees by securing as many as 5,000 fraudulent visas.

In the Nashville case, the Latin American workers say they borrowed $3,000 to $4,000 each to pay illegal fees for visa expenses and travel costs charged by recruitment companies in their homelands. They also faced fees of $350 for a training class and $200 a month for housing in a Madison, Tenn., apartment where half a dozen workers slept on the floor, according to the lawsuit.

From mid-2008 through early this year, they said they were rarely given the full-time work needed to pay their debts to family and friends who loaned them money for the fees.

So Jimenez has gone underground, into the basement garage of a house outside Nashville shared by seven immigrants. He sleeps on a mattress on the concrete floor, suitcases piled at its head for privacy, and pressed shirts from a second hand store dangling in a makeshift closet.

He wears the shirts to work at a sparkling restaurant where he wiped down tables on a recent Friday night ahead of fashionably dressed couples who never knew he was there.

“After all of this, I just want to be back home,” said Jimenez, who decided to take Cumberland’s settlement offer of $9,191 but won’t see the money for up to three months. After paying legal fees and back rent at the house, he plans to return home with just enough to repay the $5,000 he borrowed from his family.

Martin, who is studying at a community college to become an electrician, said he is in even worse financial shape after borrowing nearly $15,000 from relatives during his job search.

“To be doing what some companies are doing is just totally un-American,” he said. “Just straight greed that doesn’t care about anybody who needs work.”

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By Johann Hari

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means “City of Gold”. In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. “To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell,” he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal’s village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they’d pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don’t like it, the company told him, go home. “But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket,” he said. “Well, then you’d better get to work,” they replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is “unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night.” At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.

The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn’t properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. “It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink,” he says.

The work is “the worst in the world,” he says. “You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable … This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can’t pee, not for days or weeks. It’s like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren’t allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer.”

He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn’t know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.

Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. “Here, nobody shows their anger. You can’t. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported.” Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

The “ringleaders” were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. “How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets…” He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: “I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings.”

Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. “We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can’t, we’ll be sent to prison.”

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: “There’s a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they’re not reported. They’re described as ‘accidents’.” Even then, their families aren’t free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a “cover-up of the true extent” of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. “It helps you to feel numb”, Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious. (…)

Continue reading on the Independent

By Young Ran-jeon

With the international community tightening economic sanctions on North Korean entities for their alleged involvement in nuclear and weapons activities, Pyongyang is ever more eager to earn hard currency. One of the few options for the regime to get foreign dollars is to rely on its own labor exports. VOA’s Korean Service reporter Young Ran-jeon recently visited Vladivostok, Russia and filed this report voiced by Kate Woodsome. Pseudonyms were used to protect the workers interviewed for this story. 

Skilled laborers
In Russia’s largest port city on the Pacific Ocean, Vladivostok, several small-framed Asian men are bustling around a half-built apartment building, trying to move large metal beams. They are North Koreans sent out by their government to earn much-needed foreign currency for the country. Kim Dong Gil came from North Korea’s second largest city of Hamhung. He brags that North Korean workers have the best skills in the Russian construction market, which is also filled with laborers from Central Asia and Vietnam. The estimated 5,000 North Koreans in Vladivostok come from various backgrounds and even include doctors. “I didn’t have any construction skills since I used to be with the military,” said Kim Soon Nam, who served in the army back home. “I learned from scratch when I arrived here. I got trained by a really young person who used to curse and swear at me all the time.”

Appreciation for capitalism
Despite the stress of living and working in a foreign country, the North Koreans have come to appreciate the culture of capitalism. “Back home I couldn’t make money even if I wanted to. But here if I work hard, I can make a dozen times more,” explained Han Jong Rok.  Choi Jong-kun, an assistant professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul, says money is just one reason to leave home. The other is improving one’s status among North Korea’s political elite. “If they bring in more money, then they would sort of have sort of upward mobility in their social class,” explained Choi Jong-kun.

Potential political opening
Communist North Korea has one of the most isolated and centrally controlled economies in the world. After the country suffered a deadly famine in the mid-1990s, the government allowed private farmers markets for a few years. But it tightened the policy in 2005.
Pyongyang is known to pour money into weapons programs instead of public services. And it has kicked out many international development agencies, allowing just limited food aid primarily from China and South Korea. That has saved the population from starvation, but North Koreans still struggle with malnutrition and poor health conditions. Pyongyang earns foreign currency from South Korean companies employing North Korean workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. But opening up to cross-border commerce means opening up politically, too. Professor Choi suggests it is easier to send workers overseas than to deal with the impact of liberalizing the economy. “They have to think of not only economic prosperity but also they have to think of so-called regional security,” said Choi. “What kinds of implications would it have to their regional security.”

Key source of foreign currency
North Korea does not reveal significant economic data, but exporting workers is considered a key source of hard foreign currency. A report by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul estimated in 2007 that Pyongyang earns at least $40 million to $60 million a year from labor exports. Outside of Russia, the institute has tracked North Korean workers in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bangladesh, China and Mongolia. In Vladivostok, every North Korean worker is required to pay the Pyongyang government around $800 each month.  Kim Soon Nam says he works extra hours to make sure he has money for himself. “If we want to save some money, we have to work Sundays and holidays, too,” he said. “We must earn a lot of money no matter what. North Koreans have to work from 8 am to 10 pm.”

Sacrifices help family members
The North Koreans in Vladivostok usually get a five-year visa, but many get extensions to earn more money. They sleep in dormitories and live to work, spending much of their time outside the construction sites doing extra jobs in local Russian homes. Kim Chul Woong, a welder, says he is willing to sacrifice time from his family back in Pyongyang to give his son opportunities few North Koreans enjoy, like a computer.
“The video footage on the computer can enhance children’s intellectual development, but I don’t have the kind of money,” he said. “When I go back home after working in Russia I’ll have a good amount of money. I can buy expensive stuff for my son. If he wants to do music I can buy him a violin or a guitar.” He says he is taking advantage of the work while he can get it. Kim Chul Woong says the construction jobs are dwindling in Russia because of the economic crisis. There is also greater competition from newly arriving Central Asians who are as hungry for dollars as he is.

Additional reporting by Kurt Achin in Seoul and Kate Woodsome in Washington.
(Voice of America news)