Labour / Labour Conditions

An international campaign by Canadian labour activists has persuaded the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and a major Canadian employer association to stop demanding a $400 deposit from more than 4,000 temporary Guatemalan farm workers employed mainly in Quebec.

Employment statistics released last week in the United Kingdom have provided an immigration bonanza for the rightwing press. This short paper attempts to disentangle the statistics from the interpretation, and to explore how this story came to take the shape it has. By doing so, it aims to draw a few lessons for policy.

BANGKOK, Aug 25, 2010 (IPS) - "My male employer was a womaniser and he liked to touch me and told me not to tell his wife. I felt so uncomfortable," says Chompoo, who was just 15 years old when she served – and suffered abuse – as a domestic worker here in the Thai capital.

"So I told my mom that I don’t want to work in this house anymore and I quit without salary," says Chompoo, who originates from Tavoy, a south- eastern city in Burma.

Canada’s largest private-sector union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW Canada), has launched – in collaboration with the Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA) – a major campaign to denounce the systematic abuse and violation of the rights of Guatemalan farm workers who come to Canada through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP).

In March 2010, Costa Rica passed new legislation providing greater protection for migrant workers. Much remains to be done, however, to ensure full respect for the exercise of their trade union rights. The ITUC-backed Trade Union Centre for Migrants, linked to the bilateral trade union cooperation agreement with Nicaragua, provides training and legal assistance. Progress is being made with the unionisation of migrant workers, especially in the retail, agricultural and domestic work sectors.