The vanished: the Filipino domestic workers who disappear behind closed doors

According to the United Nation’s International Labour Organisation, domestic workers are some of the most likely to face abuse and exploitation in their place of work. A number of cases in the past few weeks have made international headlines: an Indian domestic worker who had her arm chopped off, allegedly by her employer when she asked for her wages; a Saudi diplomat who reportedly tortured and raped his Nepalese domestic workers; another Saudi man videoed apparently molesting his foreign maid as she worked in the family kitchen. But these are just the stories we hear about; there are many more cases, documented by human rights groups, in which women have been gang-raped, burned with oil, starved, mutilated with acid or literally worked to death.

In the Gulf, the International Trade Union Confederation says that 2.4 million domestic workers are facing conditions of slavery. Yet moving abroad to find work as a domestic worker is a calculated risk that millions of women such as Marilyn take every year. For a largely invisible workforce, domestic workers wield serious economic clout. Collectively, they account for 4% of total global employment and nearly 8% of total female employment. There are 1.5 million domestic workers in Saudi Arabia alone, and recruitment agencies fly in 40,000 women a month to keep up with demand. Muslim women from the Philippines are considered the highest calibre of workers in many richer households.

More at The Guardian

Thailand indicts rights worker over labour abuse report

A Bangkok court has indicted a British human rights worker for criminal defamation after he exposed alleged labour abuses in Thailand’s tinned fruit industry. Andy Hall, 35, could face up to seven years in prison if found guilty of criminal defamation by publication and offences under the country’s Computer Crimes Act.

The case is one of four criminal and civil cases brought by the Natural Fruit Company following Hall’s research into the firm. The civil cases carry fines of up to $12.5m. Hall’s interviews with migrant workers from neighbouring Myanmar found evidence of labour trafficking, child labour, violence against workers, and other abuses at its plant in the central province of Prachuap Khiri Khan.
The research was carried out on behalf of the Finnish NGO Finnwatch. Its executive director Sonja Vartiala said the charges against Hall were unfounded and called on Thailand to abolish its criminal defamation laws, "as they infringe on freedom of expression". "At this point, the prospects for Andy Hall to receive a fair trial are looking grim," she added.

The Bangkok South Criminal Court ordered Hall to enter a plea on October 19, when he faces detention but can request bail.
Hall is backed by international human rights groups, trade unions, and the Thai seafood industry, which has itself come under fire for alleged human rights abuses. "They are all against it. These people [Natural Fruit] are just stubborn," Hall told Al Jazeera. "I respect the decision of the court, but I will fight the case and hopefully win it."

More at Al Jazeera English

Stand with Anti-Slavery Activist Andy Hall

Andy Hall is a British campaigner with a special focus on the rights of migrant workers. Two years ago he undertook an investigation on behalf of Finnwatch into potential labour abuses at Natural Fruit, part of NatGroup, a Thai company that processes pineapples and supplies retailers around the world.

Instead of addressing the allegations published in Finnwatch's report, Natural Fruit decided to try and silence Andy with lawsuits. He could now face 7 years in prison and $10 million in legal damages for his investigations.
If this case proceeds and Natural Fruit are successful this would not only be a grave miscarriage of justice for Andy Hall. This process could set a dangerous precedent for other companies in Thailand that might take a similar approach when allegations are raised of modern slavery in their supply chains. This threatens the work of anti-slavery campaigners but also workers in Thailand who might be too afraid to come forward and report abuse.

Petition: Stand with Anti-Slavery Activist Andy Hall

Ludlow Massacre

Song by Woody Guthrie. Refers to the violent deaths of 20 people, 11 of them children, during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914

The Fashion Victims of Cambodia

Primark clothing label "Forced to work exhausting hours"

Primark is keen to investigate how a label bearing the hand-stitched words: "Forced to work exhausting hours" was found inside one of its dresses. Swansea shopper Rebecca Gallagher bought a floral dress at the budget retailer and was alarmed by what she found.

"I was amazed when I checked for the washing instructions and spotted this label," Gallagher told the South Wales Evening Post. "To be honest I've never really thought much about how the clothes are made. But this really made me think about how we get our cheap fashion. I dread to think that my summer top may be made by some exhausted person toiling away for hours in some sweatshop abroad."

The shopper, who says she called Primark but didn't receive a response after being placed on hold, sees the wording as a "cry for help - to let us people in Britain know what is going on", although the label's origin will be difficult to verify. While it could have been added once the garment arrived in Britain, the label may also have been sewn in by a factory employee - a mystery that Primark is attempting to unravel.

Vogue.com UK

Tomato workers in Morocco

Qatar World Cup: 400 Nepalese die on nation's building sites since bid won

More than 400 Nepalese migrant workers have died on Qatar's building sites as the Gulf state prepares to host the World Cup in 2022, a report will reveal this week.

The grim statistic comes from the Pravasi Nepali Co-ordination Committee, a respected human rights organisation which compiles lists of the dead using official sources in Doha. It will pile new pressure on the Qatari authorities – and on football's world governing body, Fifa – to curb a mounting death toll that some are warning could hit 4,000 by the time the 2022 finals take place.

It also raises the question of how many migrant workers in total have died on construction sites since Qatar won the bid in 2010. Nepalese workers comprise 20% of Qatar's migrant workforce, and many others are drafted in from countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

A focus on the Nepalese deaths has seen Fifa and Qatar battling a PR crisis that threatens to cast a long shadow over the event. Last week, appearing before EU officials, Theo Zwanziger, a senior Fifa executive who has publicly criticised the decision to award the tournament to Qatar, pledged that his organisation would be carrying out "on-the-spot visits" to ensure that workers' rights were being respected.

More on The Observer

Noam Chomsky: America Hates Its Poor

An article that recently came out in Rolling Stone, titled “Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail,” by Matt Taibbi, asserts that the government is afraid to prosecute powerful bankers, such as those running HSBC. Taibbi says that there’s “an arrestable class and an unarrestable class.”  What is your view on the current state of class war in the U.S.?

Well, there’s always a class war going on. The United States, to an unusual extent, is a business-run society, more so than others. The business classes are very class-conscious—they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.

We don’t use the term “working class” here because it’s a taboo term. You’re supposed to say “middle class,” because it helps diminish the understanding that there’s a class war going on.

It’s true that there was a one-sided class war, and that’s because the other side hadn’t chosen to participate, so the union leadership had for years pursued a policy of making a compact with the corporations, in which their workers, say the autoworkers—would get certain benefits like fairly decent wages, health benefits and so on. But it wouldn’t engage the general class structure. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why Canada has a national health program and the United States doesn’t. The same unions on the other side of the border were calling for health care for everybody. Here they were calling for health care for themselves and they got it. Of course, it’s a compact with corporations that the corporations can break anytime they want, and by the 1970s they were planning to break it and we’ve seen what has happened since.

This is an excerpt from the just released second edition of Noam Chomsky’s  “Occupy: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity,” edited by Greg Ruggiero and published by  Zuccotti Park Press.

More on Alternet

US fast-food workers in vanguard of growing protests at 'starvation' wages

McDonald's in New York's Times Square, in midsummer. The fast food store heaves with native New Yorkers and tourists, including a table of Filipino nuns and a troupe of burlesque actors. The staff, remarkably unstressed, offer only accommodating smiles. But behind the scenes the atmosphere is anything but relaxed.

McDonald's, along with dozens of profitable Wall Street-listed fast food and retail chains, is being rocked by unprecedented workforce- and consumer-led protests over wages and conditions.

Since last year, when Walmart faced the first co-ordinated strikes in its history over pay and conditions, similar protests have been spreading through America's low-wage workforce. Earlier this month thousands of fast food workers in cities including New York, Chicago and Detroit took to the streets, many wearing red "Fight for 15" T-shirts – a reference to the popular call for a $15 (£9.70) hourly wage, almost double the current minimum. With more protests planned for the autumn, America's most marginalised, vulnerable and exploited workforce is on the march.

"We're frustrated and we're angry," says Alex Mack, 33, a worker at Wendy's in Chicago. "I make $8.25 an hour and it's impossible to live on. I'm a father, a husband. I'm always robbing Peter to pay Paul, shorting one bill to pay another." But Mack is optimistic that the strike action will be successful. "If we stick together, it's not impossible," he says.

Full article on The Observer

Except Farmworkers

A day in the life of farmworkers in Poughkeepsie, NY, USA. - Except Farmworkers Website

The War on Wages and The Road to Bangladesh

Bill Black: In the name of competitiveness, the criminal conditions that led to the deaths and injuries of thousands of workers in Bangladesh, are being created around the world in a race to lower wages and working conditions

The Real News Network

Hundreds of Fast Food Workers Strike for Living Wage

Visit Democracy Now

India's clothing workers: 'They slap us and call us dogs and donkeys'

Workers making clothes that end up in the stores of the biggest names on the British high street have testified to a shocking regime of abuse, threats and poverty pay. Many workers in Indian factories earn so little that an entire month's wages would not buy a single item they produce.

Physical and verbal abuse is rife, while female workers who fail to meet impossible targets say they are berated, called "dogs and donkeys", and told to "go and die". Many workers who toil long hours in an attempt to support their families on poverty wages claim they are cheated out of their dues by their employers.

The allegations, which will be of concern to household names including Gap, H&M, Next and Walmart, were made at a human rights tribunal in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. The "national people's tribunal for living wages and decent working conditions for garment workers" was convened to investigate widespread human rights abuses in the garment industry.

The Observer

Reforming China's controversial labor camps

China is a country where the rule of law is selective and often unjust. One source of injustice is the 50-year-old system known as "laodong jiaoyang," or re-education through labor. Under this system, tens of thousands of offenders are imprisoned in China without trial.

A United Nations Human Rights Council report estimates that some 190,000 Chinese were locked up in 320 re-education -- or "laojiao" -- centers in 2009. That is in addition to an estimated 1.6 million Chinese convicted in regular courts and held in the formal prison system.

The "re-education through labor" system dates back to the 1950s when the newly established communist regime swept up "counter-revolutionaries" and "class enemies" to maintain order. Today it empowers police to jail accused offenders -- from petty thieves and prostitutes to drug abusers -- for up to four years without a judicial hearing.

Though the practice is supposedly meant for only minor offenders, critics of the system say it is often used as a tool to persecute government critics, including intellectuals, human rights activists and followers of banned spiritual groups like the Falun Gong, and is a major source of human rights violations.

CNN.com

Foxconn halts production at plant after mass brawl

Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology, a major supplier for Apple, has halted production at a plant in northern China after a fight broke out among workers.

Foxconn confirmed that a "personal dispute" escalated into an incident involving about 2,000 workers, injuring 40 of them. Police later dealt with the situation near the facility in Taiyuan, which employs about 79,000 workers.

Foxconn has previously been accused of having poor conditions for its workers.

BBC News - More on The Inquisitr

Thousands of UK Workers 'Blacklisted' Over Political Views

Corporations in the UK who used a secret "blacklisting" database to screen out ‘left wing trouble-makers’ and union sympathizers as potential job recruits are facing renewed scrutiny after the UK-activist group Liberty called for a fresh investigation Monday night.

A demonstration outside the Olympic site on March 1, 2011 was called in solidarity with the whistleblower who was fired for standing up for an illegally blacklisted workmate. The blacklist scandal first broke in 2008, when the UK media revealed that more than 40 leading employers had subscribed to the vetting service provided by The Consulting Association, which had surveillance files on more than 3,200 workers, including political activists, shop stewards and health and safety representatives.

Police seized the database three years ago and Ian Kerr, the founder of The Consulting Association, was fined only about $7,500. Invoices were discovered showing that 44 companies had paid to access the names on the list.

Common Dreams - Blacklist Blog

iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think

Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy”. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

More on AlterNet

State of emergency after Kazakhstan clashes

The Kazakh president has declared a state of emergency and curfew in western oil city of Zhanaozen. Violence erupted on Friday as hundreds of angry oil workers went on the rampage and clashed with police in Zhanaozen, a town in the Mangistau region of west Kazakhstan, where a ceremony was being held to mark the 20th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s independence.

The presidential decree bans strikes and public protests, restricts freedom of movement around Zhanaozen and limits access to and from the city for 20 days. Reuters reported.

An independent source in Astana put the death count as high as 70, with more than 500 wounded, when police fired on protesters. The violence is a setback for Nursultan Nazarbayev, the authoritarian president of Kazakhstan, who hosted lavish independence day celebrations in Astana this week to burnish his country’s image as a global oil power and safe destination for foreign investment. Analysts said the unrest was likely to bring a security crackdown in Kazakhstan which is preparing to hold a parliamentary election next month.

FT.com

Fury at BBC for offering jobs as prizes to unemployed in 'cruel' gameshow

BBC bosses were condemned today for a gameshow-style reality series which offers jobs as prizes to the unemployed. The programme, Up For Hire, plans to quiz out-of-work youngsters before telling them if they have got a job live on air.

BBC3 is scheduled to give the series - branded 'inappropriate and cruel' - a prime time evening spot. The series, which was commissioned earlier this year, will film school, college and university leavers on four-week work placements at top British companies. The youngsters will start with menial tasks like making tea before graduating to executive decisions. Bosses will then question them ahead of making their 'You've hired' decision.

More on Mail Online