The Situation Facing Migrant Workers
The United Nations defines a migrant worker as "a person
who is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State
of which he or she is not a national." Their number is estimated by the
International Labor Organization at about 164 million worldwide. This
number does not include those seeking asylum as refugees or
undocumented workers who work in anonymity without any official rights
or protection.
Migrant workers face a most untenable situation
regarding their health and safety on the job and for care when injured.
For these workers, the struggle is not only for healthy and safe
working conditions, but also for the basic right to humane, healthy and
safe living conditions and treatment when injured or sick and for
assistance for their
families when killed. They form a global pool of actual and potential
labour that is subjected to the most inhumane treatment. The
imperialist
globalization of the labour market is used first to exploit migrant
workers, sometimes called "guest workers" and deny them basic rights,
and secondly to lower the living and working conditions of all
workers.
 One of the most blatant
examples is the shameful activities of the human traffickers sent out
into countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, as
well as Europe, to recruit or conscript cheap labour. The traffickers
burden migrant workers with recruitment fees and other abuses, which in
Canada are supposed to be illegal but are silently "tolerated." The
migrant workers are not in a position to challenge the fees or any
mistreatment although the onus is on them to take action because the
companies that eventually buy migrants' capacity to work see
enforcement
of any regulations as an attack on their right to exploit the global
labour market without rules or restrictions.
Even when obviously and grossly abused, the burden is on
migrant workers to reveal the situation and for doing such they know
that their situation may and most probably will become even more
untenable. Certain conditions they face such as housing are often
appalling. Migrant workers are cramped into small apartments or worse
and forced to pay unaffordable rents, which are deducted from their
pay. Yet all this occurs with impunity for those organizing the abuse
because of lack of enforcement and the inherent vulnerability and
desperation of migrant workers for employment, which often includes
sending money back home to support their families.
The global monopolies are exploiting this situation to
the hilt, expanding the categories of precarious, irregular and migrant
workers through outsourcing, contract work, and the use of temporary
foreign workers including foreign students. The big companies are now
geared to take advantage of the global labour market and human
trafficking as a
means to increase their expropriation of the value workers produce as
private profit. They even encourage imperialist state and private
militaries to cause as much destruction as possible worldwide and
sabotage of economies through war, blockades and sanctions to guarantee
a constant and growing supply of migrant workers.
An example of destroying existing arrangements that
exerted some control over a national labour market occurred in
Australia. The global oligopoly Alcoa obtained a ruling from the state
Labor Relations Board to cancel a collective agreement covering 1,500
of its workers. This enables Alcoa to outsource workers "under global
market
conditions" without restrictions imposed by a collective agreement to
protect workers' rights either within national boundaries or globally.
Massive private empires and their state representatives are organizing
and sanctioning forms of modern wage slavery encompassing workers
across the entire globe.
The situation is an open wound on the body politic and
society. The social force capable of changing the situation is the
organized working class.
This article was published in
Number 15 - April 25, 2019
Article Link:
The Situation Facing Migrant Workers
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
