A Global Alliance Against Forced Labour - International Labour ...

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A DYNAMIC GLOBAL PICTUREderive significant fi nancial advantages from cuttingback on safety and health expenditure.254. A feature of the construction industry inEurope and elsewhere is that forced labour practicescan occur both through informal and clandestine recruitmentsystems and in legally approved contractsfor international labour placement. The collapse ofsocialist economies in central and eastern Europe hassignificantly increased the pool of cheap and flexiblelabour. Migrant workers move from Ukraine toPortugal, from Poland to Germany, or from Romaniato Israel, under both regular and irregular arrangements.In some cases internationally contractedworkers are arguably in a forced labour situation,when they are tied to one employer without the rightto leave, or when unlawful deductions are made fromtheir wages. Trade unions and other advocates havesought rulings on these issues, to ensure that all constructionworkers are covered by labour regulations inthe destination country.255. The textile and garment industry, easily relocated,presents a different picture. In the industrializedcountries it has been severely affected in recenttimes by global competition, and has responded witha fundamental shift in employment patterns. Sincethe mid-1990s Europe, for example, has persistentlylost ground to Asia as a global exporter of textiles.Many enterprises have been relocated, and survivingenterprises have had to apply highly flexible productionmethods in a sector where the key to successfulcompetition is low labour costs and swift adaptationto consumer demand. The sector appears to lend itselfto the “ethnic niches” where migrants can setup clandestine enterprises with their own operatingrules, evading national regulations, and having verytenuous links to the formal economy.256. It is surely a matter of particularly grave concernwhen coercive labour practices against migrantscan pervade major enterprises and even the publicsector. There is considerable evidence that migrantworkers are recruited in their home countries, on theunderstanding that they will have a fixed salary andparticular job in the destination place, only to receiveupon arrival a contract with entirely different conditions.Under such circumstances, health-care and otherworkers may accumulate debts steadily over the recruitmentand transporting process, for video interviews,visas, air fare and other items. On arrival, they may bemade to stay in preselected accommodation at aboveaveragecost. When wages are lower than anticipated,they can find themselves in situations equal to, or atleast approximating, debt bondage in the legal sense ofthe term. Disturbingly, it is sometimes found that thesame private contracting agency acts as high-interestmoney lender, travel agent, or even accommodationagent in the country of destination. It is dubious practicesof this kind, by agencies which may be registeredquite legally but nevertheless operate on the bound ariesof crime and trafficking, which risk contributing tothe further rise of a new form of forced labour in bothindustrialized and developing countries.Recruitment systems in originand destination countries257. Intermediaries play an important role at bothends of the trafficking cycle. Victims of forced labourrely more often on dubious intermediaries to helpthem arrange travel and job placement. Figure 2.2compares the means used by forced labour victimsand successful migrants to find employment abroad.According to the study on returning migrants fromeastern and south-eastern Europe, while both forcedlabour victims and successful migrants obtained jobsabroad through social connections (38 and 42 per cent,respectively), a larger proportion of forced labour victimsfound jobs via intermediaries (35 per cent) thandid successful migrants (10 per cent). Traffickingnetworks for the sex industry operate slightly differentlyfrom the agencies recruiting migrants for labourexploitation. Members of the latter networks tend tobe less sophisticated than the criminal organizationsdominating the sex trade. <strong>Labour</strong> trafficking oftentakes place under a legal cover, for example throughprivate recruitment agencies, contract work or eventhe abuse of seasonal work schemes.258. While recruitment for employment abroadshould be seen as a legitimate business, it may, in theworst cases, in the absence of legal and administrativecontrols, provide a cover for trafficking activities.Where monitoring is weak and business standards arelacking, agencies may opt for quick profits by chargingmigrant workers excessive fees, deceiving them aboutthe real nature of their work, not informing themabout their rights and providing them with forgeddocuments. These agencies can work under severaldisguises the most common being travel, model, entertainmentor matrimonial agencies.259. An example of how some recruitment agenciescan become part of the modus operandi of the traffickingcrime is the gangmaster system in the UnitedKingdom, mentioned above. Gangmasters play an importantrole in providing casual labour in the Britishagriculture and horticulture industry. The term alsorefers to private employment agencies, although thedistinctions are not always entirely clear. It is estimatedthat there are about 600 gangmasters operatingin the United Kingdom. The Environment, Food andRural Affairs Committee of the House of Commonshas noted several incidents in which gangmasters haveseverely abused the rights of their contract workers. 129Problems arise from inflated charges for travel, visasand accommodation; and also from the practice ofcontract substitution, referred to above.129. House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Gangmasters, op. cit.53
A GLOBAL ALLIANCE AGAINST FORCED LABOURFigure 2.2.Ways of finding employment abroad (sample of 644 returned migrants from Albania,Republic of Moldova, Romania and Ukraine)<strong>Forced</strong> labour victimsSuccessful migrants1.46% 7.32% 1.82%10.30%13.94%1.95%35.12%11.22%18.79%0.61%12.73%5.37%37.56%In direct contact with the employer41.82%Travel agencyJob placement agencySocial connectionsFamilyAnother intermediaryOtherSource: SAP-FL.260. The following example illustrates how debtbondage operates through recruitment agents. Agang imported east European workers for illegal factorywork between 2002 and 2003. They were originallypromised work permits, but were given falsepassports en route. They then attempted to escapethe gang’s control, but were subjected to such seriousthreats that they were forced to continue. On arrivalthey were informed of their conditions. They wouldwork seven days a week, to repay the cost of boththeir transport to the United Kingdom and their foodand accommodation while in that country. Once thedebts had been cleared, they would be required towork for at least one year, for either no pay or at besta few pounds of “pocket money” per week. Salarieswere paid into a gang member’s bank account. Theworkers were watched carefully, moved from houseto house, and kept in isolation. Any breach of conditions,including work absences as a result of sickness,was added to their debt or deducted from their pocketmoney. Control was maintained through beatingsand threats of assault on workers and their familiesback home.261. Illegal agents in Ethiopia rely on deceptionwhen recruiting women migrants to the Middle East,making false promises as to what awaits them in destinationcountries. Surveys confirm that these migrantsface abuses similar to those experienced by traffickedworkers across the world, including forced labour exploitation.130 Although the Ethiopian authorities havetried to clamp down on such agents, mainly womenmigrants continue to resort to illegal services. Suchpractices persist despite the Private EmploymentAgency Proclamation No. 104/1998, which makes itobligatory for recruitment agencies to obtain a licenceand offers protection to migrant workers by requiringagencies to register all contracts of employment, givepre-departure orientation and monitor the situationof the worker in the country of employment. 131262. In Indonesia, prospective migrants areobliged to go through one of 400 agencies regulatedby the Government. The agencies require130. See E. Kebede: Ethiopia: An assessment of the international labour migration situation – The case of female labour migrants, GENPROMWorking Paper No. 3, Series on Women and Migration (Geneva, ILO, 2002).131. Available at www.ethiopar.net/Archive/English/1stterm/3rdyear/hopre/bills/1997_98/procl104e.htm .54
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A Global AllianceAgainst Forced Lab
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REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR-GENERALA glo
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ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . .
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Introduction1. Four years ago, the
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