A group of domestic workers gather at their union headquarters in Rio de Janeiro for a class on the law that sets out the rights and obligations of domestic work in Brazil. Learning about the law helps these women defend their rights and combat the vulnerability many of them of them face in the solitude of their employers’ homes. CREDIT: Courtesy of STDRJ

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

The Theater of the Oppressed helped her become aware of the triple discrimination suffered by black women in Brazil and the means to confront it, such as the Rio de Janeiro Domestic Workers Union, which she has chaired since 2018.

Maria Izabel Monteiro, 55, came to work in Rio de Janeiro when she was still a teenager, from Campos dos Goitacazes, a city of half a million inhabitants located 280 kilometers away. She has had jobs in commerce and industry, but for most of her life she has worked in other people’s homes.

She began by taking care of a sick elderly woman in Ipanema, an affluent neighborhood next to the beach of the same name. She replaced a white nurse who ate breakfast with the family. But she, the new black caregiver, did not have a place at her employers’ table.

Monteiro believes that all the prejudices of Brazilian society are concentrated in their most acute form against domestic workers, especially if they are black women. They suffer triple discrimination, for being poor black women.

This reality is often addressed by the group Marias do Brasil, created by domestic workers, which adopted the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed, a method created by Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal (1931-2009), which turns spectators into actors to act out everyday situations and raise awareness.

“It’s pedagogical theater, not therapeutic,” said the trade unionist and actress, who works miracles to juggle her weekly shift at the union, the theater and her work as a domestic.

Monteiro lives in Duque de Caxias, a town of 930,000 near Rio de Janeiro, from where she spoke to IPS. It takes her about an hour by train and subway to get to the house where she works and to the union headquarters, near the city center, and transportation costs her about 10 dollars a day.

Sometimes she and the union directors sleep in the organization’s office to save time and the cost of transportation.

The union has 2,000 registered members, although a smaller number are active. Even though the members are women, the name of the union still uses the masculine form of the word “domesticos” rather than the feminine “domesticas” because it was founded in 1989 before gender-inclusive language came into use in Portuguese. However, the women are thinking of changing the name, as similar unions have done in other parts of the country.

Roseli Gomes do Nascimento suffers frequent acts of discrimination for being a black woman who lives in a poor neighborhood, the Rocinha favela, which sits on a hill between two of Rio de Janeiro’s wealthiest neighborhoods. CREDIT: Courtesy of RG Nascimento

Racist and anti-poor violence

Roseli Gomes do Nascimento, 60, frequently suffers acts of racism and anti-poor discrimination living in Rocinha, the largest favela or shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, which sits on a hill between two wealthy neighborhoods: São Conrado and Gávea.

A taxi driver, for example, once refused to take her from São Conrado to Copacabana, a middle-class neighborhood known for its famous beach. “He said he didn’t drive that route, but he clearly expressed his prejudice that the poor can’t afford to use cabs,” Gomes told IPS, to illustrate the aporophobia – rejection of the poor – with which she lives on a daily basis.

Being followed around by security guards in shops or being denied entry to the buildings where her employers live, until someone talks to the doormen, are other forms of hostility and prejudice faced by Gomes, who currently works as a nanny taking care of a child three days a week.

Her neighbors in Rocinha, whose population is estimated at 70,000 to 150,000, are victims of constant racist violence, “but few complain to the police,” lamented Gomes, who is now determined to speak out against the discrimination she suffers.

Racism has been a crime under Brazilian law for more than 70 years, but the law is almost never enforced.

However, several scandals involving black people tortured and killed apparently because of their skin color, and anti-racist campaigns, have made more people question the impunity surrounding racism.

The Theater of the Oppressed, a method that turns ordinary people into actors to dramatize and comprehend their own situations, helped Maria Izabel Monteiro become a social activist and president of the Domestic Workers Union of Rio de Janeiro. CREDIT: Courtesy of MI Monteiro

Unfair labor relations

Monteiro says labor relations are the greatest reflection of the oppression of black women, a lingering legacy of slavery, which was not abolished in Brazil until 1888.

The Consolidation of Labor Laws, approved in 1942 and containing many of the rights still in force today in Brazil, excluded domestic and rural workers, the very sectors where female labor is abundant.

Women account for 92 percent of domestic workers in Brazil, and black women account for two thirds. A total of 6.3 million people were employed in domestic work in 2019, prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to official data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

More than two thirds of female domestic workers are informally employed, which facilitated massive layoffs during the pandemic. They lost 1.5 million jobs, according to Hildete Pereira de Melo, a specialist in gender and economics and professor at the Fluminense Federal University, located in a city near Rio.

As a result, the overall unemployment rate in late 2021 stood at 11.1 percent, compared to 16.8 percent for women and 19.8 percent for black women, according to the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies.

In 1972, a new law recognized some labor rights for women, which were consolidated and expanded by the constitution adopted in 1988. But the real breakthrough only occurred in 2013, with the approval of a constitutional amendment that established rights for domestic workers such as minimum wage, Christmas bonus, vacation days, maximum working day of eight hours and maternity leave.

In other words, they were granted almost the entire list of rights in effect under the labor legislation at the time.

But part of these conquests were lost in 2017, when Congress made labor laws more flexible, for example making it possible to pay domestic workers strictly according to the hours worked, under a new “intermittent work” contract treating them as casual workers, effectively cutting their pay, although it did maintain their rights, Monteiro said.

The Domestic Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro organizes talks with specialists and debates on labor rights issues with interested women. On this occasion, they were given orientation on the specific regulations for domestic work. CREDIT: Courtesy of STDRJ

Harassment and violence

Her union assists many women workers, most frequently helping them report rights violations. “But the first part of the complaint is emotional, not labor-related. We offer psychological support, and that’s where my experience in the theater has helped me out,” she said.

Harassment is the most frequent problem reported. Employers pressure domestics to get them to resign, instead of firing them, to avoid paying greater social benefits.

“Things disappear and suspicion is raised about the domestic worker, money is left lying around in visible places, as a trap to accuse them of theft, doubts are cast on what the employees say, with insistent questions such as ‘are you sure?’” Monteiro described.

The domestics feel unprotected, “they are on their own, facing their employers,” generally the husband and wife, and sometimes other family members, she said. For this reason, the union provides a lawyer and seeks a direct dialogue with the employers.

Black women occupy the last rung in terms of remuneration for work, in a ranking in which white men are first, followed by white women and black men. Black men earn more than black women, even though the latter have more schooling on average in Brazil, said researcher Pereira de Melo.

In other words, “the reward for education is higher for men than for women – inequity that rests on policies that Brazilian society should discuss,” she said.

In addition, black women account for 65.9 percent of the victims of obstetric violence and 68.8 percent of all women murdered by men, according to the Patricia Galvão Institute, dedicated to feminist-oriented communication.

This is much higher than the black proportion of the Brazilian population, which is 56 percent of the 214 million inhabitants of this South American country.

Black women comprised 66 percent of the 3,737 women murdered in 2019, according to the Atlas of Violence drawn up by the Brazilian Forum for Public Safety, a non-governmental organization of researchers, police and representatives of the justice system.

(L-R) Somappa, 52, Muniraju, 37, and Kaverappa, 54, finish manually emptying a pit, in Bangalore, India in August 2019. Courtesy: WaterAid/ CS Sharada Prasad/ Safai Karmachari Kavalu Samiti

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 2019 (IPS)

People who empty out sewage tanks and scrub down latrines doubtless perform a vital, thankless and even undesirable task. A new report, however, shows that doing such jobs could also cost workers their lives.

A study from the World Health Organization (WHO) and others has revealed that millions of sanitation workers in low-income countries are routinely exposed to contagious bugs, powerful chemicals and filthy conditions that can turn out to be deadly.

The 61-page study titled ‘Health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers‘ holds up the world’s sanitation workers as unsung heroes who risk their lives cleaning other people’s muck, saying they should at the very least get protective clothing and basic employment rights.

Speaking with reporters in New York on Thursday, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric described the “unsafe and undignified working conditions of sanitation workers” across nine developing countries.

Researchers focussed on muck-cleaners in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Haiti, India, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda who typically toiled in an “informal economy” lacking basic “rights and protection,” added Dujarric.

The report by WHO, together with the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, and WaterAid, a charity, described people around the world emptying pits and septic tanks, cleaning sewers and manholes and handling fecal sludge at treatment and disposal works. 

Researchers shone a spotlight on the case of Wendgoundi Sawadogo, a sanitation worker in Ouagadougou, capital of the landlocked West African country, Burkina Faso, a city of some 2.4 million people.

The 45-year was photographed climbing into latrines and open pits, holding muck-smeared ropes without gloves. In a statement accompanying the report, he described finding discarded syringes and broken calls in fetid pits. 

Sawadogo spoke of colleagues struggling to lift the concrete slabs that cover pits, occasionally breaking fingers, toes, and feet. The work is “really dangerous” and some of his co-workers have perished in such trenches, he added.  

“You have no paper to show that this is your profession. When you die, you die,” said Sawadogo.

“You go with your bucket and your hoe without recognition, without leaving a trace anywhere or a document that shows your offspring that you have practiced such a job. When I think of that, I’m sad. I do not wish any of my children to do the work I do.” 

Another emptier in the same country, Inoussa Ouedraogo, described a slab crushing his finger in an injury that cost the 48-year-old about $100 in local currency during 11 months of “painful”  treatment, in which time he had to carry on working. 

Researchers described sanitation workers toiling in sewage pits around the world without safety gear — risking exposure to cholera, dysentery and other killer bugs. Some 432,000 people perish from diarrhoeal deaths each year, the report said.

They also have to work in tanks amid fumes of ammonia, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and other toxic gases that can cause workers to lose consciousness and die, or face long-term breathing and eyesight problems.

Few low-income countries have health and safety guidelines to protect sanitation workers, researchers said. There are no reliable global statistics, but it is estimated that one manhole worker dies unblocking sewers by hand in India every five days.

Dr Maria Neira, a public health director at WHO, called for much sanitation work to be mechanised so that workers do not have to touch human waste with bare hands. She called for better health and safety laws, training, protective gear, insurance, and health checks.

“Sanitation workers make a key contribution to public health around the world – but in so doing, put their own health at risk. This is unacceptable,” said Neira. “We must improve working conditions for these people.”

The wages of Egypt's poorest workers have failed to keep up with rising living costs. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Oct 1 2013 (IPS)

Egyptian workers who mobilised during the 2011 uprising that toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak have used the past two and a half years to organise into unions, press for labour reforms, and strike for better wages and working conditions.

But they face an uphill battle against a state that continues to restrict labour freedoms and to promote Egypt as a cheap-labour, business-friendly destination.

“Nothing has changed,” says journalist and labour activist Adel Zakaria. “The government is still not willing to give workers their rights… and overlooks labour violations under the pretext of attracting investment.”

Mubarak’s authoritarian regime (1981-2011) kept the country’s labour force under tight control, using its monopoly on union organisation to prevent collective action and mobilise workers to support the ruling party during election campaigns. The state flagrantly ignored its commitments to international labour treaties, denying workers basic rights and dispatching security forces and hired thugs to back employers during labour disputes.

Political economist Amr Adly says the regime’s neo-liberal economic policies and hugely unpopular privatisation programme pleased World Bank and IMF officials, but resulted in high unemployment and widening disparities between rich and poor.

“The economy was growing rapidly but the wealth concentrated at the top without any trickle down,” Adly told IPS. “The majority were excluded from the country’s economic growth.”

By 2011, on the eve of the mass uprising that toppled Mubarak, nearly a quarter of the population lived below the poverty line, and millions worked in a huge parallel economy where job security is absent.

Nearly two million Egyptians subsisted on the monthly minimum wage of 35 Egyptian pounds (about five dollars at today’s rate), the bulk of their salary coming from a series of bonuses and benefits that employers routinely withheld or used as leverage.

The twilight years of Mubarak’s rule saw a surge in the number of labour strikes as workers defied the state to demand unpaid bonuses and a livable wage.

“The labour protests were part of the social and economic discontent that led to the revolution,” says Adly.

Mubarak’s successors – both the Muslim Brotherhood and the ruling military junta – have continued to push his economic policies, working to contain labour unrest rather than address its underlying causes.

A 2009 International Labour Organisation (ILO) study showed that Egypt’s wages were among the lowest of 72 countries surveyed. The average monthly salary of 542 dollars put the country on par with Mexico and Thailand, and was less than a third of the average in Turkey.

Economic conditions have continued to deteriorate, whittling away at paychecks and pushing the national poverty rate to a record 25.2 percent last year. Political instability has spooked investors and devastated the tourism sector, previously the country’s biggest foreign revenue earner.

Government figures show the unemployment rate has climbed from nine percent before the 2011 uprising to over 13 percent, with more than a quarter of the country’s youth out of work. Inflation has averaged 10 percent, raising living costs and putting pressure on the country’s most disadvantaged citizens.

“There has been no attempt to link wages to rising living expenses,” says labour activist Zakaria. “Most Egyptians are worse off now than before the revolution.”

The 2011 uprising brought a heightened awareness of labour rights to workers, who have used the chaotic transition since Mubarak’s downfall to organise into thousands of independent trade unions, challenging the hegemony of state-controlled syndicates.

The free unions – estimated to represent nearly three million workers in this country of 85 million people – have been at the forefront of a wave of strikes that has grown in size and scope.

Zakaria says the emerging labour movement has empowered workers and increased their leverage. Last year there were a record 2,000 collective worker actions, with protests calling for better wages, payment of overdue bonuses, and the reinstatement of unfairly sacked employees.

Workers have also called on the government to abolish Mubarak-era labour laws and establish wage controls.

“Not all [strikes have been] successful, in fact many have failed,” Zakaria told IPS. “But since the revolution the government and employers have been more inclined to negotiate with workers, instead of beating them into submission – though they still do that too.”

In October 2011, the government caved in to pressure and revised the minimum wage for the first time in 25 years. It was a hollow victory for labour groups, which were disappointed by the decision to set the wage at 700 Egyptian pounds (102 dollars), less than half of what they had campaigned for.

The government recently pledged to increase the minimum monthly wage for six million public sector workers to 1,200 Egyptian pounds (174 dollars), but rejected calls to extend it to the 19 million employees in the private sector.

Fatma Ramadan, a board member of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), says the government has made some adjustments to public sector wages, but continues to provide cover for exploitative private employers, fearing worker concessions could push investors toward cheaper and more servile labour markets.

The average weekly pay of government and public sector workers grew 29 percent in 2012 to reach 845 Egyptian pounds (124 dollars), according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). Private sector salaries saw piecemeal increases, but largely stayed the same, according to official information.

“The military and feloul (remnants of the old regime) have worked to keep workers from exercising their rights, including the right to organise into unions or strike,” says Ramadan. “They have claimed that strikes are hurting the economy, but it is not for workers to forfeit their rights in order to protect the interests of business tycoons.”

Twenty-five-year-old Razia is one of 2,500 survivors of the factory collapse in Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 31 2013 (IPS)

Top U.S. companies are now in negotiations to agree on new safety standards for their clothing-producing contractors in Bangladesh, a month after a garment factory’s collapse in Dhaka killed more than 1,100 workers.

The move comes after these companies, most prominently including Walmart and Gap, refused to sign on to a fire and safety standards agreement, announced weeks ago, that has received wide backing among European companies. Yet labour advocates are disparaging the new talks, suggesting the results will likely not be binding and thus will not be able to ensure worker safety."They are still looking for political cover so they can preserve the very lucrative status quo.” -- Scott Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium

“Walmart is … undermining the constructive efforts of other companies,” Jyrki Raina, general-secretary for IndustriALL Global Union, an umbrella of unions with 50 million worldwide members that has led the European agreement process, said Friday. “The kind of voluntary initiative being put forward by Walmart and Gap has failed in the past and will again fail to protect Bangladeshi garment workers.”

The new discussions, announced Thursday, are being sponsored by the BipartisanPolicyCenter, a Washington think tank, and being co-chaired by two respected former U.S. senators, George Mitchell and Olympia Snowe. The negotiations also include several U.S. and Canadian trade associations.

“Over the next several weeks, we look forward to building on [past] efforts … and seeking input from key stakeholders to forge an effective response,” Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), said Thursday.

Currently, the process is aiming to come up with a final agreement on new standards for Bangladeshi contractor factories by July. (BPC did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

“We are hopeful that … these discussions will result in a plan for long-lasting change for the garment industry in Bangladesh,” Bill Chandler, vice-president of global corporate affairs for Gap, Inc. told IPS. “We believe the American alliance can be a powerful path forward to achieve lasting change in Bangladesh, and will build upon the work that is already underway.”

A spokesperson for Target also confirmed the company’s involvement in the BPC-facilitated talks process.

Contacted by IPS, a Walmart spokesperson emphasised that the company has already taken “a number of actions that meet or exceed other factory safety proposals”. But he also noted Walmart’s belief that “there is a need to partner with other stakeholders to improve the standards for workers across the industry”.

Nonbinding “not good enough”

This interest in entering into the new negotiations appears to be motivated particularly by public pressure following the companies’ refusal to sign on to the European Union accord, which now has more than 40 corporate backers, including three U.S. companies.

That agreement would include financing to upgrade factories as well as independent inspections. In addition to concerns over potential costs and the prospect of court litigation, a key sticking point for U.S. companies over the E.U. proposal has been that the agreement would be legally binding.

According to documents on Gap’s corporate website, for instance, in mid-May the company was “ready to sign on today with a modification to a single area – how disputes are resolved … With this single change, this global, historic agreement can move forward with a group of all retailers, not just those based in Europe.”

Yet it is because of this stance – reportedly repeated at a Gap shareholder meeting on May 21 – that observers are now sceptical that a company-led negotiations process will be able to result in strong, and legally enforceable, agreement.

“Forty retailers from all over the world … have agreed to a binding comprehensive safety plan for Bangladesh,” the AFL-CIO, one of the largest labour unions in the United States, said Friday, noting its “deep concern” about the new BPC-led talks.

“No amount of bipartisan window dressing can change the fact that Walmart and the Gap have refused to take this important step. This is a matter of life or death. Quite simply, nonbinding is just not good enough.”

Such concerns are heightened by the fact that, currently, no worker-rights organisation is included in the talks.

“This is the latest, and probably most sophisticated, in a series of industry public relations gambits designed to deflect attention from the real issue: the refusal of these companies to make a binding commitment to clean up their factories in Bangladesh,” Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an advocacy group, told IPS in an e-mail.

“This shows the pressure these corporations are under and their recognition that the failed inspection schemes they have been touting no longer have any public credibility. Unfortunately, their goal has not changed: they are still looking for political cover so they can preserve the very lucrative status quo.”

Corporate-led process

Concerns over corporate-led international labour and safety programmes have received boosts from U.S. lawmakers in recent days, as well. Last week, Representative Sander Levin warned that the oversight process has “been left up to the retailers, suppliers and government all these years, and that hasn’t worked.”

On May 15, Levin and two dozen members of Congress wrote to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, urging that her government put “the highest priority on aggressively enacting and enforcing comprehensive reforms … including the right to organize and form unions”. The lawmakers also noted, “it is critical that all key stakeholders take action”.

Reports in recent days have suggested that the U.S. State and Labour Departments are currently arguing over how hard to push the Bangladeshi government on these issues. Unions and some advocacy groups are pressuring the U.S. to revoke certain bilateral trade concessions given to Bangladesh, though critics say doing so would give up important leverage for change.

For now, Washington, seemingly led by the embassy in Dhaka, has chosen not to back the E.U. accord, although the U.S. State department says it is urging Bangladeshi officials to institute a suite of labour reforms.

“We need a lot more from the U.S. government – why the embassy has decided not to endorse the E.U. standards is beyond me,” Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“Of course, we have to remember that even the E.U. accord hasn’t put any emphasis on workers’ right to organise. It’s only workers themselves that can win their rights, and they can do so only once they have the right to organise and bargain collectively. The U.S. government needs to do far more on two issues: binding agreements on safety codes and the right to organise.”

Migrants employed as construction workers in Thailand receive little training or safety equipment. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, May 21 2013 (IPS)

On the outskirts of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, a group of twelve migrant families lives in a makeshift camp comprised of houses constructed from scrap metal.

They share three toilets between them, and each home consists of nothing more than a single room, whose flimsy walls and roof provide little privacy, and are no match for the heavy monsoon rains that lash northern Thailand between the months of May and November.

Sounds of splashing water fill the air as both male and female migrants, returning from a long day’s work, unwind with a shower in the rudimentary, open-air structures that contain nothing more than a rap connected to a water tank.

Most of these workers are employed on a residential construction site just north of here, where they pour cement, plaster walls, build roofs or install electrical wiring from seven in the morning until six in the evening, seven days a week. They do not have much to show for these gruelling hours on the job, returning home with as little as six dollars a day.

One of this shantytown’s residents, Nang Soi Sat, tells IPS the long working hours and paltry income are not even her biggest concerns: she is more worried about maintaining her legal status in the face of multiple challenges.

Thailand is home to an estimated 2.5 million migrant workers. The country’s economic boom – which has seen an 18.9 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) since 2011 – relies heavily on a constant influx of labour from neighbouring countries. Over 82 percent of the workers hail from Myanmar (Burma), 8.4 percent from Laos and 9.5 percent from Cambodia.

Those from Myanmar say ethnic strife and civil conflict sent them fleeing in search of better opportunities in the region. A network of garment and furniture factories housed in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that dot the Thai-Myanmar border quickly absorb incoming migrants to work for a pittance.

Other key areas of employment for migrants include the seafood and agricultural sectors.

For migrants like Sai Sun Lu, the search for better opportunities did not end with his arrival here. Originally from Myanmar’s volatile Shan State, Lu works over nine hours a day at a site in Chiang Mai, constructing high rise buildings that will likely be converted into commercial centres, residential condos or offices, without a single day off.

He tells IPS he did not want to come to Thailand, but was forced to as a result of intense fighting in his home. His hopes for greener pastures on the other side of the border have been dashed and he now finds himself living in a kind of daily nightmare, toiling in what rights groups have called “appalling” conditions.

According to the U.S. State Department’s report on migration and refugees, Thailand ranks alongside some of the worst offenders of migrants’ rights, including Afghanistan, Chad, Iran and Niger.

Because migrant labourers are typically unskilled, with little awareness of occupational safety, they are easy prey for employers looking to cut corners by dismissing safety concerns.

In the construction sector, inadequate training in the proper use of machinery and a lack of protective equipment such as body harnesses or guardrail systems pose a grave threat to those who work on buildings as high as 27 to 69 stories.

On Sai Sun Lu’s construction site, “there have been many accidents and deaths. Some workers have slipped and fallen from the high rises but we receive very little or no compensation,” he said.

“As Burmese we have to be extra careful because if we make any mistakes then our employers can terminate our work without any explanation.”

Fear of this last consequence is, for many workers, second only to the fear of death, and a very common one among migrants from Myanmar who account for 75 percent of Thailand’s one million undocumented workers, according to the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University.

The 2008 National Verification Programme (NVP) was intended to legalise the status of incoming migrants and provide them with basic protections under Thai labour laws, such as access to social security schemes, official work accident compensation and the ability to apply for driving licences.

However, rights activists contend that the NVP’s registration fees are “extortionate”, often requiring three times the average worker’s monthly salary of between 100 and 167 dollars.

According to this year’s World Report, published annually by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Thai employers frequently seize migrant workers’ documents, thus rendering them bonded labourers, while government policies – like the Thai cabinet’s 2010 resolution to fine employees if their papers carry outdated information – impose severe restrictions on migrant workers’ ability to change jobs.

Even migrants with all their legal papers in hand often go to pains to avoid encounters with the police for fear of being harassed, physically abused, or arrested.

In desperation, many have turned to personal networks of friends and family members to gain access into the country.

In rural Myanmar, where most migrants come from, informal transporters linked to smugglers with networks along the border facilitate entry into Thailand. This system has led to the proliferation of so-called recruiters, or agents, who charge exorbitant fees in exchange for providing such services as remitting money, establishing communication channels between families, or securing employment.

Following allegations of rampant corruption among recruitment agencies, the Labour Ministry of Myanmar recently banned 12 agencies from sending migrant workers to Thailand, according to an internal memo obtained by ‘The Myanmar Times’.

Earlier this month, Myanmar’s Deputy Labour Minister Myint Thein assured labour activists and migrants that the state was doing everything possible to rein in illegal actors and ensure safe, affordable passage between the two countries. It has a vested interest in doing so: a 2010 ILO report found that the average migrant worker in Thailand sent home about 1,000 dollars every month, with total remittances from Thailand accounting for about five percent of Myanmar’s annual GDP.

Miguel* is one of millions of Mexicans scraping by on a meagre income – he earns 60 dollars a week working 11 hours a day in an electronic products store in the northern city of Mexicali.

He walks home – it takes him 20 minutes – to save on bus fare, which would cost him a dollar.

“There are only two things to do here: work and drink beer,” he tells IPS in a room where he has just a bed and a small TV set. “We all have to work overtime, to boost our wages,” adds the 41-year-old, who lives alone.

Some 2,500 km from Mexicali, the correspondent for a national daily in the eastern state of Veracruz is paid just 15 dollars per article. On top of the low wages, he works in the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists, where a record nine reporters have been killed in the last two years.

Like many of his colleagues around the country, he does not have social security, labour benefits or healthcare coverage. He spends half of what he earns travelling to Mexico City every two weeks to take a course on journalism and human rights.

Things are not much better in the capital. Juan, a designer who has taken masters’ level courses, earns 90 pesos (seven dollars) an hour teaching at a private university. He doesn’t have social security coverage either. He works freelance to increase his income. But as a professional, he pays one-third of what he earns in taxes.

“In this country, the biggest problem is not unemployment, but precarious job conditions,” Alberto Arroyo Picard, a researcher at the Autonomous Metropolitan University and a member of the executive board of the Mexican Network for Action Against Free Trade (RMALC), told IPS.

In this country of 112 million people, 2.5 million are unemployed, according to the latest figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

The outgoing government of conservative President Felipe Calderón boasts that Mexico has a lower unemployment rate than other countries in Latin America, like Brazil. But it fails to note that working conditions here are often dismal.

For example, while 51 million people are counted as “employed”, 12 million of that total are in the categories of “under-employed” (those who work less than 15 hours a week) or “critical conditions” (less than 35 hours a week or earning less than the minimum wage). And 14.2 million are active in the informal economy.

These figures on the precarious conditions of labour contrast with Mexico’s fairly robust economic performance. According to the World Bank, the economy grew 3.9 percent in 2011, and the projections for this year and next are 3.5 and 4.0 percent, respectively, despite the global crisis.

Only 16 million people have social security and labour benefits – less than one-fourth of the economically active population, according to the most recent data from the Mexican Social Security Institute. And of those, two million are on short-term contracts or are temporary workers.

But conditions are set to get even worse. A bill before Congress would make it easier to hire and fire workers, and would create trial employments periods, allow companies to hire employees on an hourly basis, and legalise subcontracting and outsourcing.

The ambitious overhaul of the country’s labour laws is opposed by left-wing parties.

“What they are doing is legalising infamy,” Salvador Arellano, the secretary-general of the Commercial, Office, Retail, Similar and Allied Workers’ Union (STRACC), told IPS.

Patricia Juan, of the Authentic Labour Front (FAT) independent confederation of unions, said the proposed reforms would not only further reduce the cost of labour and undermine job stability, but would inhibit collective bargaining and make it more difficult for workers to organise to defend their rights.

“That is the last social right we have left in Mexico, besides free education, which is going to end soon,” she said. “Since you’ll be on trial all the time, you’ll accept anything in order to keep your job.

Although outsourcing and subcontracting have existed in Mexico informally for the past two decades, the effects of the global economic crisis that broke out in 2008 have led to their expansion to virtually every industry.

To illustrate, nearly half of all bank employees in Mexico work under outsourcing arrangements.

Of the 42 banks currently operating in the country, in 11, nearly all of the employees work under an outsourcing regime, including BBVA Bancomer, Banco Wal-Mart and Inbursa, which belongs to billionaire Carlos Slim.

And according to the Mexican Association of Human Capital Business (AMECH), which represents employment services companies, outsourcing of services is growing by about 10 percent a year.

But the finance ministry has identified outsourcing companies that evade taxes. The federal audit office of the tax administration service (SAT) reported that outsourcing is responsible for more than 300 million dollars a year in tax evasion.

The proposed labour reform was approved by the Senate in late October but sent back to the lower house of Congress, which has to decide on articles aimed at opening up labour unions to greater scrutiny – a demand set forth by business and independent workers and opposed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which will govern the country after president-elect Enrique Peña takes office in December.

But the rest of the articles have already been approved and will not be modified.

“The Chamber of Deputies could delay passage of the law if it does not consider the union question a priority issue. But the aspects involving civil rights are irreversible,” labour lawyer Manuel Fuentes told IPS.

The next step, he said, is to exhaust all of the legal options to fight the bill. For example, different labour groups will ask the National Human Rights Commission to challenge the law as unconstitutional.

But he is not optimistic.

The problem is that just nine percent of wage-earning workers are unionised in Mexico, and only those who belong to independent unions are willing to wage a battle against the labour reforms.

And in a country where wages have lost 76 percent of their buying power in the last 30 years, and three-quarters of workers have already lost their rights, people are more concerned about holding on to their jobs than fighting for better conditions.

*The names of the interviewed workers have been changed to respect their privacy.

Miners at the Marikana platinum mine in South Africa have begun returning to work after agreeing a pay deal.*

Striking workers went back to work on Thursday at the Lonmin plant, the scene of violent protests in which dozens of miners were shot by police in August.

The return to work came as the final day of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) conference took place in Midland, Johannesburg.

Cosatu is expected to decide whether it will open its own inquiry into the Marikana shooting and the state of the country’s mining industry.

Many striking miners have left the unions that represented them.

Mike Hannah, reporting from Johannesburg, said: “The government has put a policy in place with regard to the mining companies, the government’s position is that some mining companies like Lonmin who own the Marikana mine have not met their full agreement as they have agreed with the government as a whole.

“Now you are going to see pressure from the company ramping up to carry through things like renovating the hospitals where workers stay and better living conditions in and around the mines.”

Tear gas

On Wednesday, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters near a mine run by the world’s biggest platinum producer Anglo American Platinum, as unrest spread after strikers at rival Lonmin won big pay rises.

Within hours of Lonmin agreeing pay rises of up to 22 per cent, workers at nearby mines called for similar pay increases on Wednesday, spelling more trouble after six weeks of industrial action that claimed more than 40 lives and rocked South Africa’s economy.

Police clashed with a crowd of men carrying traditional weapons such as spears and machetes in a township at a nearby Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) mine outside the city of Rustenburg.

Officers fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse an “illegal gathering,” police spokesman Dennis Adriao said. He had no information on any injuries.

Anglo American later issued an ultimatum to their striking workers to end the strike.

“Anglo American Platinum has communicated to its employees the requirement to return to work by the night shift on Thursday 20 September, failing which legal avenues will be pursued,” the firm said in a statement.

The ultimatum by the world’s top platinum producer came after police arrested 22 people in protests after it had urged workers to return to five mines that were shut down over safety fears last week.

The number of dead from the unrest rose to 46 when a woman was struck by a rubber bullet on Wednesday as police dispersed mine protesters, Central Methodist Church Bishop Paul Verryn, who has been counselling striking miners, told the Reuters news agency.

“We want management to meet us as well now,” an organiser for the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) at Impala Platinum, the second biggest platinum producer, told Reuters.

“We want 9,000 rand (1,100 dollars) a month as a basic wage instead of the roughly 5,000 rand we are getting,” said the organiser, who declined to be named fearing recriminations from the firm.

Lonmin deal

A labour activist said workers who had stayed off the job at Amplats, which accounts for 40 per cent of global supplies of the metal used for catalytic converters in cars and jewellery, were inspired by Lonmin and would press on with their demands.

“The mood here is upbeat, very celebratory,” said Mametlwe Sebei, a community representative near Rustenburg. “Victory is in sight. The workers are celebrating Lonmin as a victory.”

President Jacob Zuma expressed relief at the pay deal after criticism from the opposition and media of the government’s handling of the crisis – not least in the aftermath of the police killing of 34 Marikana miners on Aug. 16.

Further fuelling union rivalry, jubilant workers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, 100km northwest of Johannesburg, painted the wage deal as a victory for AMCU over the dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), an ally of the ruling African National Congress.

Lonmin shares rose more than nine per cent in early trade on news of the pay deal, but gave up most of those gains as the reality of the extra costs to a company struggling with a shaky balance sheet and unprofitable mine shafts sunk in.

Platinum prices rose a little on Wednesday after falling 2.6 per cent a day earlier on news of the Lonmin deal.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Shumi attends school and does shifts at a brick factory. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Jul 3 2012 (IPS)

At first glance the smart young women in white overcoats, black rubber boots and protective face masks seem out of place in impoverished Bangladesh’s dirtiest industry – brick making. 

But this factory in Savar, 35 km outside Dhaka, is no ordinary brick kiln. It is a Hybrid Hoffman Kiln (HHK) which uses modified German technology that drastically cuts down the smoke and soot associated with firing blocks of clay into bricks.    

HHKs also use semi-automatic machines that do away with heavy manual labour, allowing women to be employed in brick-making in large numbers.   

Since production started at this demonstration unit last year, many of the women in nearby villages  have switched from being low-paid farm labourers to skilled brick makers. 

Says Salma Begum, 34, from the nearby Bhatiakandi village: “I used to toil nine hours at a stretch daily on a potato farm just to earn about 1,400 Bangladeshi taka (17 dollars) a month. 

“Now, working six hours daily as a supervisor at the loading section of this modern brick factory, I earn 64 dollars as monthly salary.” 

Rehana Begum, 42, a former labourer at a nearby vegetable farm, says her life changed after she took a five-month training stint at the same brick field. 

About six months ago, Rehana and her husband, Motin, signed on as regular workers. “My husband and I together make about 120 dollars a month, enough for my family of six that includes my mother-in-law,” she tells IPS. 

It was in 2010 that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bangladesh introduced new brick making technologies to replace the polluting fixed chimney kilns (FCK) that release large  amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. 

Traditionally, the brick industry in Bangladesh was unregulated, ran  during the six dry months of the year and depended heavily on male bonded labour. 

Md Hisham Uddin Chisty, research officer of Clean Energy Alternatives (CEA), consultants for HHK technology, told IPS: “The new design allows women to participate in production as the heavy work is mechanised.”   

The women are happy to learn new skills. “I joined as an apprentice three months ago after five days of training at the factory. I learnt how to operate some of latest machines and make good quality bricks,” says Shahera Begum, 27. 

Md Murtoja Ali, marketing manager of CEA, told IPS: “Women are preferred in certain sections where heavy work is not involved and where they perform far better than their males because they have more patience. 

“We give opportunities to all the women living in the nearby villages so that they get some experience. About 82 of the women are on short-term contracts which allow them to take time off to attend to family matters and return when they can.” 

“Because I get a one-hour lunch break I can go to my home in nearby Ganakpara village to cook for the family and be back at work on time,” she tells IPS.  

Shumi, 16, a school girl from Ganakpara village, says she works at the production line and attend school between shifts. The youngest worker at the factory, Shumi earns 56 dollars a month and plans to continue with her education.

“My supervisors have been very generous. Because of such worker-friendly atmosphere we enjoy working here,” she says. 

The factory, built at a cost of 841,575 dollars, has modern facilities like changing rooms, clean toilets and rest rooms. 

“All workers are required to take a shower after completing their shifts, and those who work near the hot oven chamber are also required to drink oral rehydration solutions,” says Kabir Hossain, a manager. 

“The idea of short-term employment is to have pool of trained workers available in the surrounding villages at all times,” Hossain explains. 

Also, when the project ends in 2014 and it is handed over to the owner he will not face any shortage of workers, says Khondker Neaz Rahman, project manager of ‘Improving Kiln Efficiency in the Brick Making Industry, to IPS. 

The UNDP-funded pilot project currently has four such factories in operation, two in Savar and one each in Natore and Gazipur districts, all of them designed to transfer the technology and produce skilled manpower. 

“There is tremendous enthusiasm among the workers to learn how to operate the machines and earn money,” says Neaz adding that there is a proposal to open a formal training centre. 

The new factories have provisions to allow women to breastfeed infants and run routine health checks of the workers. Fire drills are carried out every month and attention paid to safety. 

Mosammet Khadiza, 35, from Ganakpara, is appreciative of the discipline. “We are not allowed to gossip during production but we have tea breaks to relax and freshen up.” 

Kabir said, “Any worker feeling sick can always seek permission to take rest or go home. We can always replace him/her with extra hands who are usually prepared to work on short notice.” 

Mizan ur Rahman, president of Bangladesh Brick Manufacturing Owners’ Association, told IPS that the new system of recruitment and the modern equipment are welcome because they greatly improve productivity. 

“We prefer skilled women workers because they tend to be more efficient and far easier to manage than male workers,” Mizan said. 

Monwar Islam, director-general of department of environment, told IPS, “We want to see more women working in this industry. In fact, we are in the process of formulating a policy to encourage women to find jobs in brick making.” 

Things are expected to improve further after the government stops renewing existing licenses on factories that have not adapted to the new technology by September and implements a complete ban on all FCK brick factories a year later.

Persecution of trade unionists remains a problem in El Salvador, in spite of the fact that the country is governed by a left-wing party that advocates labour rights, union leaders say.

When Mauricio Funes won the March 2009 elections as the presidential candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a former guerrilla group-turned-political party, he promised to put an end to the harassment of labour activists that was a constant during the series of dictatorships that governed the country from 1932 to 1979 and during the subsequent right-wing governments.

But many labour leaders criticise the Funes administration for not making enough progress on union rights.

The Jul. 30, 2011 dismissal of Luis Alberto Ortega, general secretary of the Union of Legislative Assembly Workers (SITRAL), which was founded in December 2010, is one of the cases that have drawn the attention of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Ortega, who led an occupation of the San Salvador cathedral from January to April, claims that the FMLN parliamentary group that was his employer dismissed him arbitrarily, in collusion with other political sectors, as a first step towards leaving the newly formed union without leadership.

Ortega’s job tenure remains unclear, because the Funes administration has not yet replied to questions posed by the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association, which is investigating this and other cases of alleged violations of ILO Convention 87 protecting the right of unions to organise.

“People are still fearful of organising or strengthening trade unions,” Róger Gutiérrez, a leader of the Federation of Independent Associations and Unions of El Salvador (FEASIES), which has 10 member organisations, told IPS.

During the 1980-1992 civil war, which left a death toll of 80,000, far-right death squads abducted and murdered political opponents, including many trade union activists.

Gutiérrez said the greatest advances for trade unions during the Funes government have been seen in the state employee sector, arising from a constitutional reform approved in June 2009 which gave them permission to organise unions, overruling the 2007 Supreme Court verdict declaring ILO Convention 87 to be unconstitutional.

“The greatest problems are in the private sector, where unions continue to be repressed,” Gutiérrez said, because they see them as harmful to free enterprise.

In certain business sectors, such as textile factories assembling goods for export under the duty-free “maquila” system, dismissals of trade unionists or the setting up of parallel pro-employer unions are particularly common.

Even union leaders who, as such, have immunity under the Labour Code protecting them from any kind of anti-union discrimination, have been fired.

In July 2011, executives of the Gama apparel factory decided to close down the plant after learning, local press reports said, that the Gama workers’ union (STECG) planned to initiate negotiations for a collective contract, which would have been the first of its kind in the maquila sector.

“Under the right-wing governments, persecution was commonplace and the police were even involved. But now, although it can be said that trade unions can organise, there is still harassment and persecution,” Alexander Gómez, financial secretary of the Trade Union Federation of Public Service Workers of El Salvador (FESTRASPES), told IPS.

The federation brings together 12 trade unions representing some 12,000 public employees in airports, education, health services, utilities and other sectors.

The continued trade union intimidation in this impoverished Central American country can partly be explained by the government being made up of individuals and groups with different sectoral interests that are sometimes at variance with one another, say labour activists.

“The dominant model remains the same, neo-liberalism, to the detriment of workers,” and that is standing in the way of progress in the area of labour rights, complained Gutiérrez of FEASIES.

Moreover, the Labour Ministry is institutionally weak and lacks the resources and personnel to fully enforce labour laws, other trade unionists told IPS. As of February, it had only 212 labour inspectors for the whole country.

Some middle-ranking officials, who were also in the ministry during the government of right-wing president Antonio Saca (2004-2009), indulge in unethical practices, such as taking bribes from companies in exchange for favourable inspection reports that cover up violations of labour rights or union freedoms, the sources said.

“Inspectors are still in collusion with the companies: in our view, nothing has changed there,” said Gutiérrez.

IPS made unsuccessful attempts to arrange an interview with Labour Minister Humberto Centeno, who was an experienced trade union leader during the 1970s and 1980s before devoting himself to FMLN party work after the end of the civil war in 1992.

Meanwhile the Trade Union of Municipal Workers and Employees of El Salvador (SITESMUES) is in negotiations with the authorities over alleged arbitrary mass dismissals, of union leaders as well, after the local and parliamentary elections in March.

Other workers have been dismissed for political reasons, José Neftalí Yáñez, head of the Electrical Industry Union of El Salvador (SIES) branch at the Delsur electricity distribution company, told IPS.

Yáñez claims his dismissal and the break-up of the executive committee of his union branch were the result of internal pressures in the FMLN, and were carried out in reprisal for protests he led some time ago in conjunction with business associations and civil society organisations.

Foreign workers, mostly from Indonesia, now make up just over 10 percent of Malaysia’s workforce of 14 million people, both in the formal and informal sectors, according to the latest government statistics.

A recent series of incidents has highlighted the shocking conditions in which these labourers toil and exposed the lengths to which the Malaysian government will go to keep the press quiet on the plight of immigrants in the country.

Prominent human rights activist and long-time champion of exploited foreign workers, Irene Fernandez, has come under severe attacks from government ministers and employers for an interview she gave a Jakarta newspaper in which she condemned poor governance and alleged that migrant workers felt “unsafe” in Malaysia.

In the Apr. 30 interview Fernandez, president of Tenaganita (Women’s Force) and winner of the Right Livelihood Award in 2005, said that apart from low wages and rampant exploitation, migrant workers were also subjected to unfair labour practices and often stopped and harassed by uniformed personnel, in a country that has no legal framework to protect, regulate or ensure the safety of immigrants.

Immigrants’ housing, wages and welfare were left to market forces, she told the English-language ‘Jakarta Post’, causing a chaotic situation that enabled rampant exploitation of vulnerable workers.

The interview came on the heels of rising anger in Indonesia against the reports of exploitation of its nationals in Malaysia.

The wave of immigration, which began in Malaysia in the 1990s, coincided with a construction and commodities boom that saw vast swathes of the jungle-cloaked country transformed into oil palm plantations.

As countless skyscrapers popped up and rapid urbanisation made the construction sector hungry for cheap labour, Indonesians were lured into the country en masse, quickly growing to be the biggest group of foreign workers, numbering nearly two million last year.

Others – Indians, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Vietnamese and Africans – followed to work on plantations and in the construction, manufacturing and service sectors whose rapid expansion left the top 10 percent of Malaysia’s 28 million people, along with foreign investors, extremely wealthy.

The middle class also expanded but the bottom 60 percent of the country suffered, competing ferociously for the manufacturing sector’s four million jobs.

According to the Malaysian Investment and Development Authority (MIDA), a government agency, from 2011 the government expanded foreign employment to include 11 sub-sectors such as restaurant jobs, cleaning services, cargo handling, launderette services, golf club caddies, barbers and so forth.

As high demand pushed wages down, the ‘3-D’ jobs – dirty, dangerous and demeaning employment that most Malaysians no longer want to do – became almost exclusively associated with Indonesian immigrants.

‘Sedition’

To counter Fernandez’s allegations now circling around Jakarta, the mainstream media here is running daily stories of happily employed Indonesian workers with no complaints about the system.

The interview is seen as a “betrayal of Malaysia” by Fernandez and has sparked vociferous calls for action against her.

She has been accused of everything from unpatriotic behaviour to being a traitor and has been held responsible for spoiling an otherwise “excellent” relationship between the two countries.

Under pressure from the government, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and the police announced this week that Fernandez is being investigated for ‘sedition’, a catch-all law that many civil rights activists have described as “archaic” and used against human rights defenders.

Fernandez, who for the last two decades has been virtually the lone voice in the country decrying the plight of foreign workers, said she is unfazed by the attacks.

“I will not be cowed. I will continue to speak up for voiceless migrants and the oppressed poor people of Malaysia,” she told IPS.

“I have no regrets. I want to highlight the sorry plight of thousands of migrant workers,” she said, adding that she stands by everything she said in the ‘Jakarta Post’ interview.

This is Fernandez’s second run-in with the law.

Back in 1996 she was charged with publishing false news to all the foreign missions in the capital about the deplorable living and working conditions of immigrants in detention centres.

After a marathon trial that lasted 13 years the court acquitted her.

She was given the Right Livelihood Award for her “outstanding and courageous work to stop violence against women and abuses of migrant and poor workers.”

Fernandez has a long history of activism – she organised the first textile workers union, was instrumental in setting up trade unions in the country’s free trade zones and focused on development of women leaders in the labour movement.

Tenaganita aims to secure the rights of foreign workers who, according to a government census in December 2011, number nearly 3 million, documented and undocumented.

The hysterical reaction against Fernandez for speaking the truth is typical of the government, said Arulchelvam Subramaniam, the secretary-general of the Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM).

“The country has a first world infrastructure and a booming economy but remains immature intellectually,” he explained.

“At a signal, everybody jumped on the bandwagon and lashed out at her (Fernandez) including the mainstream media”, in the process forgetting the real issues involved such as the exploitation of workers, low wages and corruption in the legal system.

According to Subramaniam Sathasivam, the Human Resources minister, all labour laws are equally applicable to locals as well as foreign workers.

“We are fair in that,” he told IPS.

But the laws are weak and easily surmounted by employers, while law enforcement and persecution of offenders is weak and ineffective. Some laws look good on paper but are impractical to implement.

While seeking to deflect criticism on its handling of foreign workers, the government is now toying with a Foreign Workers Act, which will regulate immigrants’ working and living conditions.

(END)