Jan 2, 2013
As the new year begins, the ongoing global jobs crisis means workers everywhere are still struggling to find employment—some 200 million people, including 75 million age 25 or younger, are unemployed. Millions more, most of them women, are shut out of the labor force. The World Bank’s recently released “2013 World Development Report on Jobs” offers policymakers a new framework for looking at jobs and outlines why jobs that most benefit development can spur a virtuous cycle.
Notably, the report’s recommendations for successful job creation include well-designed labor policies. “Because [economic] growth alone may not be enough, labor policies need to facilitate job creation and enhance the development payoffs from jobs,” the report states. Yet it finds that many nations do not successfully protect worker rights because labor laws often cover only formal employment, and some labor laws deliberately exclude domestic workers, family workers or workers in small enterprises.
A key chapter, “Valuing Jobs,” points out that “the jobs with the greatest development payoffs are those that make cities function better, connect the economy to global markets, protect the environment, foster trust and civic engagement, or reduce poverty. Critically, these jobs are not only found in the formal sector; depending on the country context, informal jobs can also be transformational.”
Both the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) believe the World Bank report makes a positive step toward acknowledging the role of jobs and livelihoods in the development process. Both worker rights organizations also see flaws in the report, especially in its depiction of freedom of association. The ILO says the report raises “freedom of association as a right focused at workplace level, with very little reference to the important role that workers’ and employers’ organizations can play in national social dialogue around policy choices for job creation and development.”
The ITUC noted that the report promotes the concept of “good jobs,” rather than the well-established ILO objective of “decent work,” in which women and men obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.
The need for world leaders and lawmakers to focus on creating quality jobs is higher than ever.
As the report states, “over the next 15 years an additional 600 million new jobs will be needed to absorb burgeoning working-age populations, mainly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.” Meanwhile, many workers with jobs “do not earn enough to secure a better future for themselves and their children, and at times they are working in unsafe conditions and without the protection of their basic rights.”
Dec 21, 2012
It has been nearly a month since at least 112 Bangladeshi workers died in the horrific fire at Tazreen Fashion Ltd garment factory. A government probe has identified nine mid-level officials “who barred the workers from leaving the factory after the fire broke out,” according to the Bangladesh Daily Star Report. The factory owners kept fabric bales in the building’s basement, rather than in fireproof storage as required by Bangladesh law.
But the Tazreen fire is not an isolated incident. Since the Nov. 24 tragedy, 17 fires have broken out in Bangladesh garment factories, killing one worker and injuring dozens more.
In Bangladesh, where more than 4,500 garment factories employ more than 4 million workers, many of them young women, workers are paid wages as low as 21 cents an hour, producing clothes in crowded conditions. In the past five years, more than 700 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in factory fires.
Bangladesh’s $20 billion-a-year garment industry accounts for 80 percent of the country’s total export earnings. It is a powerful industry where factory owners often ignore labor laws—including regulations regarding health and safety—and the government does little to enforce those laws. A government official told the New York Times, “the Capital Development Authority could have fined Tazreen Fashions Ltd. or even pushed for the demolition of illegally built portions of the building.” But it did nothing, rather than confront one of Bangladesh’s most powerful industries, he said.
Just yesterday, 12 members of the U.S. Congress said Bangladesh appeared to be “going in the opposite direction” despite promises of labor reforms. “We are seriously concerned about the deterioration of working conditions and worker rights in Bangladesh,” they wrote in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.
In Bangladesh and throughout Asia, the relentless drive for cheap production often entails dangerous facilities, below-poverty wages, cramped conditions and an absence of health and safety programs. And it is the workers who pay.
Vulnerable and impoverished workers cannot fight alone for their rights and, without the relative strength of a union to represent them, their lives hang in the balance. Yet when Bangladeshi garment workers seek to join together to make their workplaces safe, they are often harassed, fired, even physically attacked, to discourage other workers from following their example. One trade unionist, Aminul Islam, was found dead in April, after being severely tortured and beaten.
If authorities and buyers are serious about preventing a greater death toll, workers—whose lives are at risk and who know best how dangerous their workplace can be—must be able to assert their rights, organize unions with their co-workers, raise safety concerns and demand better working conditions according to their best judgment.
Dec 18, 2012
With no other option to support her family in her native Sri Lanka, Nalani Samarasinghe, 41, has moved to Qatar three times for jobs ranging from 11 months to three years. At her last job as a domestic worker, she was expected to work between 5 a.m. and 1 a.m. daily with no holidays. In addition, the employer charged her rent and refused to let her return home for more than two years. Samarasinghe, who was interviewed by the Migrant Service Center in Sri Lanka, says she could not leave for a better job because migrant workers’ visas in Qatar are tied to a specific employer.
Samarasinghe is among the nearly 85 million people who migrate for work globally, as unemployment and increasing poverty have prompted many workers in developing countries to seek jobs elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, overseas migrant worker remittances totaled almost as much as the country’s entire annual export income in 2011, according to Sri Lanka’s Bureau of Foreign/Employment. Overseas migrant workers now make up nearly a quarter of Sri Lanka’s economically active population.
Today, International Migrants Day helps highlight how unsafe migration processes and the lack of labor and other legal protections for migrant workers make them easy targets for traffickers, primarily unscrupulous labor recruiters and employers. Like other migrant workers around the world, Sri Lankans who leave their country to support themselves and their families are far more likely than other workers to experience work-related abuse, even death. In 2010, the Sri Lankan government received reports of 313 deaths of migrant workers, including 18 suicides, along with thousands of incidences of harassment and sickness.
Samarasinghe’s experience with labor recruiters is all too common. Each time she signed on for a job overseas, she received a contract agreement before leaving Sri Lanka. But each time when she arrived in Qatar, she says “nothing match[ed] the agreement.”
The Migrant Services Center, a Solidarity Center partner, is assisting migrant workers like Samarasinghe and their families in Sri Lanka while championing structural change through the legislative and governmental processes. The center maintains a registry of unscrupulous brokers and employers and connects with village representatives to help steer migrant workers away from illegal agencies that are not registered with the government. (The Solidarity Center in Sri Lanka and Qatar work with the Migrant Services Center and other workers’ rights organizations to eliminate all forms of worker exploitation and to build support for worker rights.)
The center’s 30 Migrant Worker Associations are central to fulfilling its mission. The associations, spread across eight districts, are geographically located in areas from which the most workers emigrate. The center’s staff recognize that informing migrants about possible problems they may encounter abroad is its biggest educational challenge, says MSC program manager Amali Kalupahana.
Assistance for migrant workers does not end after they leave Sri Lanka. The center monitors families with the aid of village-level association leaders. It provides emergency hotline services for migrant workers and their families in distress and acts as liaison between migrants’ families and Sri Lanka’s Foreign Employment Bureau when an overseas domestic worker is trapped in an exploitative situation. Inhama Ifthikar, who staffs an MSC emergency hotline and frequently travels to rural areas to provide training, says the most common requests she receives involve repatriation stemming from harassment, beatings or lack of basic needs.
The center also works with the Sri Lankan embassies. Together, they address problems like harassment, restrictions on communicating with families and rape cases. Also, “it is common for migrant workers not to get paid,” says Kalupahana. “We help them get their pay.”
Although there are more steps the Migrant Services Center can take to improve its advocacy and support for migrant workers, the center offers a model for how other labor and workers’ rights organizations can begin addressing the needs of one the fastest growing workforces in the global economy.
This report is an excerpt from Catalyst for Change, a forthcoming series prepared by the Solidarity Center with support from the National Endowment for Democracy. The series features the working people, their unions and activists who are advancing worker rights and greater equity in their societies. Their experience and efforts provide real, transferable lessons for others seeking to affect positive change.
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