Home

Follow Countercurrents on Twitter 

Why Subscribe ?

Popularise CC

Join News Letter

Editor's Picks

Press Releases

Action Alert

Feed Burner

Read CC In Your
Own Language

Bradley Manning

India Burning

Mumbai Terror

Financial Crisis

Iraq

AfPak War

Peak Oil

Globalisation

Localism

Alternative Energy

Climate Change

US Imperialism

US Elections

Palestine

Latin America

Communalism

Gender/Feminism

Dalit

Humanrights

Economy

India-pakistan

Kashmir

Environment

Book Review

Gujarat Pogrom

Kandhamal Violence

WSF

Arts/Culture

India Elections

Archives

Links

Submission Policy

About CC

Disclaimer

Fair Use Notice

Contact Us

Search Our Archive

Subscribe To Our
News Letter



Our Site

Web

Name: E-mail:

 

Printer Friendly Version

Toilers’ Torturous Time: A Glimpse Only

By Farooque Chowdhury

01 January, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Part 1

Labor, symbolized by the Chilean miners, stood as ever unvanquished in the days just left behind. Labor also paid high prices during the period, symbolized by the Bangladesh garments workers, who died in a fire incident. Labor the world over is passing days with declining wage in actual terms, facing persecution for demanding implementation of rights essential for its survival.

Wages, a converted form of the value of labor power, actually decreased in many countries. The Great Financial Crisis has cut the growth of workers’ salaries by one half. Workers’ purchasing power has declined steadily. In actual terms, it is not also good news for capital.

Declining Wage

Global Wage Report 2010/2011-Wage policies in times of crisis, recently released by the International Labour Organisation, said: “the overall short-term impact of the crisis on wages should be looked at within the context of a long-term decline in the share of wages in total income, a growing disconnect between productivity growth and wages, as well as widespread and growing wage inequality.” “The largest part of this increase in inequality is due to top earners ‘flying away’, but another part was due to the ‘collapsing bottom’, where the gap between median and low-paid [defined as less than two-thirds of median wages] workers increased.” Data for the report was gathered from around 115 countries that represent 94% of the estimated 1.4 billion wage earners worldwide.

Global wage growth, the report said, slowed from 2.2% in 2007 to only 0.8% in 2008 and 0.7 percent in 2009. While Germany, Japan, Korea, the UK and other large economies have been experiencing significant decline in actual wage growth it is striking in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In Latin America and the Caribbean, wages are beginning to rise.

Declining real wages is a part of class war that capital is waging against labor for long. Maximizing profit is the motive behind this onslaught by capital.

A pilot survey in China found that annual average wage growth in the private sector was 6.6% in 2009. China’s private sector workers earned lower wages and experienced slower wage growth compared to state sector employees. The state sector workers earned an average annual income of US$4,000 in 2009 while the private sector workers made US$2,800. About 30% of China’s urban workers and more than 60% of migrant workers remained low-income. In the new economic power, income has been declining against its GDP, and the gap between wages and productivity has continued to widen.

“Growth in average monthly real wages in Asia fell from 7.2 percent in 2007 to 7.1 percent in 2008,” the ILO report said. Japan’s real wages fell nearly 2% in both 2008 and 2009 while it fell by 4% in 2008 in Malaysia. In Thailand, it fell by almost 2% in 2009. In the Philippines, workers’ wages suffered one of the biggest cuts in Asia, with a 4% decline in real wages. This indicates a widening of the gap between workers’ productivity and their wages. In the last 15 years, low-wage employment has increased in many countries. These include Australia, China (among non-migrant workers), Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and the Philippines. In Korea, 25% of full-time workers were in low wage employment and in the Philippines it was 15 percent.

Uneven Employment Recovery

Jobs Recovery: A Global Overview of Employment Trends and Working Conditions by Economic Activity, another ILO report, shows that employment was recovering unevenly across sectors in the first half of 2010. It said: while construction and manufacturing lost more than 5 million jobs in the first quarter of 2010 (compared to 2009), the health sector added almost 2.8 million jobs during the same period, compared to 2008. The report tracked 13 job sectors in 51 developed and developing countries.

Capital’s recovery path is uneven. This adds additional pressure on competing capitals, and capital, in turn, tries to transfer this pressure on labor.

Working Women: Hard Hit

Global Employment Trends for Women, ILO’s report in March, said that the financial crisis could be harder on working women than their counterparts as unemployment rates among women in marginalized and vulnerable jobs was increasing. Women’s employment rate is lower, their control over property and resources is weaker, they are concentrated in informal and vulnerable sectors, their earnings are lower and they have less social protection. These put women in a weaker position than men. To cop with the deteriorating situation women are engaging in longer working hours and taking multiple low-income jobs.

Women in Labour Markets: Measuring Progress and Identifying Challenges, an ILO report, found a continuing gender disparity in terms of both opportunities and quality of employment. In general, the circumstances of female employment, i.e., the sectors women work, the types of their work, the relationship between women and job, their wages, bring fewer gains to women than are brought to the typical working male. In almost all regions the rate of increase in female participation has slowed in recent years.

At the Women’s International Democratic Federation’s panel discussion on “The Economic Crisis and Women’s Access to Work” at the UN on March 10, 2010 it was informed that Filipino women are migrant workers in 145 countries, most often as low-paid domestic servants with no rights.

Working women, the weakest of the weak, always are bearing the hardest and heaviest burden: a sharp contradiction “mercifully” created by capital. Declining real wages force them to work longer hours. They sacrifice most in households also.

[Part 2]

Capital does not spare children in its drive for profit. Widespread poverty fuels the machine that exploits child labor. The time that passed witnessed exploitation of child labor that even establishment failed to ignore.

Child Labor: Increased Exploitation

The crisis has increased the exploitation of child labor. Around 215 million child laborers are there in factories, on farms, in households.

The US Labor Department identified 128 goods from 70 countries, from coffee grown in El Salvador to sapphires mined in Madagascar, where child labor, forced labor or both are used. Other countries include Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tonga, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and many others. India employs the highest number of child laborers, followed by China. Smaller countries in sub-Saharan Africa have a much higher proportion of child worker: up to one-third of children under 14 work instead of attending to schools.

Child labor or forced labor produced products include diamonds, gold, coffee, sugar cane, coal, cotton, tobacco, bricks, and many more. In Uzbekistan, officials require children to pick cotton. In Myanmar, forced child labor helps produce everything, from sugar to teak to rubber to rubies. The US was not free from the “contribution” of child labor. Last year children, even 6 year old, were found working on blueberry farms in Michigan. Eight farms were fined.

Child labor is cheaper and easier to subdue that in turn makes profit making easier. Many luxury commodities carry toils of these tender hands.

Agricultural Workers

In Promotion of Rural Employment for Poverty Reduction, report (2008) ILO estimated that more than one billion people were employed in agriculture. Asia had the largest share, about 70% of the total, followed by sub-Saharan Africa with about 20%. In many countries agriculture still employs more women than any other sector.

Agriculture, along with mining and construction, is one of the most dangerous industries. Agriculture workers, Sue Longley wrote in Agricultural Workers Still Struggle for Their Rights, with wages below poverty line fail to ensure food security of their families and often live in very precarious conditions. The hazards they face include: dangerous machinery, livestock, extremes of temperature and inclement weather, dehydration due to lack of access to potable water, and exposure to biological hazards arising from pesticides and other agro-chemicals. The number of fatal accidents is not less in the industry, the single biggest user of child labor: 70% of all child workers. About 130 million girls and boys under 15 work in agriculture. With work for long hours their health, safety and education are at risk.

Dedicating songs of affection to the persons engaged with agriculture turns out an act of deception if a brutal arrangement of dangerous agriculture is kept intact.

Migrant Workers

Tales of migrant workers, in overwhelming ratio, go closer to those of slaves. Amnesty International has focused on migrant rights in Malaysia and Thailand, the two main receiving countries of migrant workers in Southeast Asia. Migrant workers suffer from a wide range of abuses in both countries, from their employers, recruiting agents, and the security forces. In Thailand, more than 2 million registered migrant workers make up about 5-10% of the workforce. In Malaysia, the figure is about 2.2 million or about 20% of the workforce. In both countries, they live in poor conditions and work for long hours. Conditions in detention centers in a Southeast Asian country remain very poor, with reports of extreme overcrowding and lack of regular access to clean water, medical care and sufficient food. (Donna Guest, “Migrant Workers and Human Rights in Southeast Asia”, Oct. 14, 2010)

Migrant workers, broadly, have similar experience in other parts of world, irrespective of political system. Whether it is a modern, capitalist democracy or a medieval clan system, migrant workers’ experiences fundamentally changes to nothing. Over 100 migrant farm workers from Mexico, Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados employed at an Ontario plant had to stage a wildcat strike in November, 2010 to realize thousands of dollars in unpaid wages. Most of them were deported. Their living condition was deplorable.

In an oil-rich country, it was reported, “migrant workers continue to commit suicide at an alarming rate …, as a close examination of [newspapers of that country] for the month of April 2010 shows. During [the] period, there [were] 12 reported cases of suicide and suicide attempt by migrant workers … [D]uring 35 surveyed days in late February-March, a migrant worker committed suicide every two days there. Workers are often driven to suicide by harsh living and working conditions, abuse and non-payment of wages. During the same month, the local police uncovered several cases of rape, torture and human trafficking of migrant domestic workers.” On April 4, a Jordanian man “fell” from the fourth floor of a building. On April 6, a Bangladeshi ended his life by hanging himself off a tree. On the next day an Asian maid jumped to her death from the 3rd floor of a building and an Asian maid attempted suicide by slitting her wrists. On the next day, an Egyptian worker was admitted to the hospital after drinking insecticide in a bid to end his life. On April 12, an Indian shepherd killed himself by hanging outside his sponsor’s tent. On the next day, an Indian worker “fell” from the roof of a building and sustained injuries and an Egyptian worker fell to his death. On the next day, an Asian man hanged himself to death in a labor camp. On April 25, a Nepalese maid committed suicide. On the next day another Nepalese maid hung herself to death and a Sri Lankan man attempted to end his life by drinking a cleaning liquid. On April 10, a local newspaper reported about the kidnapping and rape of an Indonesian maid by policemen. On April 15, a housemaid reported to police for beating by her sponsor after she refused to sleep with him. On April 27, an Asian couple was arrested for forcing six runaway maids into prostitution. The report said: The local press, “like most regional papers, mention suicides by workers in just a few sentences, never bothering to find out the names of the victims, sometimes mentioning the nationality. The reports are hidden in the least-read pages and often hint that the cause of suicide was mental illness of the victim ...” (Migrant rights)

Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights 2010 (ASVUR), the report by International Trade Union Confederation, informed: In Saudi Arabia, 23 Chinese workers were arrested and repatriated after a strike to protest against low salaries. In Kuwait, there were 13 cases of suicide or attempted suicide in November alone.

The situation led one to write the following comment:

The people who really built the city [city of an oil-rich state was named] can be seen in long chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told not to stay in for more than 10 minutes.

When they [migrant workers] arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised.

They end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay back their initial debt. They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities outside [the city], where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage. They have no way to go home. And if they try to strike for better conditions, they are beaten by the police.

I met so many men in this position I stopped counting, just as the embassies were told to stop counting how many workers die in these conditions every year after they figured it topped more than 1,000 among the [nationals of a south Asian country was named] alone. (Johann Hari, “A morally bankrupt dictatorship built by slave labour” The Independent, Nov. 27, 2009)

[Part 3]

Truck Drivers and Hunger Strikers

Lands of dream, present and past, are full of inconsistencies between pronouncements and realities. The following reports fail to hide the fact:

The Big Rig: Poverty, Pollution, and the Misclassification of Truck Drivers at America’s Ports, a report examining working conditions and employment status of 110,000 US port truckers, found: Thousands of the truck drivers are being denied basic civil and human rights due to companies illegally hiring them as “independent contractors” rather than employees.

The above news is mentioned here only as a symbol that highlights the state of labor in the US and tactics capital resorts to. Even white collar employees in the US stood in protest lines.

In October 2009, workers along with homeowners, renters, farmers and retirees joined together in protest in Chicago at the American Bankers’ Association’s annual meeting. Thousands of people joined the protest named “Showdown in Chicago.” The protesters entered the lobby of the hotel where the ABA delegates gathered.

A press report said: In August 2010, around 10 workers in Kirov, a Russia city, went on a hunger strike. Their demand was to cut the price of utilities to the city average, to take over the privately owned dormitory, privatized in the 1990s, by the municipal authorities and installation of an elevator and mains hot water. The average price of a room in the dormitory was 2-3 times higher than average rent in the city. The head of the city administration and the regional governor declined to get involved in the dispute between a private company and residents.

In the US and Russia, incidents of strikes by labor are many. Labor had to resort to strike finding no other alternative. Europe witnessed strikes and demonstrations by labor. In Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France labor’s protests and strikes took at times near-unprecedented appearance. In many poor countries labor stood in the same way. Burden of crisis was put on labor in the name of austerity burden.

Deaths and Killings

Capital resorts to brutal ways as its capacity to absorb contradictions dwindles. Annihilating elements asking for only a breathing space is one of those ways. Trade Unionists, vocal for labor, are part of those elements.

The number of trade unionists murdered in 2009 increased to 101, 10 attempted murders and 35 serious death threats, ASVUR mentioned. Killings of trade unionists increased by 30% compared to the previous year. The deadliest country was Colombia: 22 trade union leaders and five women were killed. The climate of extreme violence took the lives of 89 trade unionists including at least seven women. This again made the Americas the deadliest continent in the world. Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had the high tolls, 48, 16 and 12 labor activists killed respectively. Mexico had similar six deaths, Brazil had four and the Dominican Republic had three.

In last spring, 29 workers died in a mine in West Virginia, operated by Massey Energy. It was the worst US mining disaster in 40 years. Miners’ and other workers’ death the world over is another long chapter in labor’s life, unprecedented by any account.

Deaths faced by labor the world over are actually innumerable. Hunger and poverty take toll from labor. In industrial plants, in mines, in construction sites, on farms, in transport sector death is virtually the closest neighbor of labor. Miners in New Zealand, China, in Africa and Latin America had to face death while they were engaged to produce wealth for the rich.

Part IV

Rights Denied Rights Restricted

About half of the world’s economically active population is not covered by the ILO Convention on the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining, 1949. About 50% of the global workforce has to get engaged in vulnerable work. This affected workers in export processing zones, especially in South Asia and Central America. Expansion of informal sector and “atypical” forms of employment has put labor into a harsh reality.

Workers in informal sector, ASVUR said, are prevented from joining trade unions (TU). Latin American brands of anti-union tactics include Solidarismo (practiced in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama), protection contracts (Mexico) and direct arrangements with non-unionized workers. In export processing zones (EPZ), particularly in Central America, workers have the same experience. EPZs elsewhere are no exception. Subcontracting workers via third companies is a major obstacle to organizing and collective bargaining.

Working for Scrooge: Worst Companies of 2010 for the Right to Associate, the International Labor Rights Forum’s annual report, names multi-national corporations that violated workers’ right in the previous year. The companies include Chiquita, Dole, Del Monte, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. From the Philippines to Colombia to the US, these companies have adopted many tactics to prevent workers from realizing their rights. Companies including Del Monte and Chiquita have engaged subcontractors and other management schemes to weaken unions. Dole has been involved in forming company-friendly organizations in the Philippines to undermine democratic unions and has been accused of using violence against workers in Colombia. R. J. Reynolds has refused to improve the difficult working conditions of the US tobacco workers.

Nice face of capital’s “social” responsibility cannot hide scrooge faces.

The Middle East, ASVUR said, is one of the parts of the world where union rights are least protected. In Iran, workers celebrating May Day were met with reprisals. About 150 arrests were made and police and plain-clothes intelligence officers beat, abused and fired tear gas at the workers. Teachers were frequently harassed, with some being assaulted, beaten and arrested while observing National Teachers Day. In Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Syria and Yemen, TU is monopoly. In Iran, workers may only elect Islamic Labour Councils or guild societies while labor law in the UAE permits workers to organize only in associations. In Saudi Arabia, TUs and striking are banned. The collective bargaining right is not recognized in Bahrain, Jordan and the UAE. The right to strike also remains limited in Oman, Qatar, Syria and Yemen, and is not extended to the public sector in the UAE, Iran, Kuwait and Qatar.

In Europe, the report said, employers used tactics to obstruct TU activities and retaliate against workers. Dismissals were fairly common in a number of countries including Croatia, Switzerland, Poland and Ukraine. In Russia, 60 unionists were dismissed in 2009. Other anti-union strategies frequently used include transfer, demotion and wage cuts, harassment and manipulation of workers. The right to strike is restricted in numerous European countries. In Serbia, if a strike is declared illegal, the participants and the union calling the strike face extensive penalties. In the Czech Republic, Latvia, Portugal and Turkey, laws leave little scope for bargaining on employment conditions. In Georgia and Croatia, courts either do not apply the laws prohibiting anti-union discrimination or legal proceedings are too long or enforcement is ineffective. More than 700 Balkan workers turned victims of trafficking in Azerbaijan.

Denials of TU rights and brutal abuse took place in the Americas in 2009, the report said. Murders, death threats, disappearances and harassment occurred throughout the region. The government of Costa Rica used the political crisis as a pretext to further weaken workers’ and TU rights. The obstacles to the exercise of TU rights in North America remain numerous, albeit less violent. In numerous cases, police and security forces are even party to violations. Many laws are too restrictive or fail adequately to protect TU rights. In Trinidad and Tobago, employers resisted negotiating collective agreements.

Even, Freedom House, informed readers are aware of its position, in its report The Global State of Workers’ Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World said: workers have suffered worse violations than in years past. About one-fourth of all countries assessed in the report had, according to the report’s definition, “repressive” or “very repressive” labor rights. The report released in September, 2010 found that the rights of working people and TUs were under serious duress throughout much of the world. The report said: the US did not receive top marks because its overall political environment was “hostile” to unions and labor protests. In China, thousands of workers die each year in factory and mining accidents. Forced or coerced labor is a matter of government policy in a number of repressive societies including Myanmar.

Many trade unionists remained in prison and were joined by around hundred others in 2009. Many others were arrested in Iran, Honduras, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey and Zimbabwe. The general TU rights’ situation has continued to deteriorate in a number of countries, including Egypt, Russia, South Korea and Turkey, said ASVUR.

It said: “Public authorities and companies have continued to use the [financial] crisis as a pretext to weaken and undermine trade union rights.” Many violations, the report said, go unreported, “as working women and men are deprived of the means to have their voices heard, or fear to speak out due to the consequences to their jobs or even to their physical safety.”

Labor, according to the report, faced massacres, abduction, kidnapping, disappearances, beatings, arrest, detention, dispersed demonstrations, assassination attempts, strike-breaking, violent repression of striking workers, order to leave unions, harassment, police raid in union leader’s home, violations of human and trade union rights, dishonored collective bargaining agreement, denial of TU registration, employers’ refusal to recognize TUs, organizing yellow unions by employers, hiring of thugs, mass dismissal, long prison sentences and false charges. Harsh working condition is labor’s integral part of life. These happened, to different extent and forms, in countries after countries that include Algeria, Benin, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania and many more. Underpaid workers and workers forced to work very long hours turned reality in many countries. In China, while the increasing number of strikes has caused local authorities to adopt a less hostile stance towards unions, striking workers still face harassment and police repression.

European workers, the report said, carrying out TU activities continued to be targeted. “In countries with long traditions of industrial relations, anti-union discrimination and repression took place.” The continent now has thousands of laid off workers. In Russia, a complaint was filed with the ILO “concerning the continuous attacks on TU leaders and anti-union harassment, government interference, the refusal to register and recognize TU and an overall lack of effort in investigating violations of TU rights”. In Belgium, TUs lodged a complaint before the European Committee of Social Rights for “violations of the right to strike.” In Turkey, the number of lawsuits aimed at curtailing union rights increased while Georgia and Ukraine witnessed more than hundred lawsuits filed against TUs and their leaders. In Belarus, TU rights situation deteriorated. In Albania, the government stripped the TUs of their assets. Thus TUs were deprived of the possibility of normal functioning. There was also an alarming trend of targeting union leaders’ family members with dismissals. In the UK, a major blacklisting operation was uncovered.

Public Servants

Millions of workers including public servants in the US, Mexico and Ecuador are deprived of their fundamental rights, said ASVUR. In Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Germany, Turkey, Ukraine, laws prohibit civil servants from engaging in collective action.

The brief description above is not a happy one. Capital is increasingly adopting sophisticated techniques to subjugate labor as the economic crisis crashes down the impoverished and narrows down labor’s space for rights. Labor is increasingly facing animosity and violence. In the long-term, grinding poverty and the environment of animosity will increase inequality and class hostility with prospect of shaking status quo.

Farooque Chowdhury, a Dhaka based free lancer, contributes on socioeconomic issues. One of his edited books is Micro Credit, Myth Manufactured