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Rich nations rebuff treaty protecting migrant
workers
By Thalif Deen
United Nations, July 1 (IPS)— A new United Nations convention, which
came into force on July 1, is aimed at protecting over 175 million migrant
workers worldwide who are mostly deprived of their basic legal and human
rights.
But the impact of the convention, say human rights organizations, is limited
by the fact that only 22 out of the 191 UN member states have ratified
it.
“To date, not one industrialized country has ratified the convention,
despite the important contributions migrant workers make to their economies,”
said Rory Mungoven of Human Rights Watch.
“Some developed countries have been reticent about joining the convention
for fear that it may afford too many rights and entitlements to undocumented
migrants,” he said.
The treaty — titled the International Convention on the Protection
of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families —
was originally adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1990.
But it took nearly 13 years for the convention to receive the 20 ratifications
it needed to become international law. As of today, 22 countries have
ratified the convention and 17 have signed it.
The 22 countries ratifying the treaty include Egypt, Morocco, the Philippines,
Sri Lanka, Mexico, Ghana, Bolivia, Uruguay, Senegal, Uganda and Guatemala
— all countries whose migrant workers are employed either in the
Middle East, Western Europe or North America.
Mungoven said the convention is by no means “soft” on illegal
immigration. ”All it asks is that undocumented migrants be treated
in full compliance with the law, and not subjected to abuse.”
Robert Paiva of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), however,
sees a slightly positive side to it.
“The entry into force of the convention is a first step which in
the immediate term will make a concrete difference in the lives of a limited
number of migrants in a few countries,” he said.
“But just as important is to keep sight of the momentum that has
been building in the past couple of years which has led to this entry
into force occurring at all,” Paiva told IPS.
At least 60 percent of the world’s migrants live or work in Europe
or North America. The rest live in countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, Jordan, Japan, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.
Paiva said that the fact that industrial nations have shied away from
the treaty reflects, among other things, how charged the issue of immigration
and immigrants can be, particularly in tough economic times.
“When nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies are on the rise in
many parts of the world, it is all the more difficult to build the political
will for ratification of a convention seen to favor ‘foreigners’,”
he added.
Another factor, he pointed out, is that many countries “receiving”
migrant workers say their own national legislation provides guarantees
and benefits at least equivalent to those in the convention, and they
thus see no need to ratify the treaty.
Mungoven said that fears of terrorism and economic insecurity have also
prompted a backlash against migrants and other foreigners in many countries.
“Migrant workers are vulnerable at the best of times, but they now
need protection more than ever.”
He warned that many governments, including Australia and Spain, equate
efforts to curb illegal immigration with the international campaign against
terrorism.
In the United States, he said, hundreds of non-citizens of mostly Arab
and South Asian descent have been detained, often arbitrarily, by the
immigration service as part of the government’s investigation into
the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001.
Paiva said his organization believes that all countries have a shared
interest in seeing migration better managed, and a key element in better
management is ensuring the safety and dignity of migrants — whatever
their legal status.
“We welcome the entry into force of the convention both for what
it adds concretely to the corpus of international law protecting the rights
of migrant workers and their families — despite the limited number
of ratifications to date — and for the opportunity it provides to
raise consciousness about how migrants are frequently treated and to combat
that,” he said.
The convention, he added, will provide a new sense of empowerment amongst
many migrant groups, and a feeling that they can affect how they are treated.
“As they lobby, and sensitize their own governments [in countries
of origin], they put the issue of how migrants are treated squarely on
a bilateral and regional political agenda. That cannot fail to have a
positive effect over time,” Paiva added.
But most of the migrant workers, according to human rights groups, are
being deprived of their basic legal and human rights by employers who
either hold them in servitude or force them to work in sweat shops for
paltry wages.
The convention is aimed at protecting migrant workers by giving them fundamental
rights such as the right to form associations and trade unions, the right
of freedom of expression and religion, the right to due process, as well
as equal treatment with nationals in respect of economic and social rights.
According to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), one person out of 35 is a migrant.
The number of people who are living and working in a country other than
their own is estimated at about 175 million people, which represents about
three percent of the world’s population.
The total value of migrant earnings flowing through official channels
doubled between 1988 and 1999, rising from $49 billion to $105 billion.
The estimated figure for last year was $150 billion, which was much larger
than the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of Finland ($121 billion),
Egypt ($98 billion), Singapore ($92 billion) and Chile ($70 billion).
The amount flowing to developing countries (about $65 billion on average)
now exceeds both official development assistance (about $50 billion) and
private debt and equity flows to developing nations.
Some of the major beneficiaries of migrant remittances include India ($10
billion annually), Mexico ($10 billion), the Philippines ($6.4 billion),
Morocco ($3.3 billion), Egypt ($2.9 billion) and Turkey ($2.8 billion),
according to World Bank figures.
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Tens of thousands of workers protest Bush
overtime proposal
July 1— In the past two weeks alone, more than 62,000
workers have sent letters telling the US Department of Labor not to abolish
their rights to overtime pay — the most mail the agency has received
on any similar issue in a decade. Those letters are among the more than
290,000 letters sent since late March to the Labor Department, members
of Congress and President George W. Bush protesting attacks on the 40-hour
workweek. Bush administration proposals to the Fair Labor Standards Act
(FLSA) could strip more than eight million employees of their right to
overtime after 40 hours of work a week, according to a new Economic Policy
Institute (EPI) study, affecting far more workers than the 644,000 workers
the Labor Department estimates will lose overtime.
The Labor Department’s proposed changes — which could take effect
as early as this fall — were announced in March, but the department
held no public hearings in advance of the June 30 comment deadline.
Marking the June 30 deadline, activists and workers rallied at the Labor
Department in Washington, DC, to protest the attack on the 40-hour workweek.
The workers took to the streets after the Department of Labor advised
the rally sponsors that a previously reserved Labor Department auditorium
was unavailable.
Among those at the rally: Bob Adams, a bakery worker at Rainbow Foods
in Roseville, MN, and a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local
789. Adams currently earns between $3,500 and $4,000 annually for approximately
300 hours of overtime. Under the proposed changes, Adams — who spends
the majority of his work time on the production line — could be reclassified
by his employer as exempt from overtime pay because a quarter of his time
goes to administrative duties.
Like Adams, anyone making more than $22,100 a year could be denied overtime
under the proposed changes if they are classified as professional, administrative
or executive employees exempt from federal overtime rules. Emergency medical
technicians, cooks, social workers and police officers are among the eight
million workers who could be reclassified and lose overtime pay.
While a union contract protects Adams’ overtime pay today, he said,
“We expect that at the next negotiation, the employer will say it
can’t compete if it has to pay us overtime.”
At the same time, says Adams, his employer could make full-time employees
work longer hours without pay — and might be tempted to abolish the
part-time jobs held by workers who desperately need the approximately
15 hours of weekly work they now receive.
Source: AFL-CIO
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UN workers condemn sudden suspension of
staff union
By Haider Rizvi
United Nations, July 3 (IPS)— The United Nations, which champions
the cause of labor rights around the world, has shut down its own staff
union, causing deep feelings of anger and resentment among hundreds of
employees.
Senior UN officials sent a letter to the Staff Union on June 27 telling
union leaders that their mandate had come to an end and that as of June
30, UN employees at headquarters would no longer have a right to their
representation until further notice.
Deploring the decision by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
union leaders said that management had failed to come up with any compelling
and solid reason to justify “this drastic action.”
“This is total nonsense,” Guy Candusso, vice president of the
union, told a gathering of UN employees who wanted to know who would represent
their interests in the absence of the union. “It never happened before
in the history of the union.”
The UN Staff Council represents about 5,000 employees, more than half
of whom work on a short-term contract basis.
The union’s leaders said they were seriously engaged in the process
of holding new elections, but the administration foiled their attempts
by initiating a controversy over procedural matters. The administration
took advantage of a “technicality” to dissolve their offices,
they said, charging that recently the administration tried to block communications
to the union’s members.
“The interference with the Staff Union election process indicate
that the UN is intent on denying its staff of their basic human rights
to due process,” said Rosemary Waters, president of the union. “This
is not an isolated event; it comes after the administration’s interference
with the duly elected representatives at other duty stations.”
UN officials defended the secretary-general’s decision, saying that
the union’s leaders had failed to fulfill their obligation to hold
new elections on time and therefore they had no reason to continue to
remain in office.
“It is more correct to say that the union represents views of 100
or less staffers who should be looking for jobs elsewhere, if they can
find anyone to employ them,” a senior UN official told IPS. “Some
of them whom I know are on cushy UN salaries spending their days in the
lobby.”
But many workers believe that the union was shut down because it was relatively
more assertive and aggressive in its efforts to address pressing issues
such as workplace discrimination, inequalities in the income tax reimbursement
system and lack of appropriate child care facilities.
“They are modeling their policies on modern corporate culture,”
Waters told IPS. “We are working on hard issues. That’s why
they came after us.”
Like millions of workers in the United States, most UN employees who work
on a short-term contract basis have no health insurance at all. Union
leaders say they raised the issue of health care with the administration,
but did not receive a positive response.
“I don’t know why the ILO [International Labor Organization]
rules do not apply to UN workers,” said a UN tour guide who tells
visitors every day about the achievements made by the United Nations in
the areas of human rights, labor rights and the rights of women. Yet if
she falls sick, she says she has no where to go to for medical help.
“Now the union is gone. Is that how they respect labor rights?”
she asked.
Aside from concerns over health insurance, union leaders say many low-ranking
employees at the UN work in a constant state of fear and anxiety.
“They don’t tell you how many people they are using as slave
labor,” said Candusso. “If you are working here on G4 [US visa
for UN work] and your boss doesn’t like you, what are you going to
do?”
He believes that those UN employees who come from poor countries will
feel more vulnerable when they realize that there is no longer any institution
to protect their work rights.
“People are already afraid to speak out because of their contract
situation,” he said.
Convinced that the decision to dissolve the union contravenes the staff
rules and regulations, the union’s leaders have now taken their case
to the administrative tribunal. However, it is not clear when the new
elections will be held and for how long the UN workers will be without
a union.
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