Intercultural Understanding and Human Rights Education ... - APCEIU

▶ Ms. Pranom Somwong
|Summary of Presentation |
- Ms. Pranom Somwong
Migrant workers come face to face with
the reality of globalization on a day to
day basis. They work side by side with
migrants from other areas, work under
foremen or women from the local
population, have foreign employers, sew
labels into garments in languages they
don t understand, pack into crates to
send off to countries they have only read
about in books. But when they want to
improve the conditions that they work in,
they find they have to deal with all these
various multi-national levels of their work.
Who they have to bargain with is
unclear.
To deal with the multi-national
corporations, multi-workers are needed.
Decent work is decent work is decent
workwhoever is doing it. But it will
never be achieved without all workers
joining together to achieve that standard.
All corporations, but particularly MNCs,
aim to divide the workers, by subcontracting
the work, by making work
temporary and unstable, by pitting
permanent workers against temporary
workers, local against migrant. But no
work can be called decent when there
are sectors within the work that do not get
decent work. And no work can be called
decent, while sectors within the work are
living in indecent housing, having to eat
indecent food, getting indecent health
care.
We need pro-active strategies in
places. We don’t need to wait for people
to be arrested, abused, disappeared, and
ridiculed. Pro-active stralegies include:
building collective capacity and action
among migrant worker; provide enabling
environment to empower migrant worker
to defending their rights; and the right to
organize and unionize. (please refer to
page 218 for full text)
International Symposium on a Culture of Peace 45