August 25, 2007
Global Workers came to Mexico for over two weeks to launch the programs in Southern Mexico. The first few days were spent in Mexico City strengthening relationships with human rights organizations. For the next two weeks, Global Workers focused on the southernmost state of Chiapas. Using San Cristóbal as a base for the northern region of the state, Global Workers made an effort to meet with as many groups as possible working in Human Rights.
International migration is a relatively new phenomenon for people from Chiapas (Chiapanecos). Traditionally, they have migrated to various parts of Mexico. In the past five years a major domestic migratory stream began to develop from “los altos” of Chiapas (the mountainous region of San Cristóbal) to the “Mayan Riveria,” that is the beach resorts near Cancun. There is a high labor demand due to reconstruction after devastating hurricanes and new construction due to the steady increase of tourism. Guatemalans are also migrating to the beach resorts to work. Unfortunately, there are no organizations there to help the migrant workers suffering from pervasive exploitation. One church organization in Chiapas is taking steps to open an office in Playa del Carmen (south of Cancún) to address the needs of these workers. As always with migrants, it is a challenge for advocates to keep up with the shifting migrant streams and constant needs of the world’s most exploited workers. As an alternative to the Yucatan migration from the Los Altos region, many Chiapanecos, most of who are indigenous, are moving to the USA to search for work.
July 10, 2007
Parallel to the governmental Global Forum on Migration & Development was the Global Community Forum on Migration, Development, and Human Rights organized by prominent NGOs. Especially since NGOs are marginalized in the government process, the need for NGOs, trade unions, migrant associations and church organizations to organize themselves on this issue is urgent. The inclusion of human rights in the conference title was deliberate. One can not discuss migration without human rights.
One concern Global Workers raised (in addition to portable justice) was the alarming increase of temporary labor migration programs without any thorough analysis of the impact on all the players. What is emerging is a two-tiered worker class. Today’s global work force is being divided into “higher skilled” and “lower skilled” (or unskilled) workers. In general, higher skilled are considered to have professional degrees, while lower skilled do not. Many have expressed concern over the categories, rightly indicating that “lower skilled” professions include many highly skilled manual labor jobs such as masonry and carpentry, amongst others. So the question is how to categorize the two sets of workers in a way that dignifies both? There is no easy answer. For simplicity sake, these titles will be used until more appropriate ones emerge.
Terminology is perhaps the least of our concerns, although representative of the more troubling aspect of the worker segregation—disparate treatment in the receiving countries. In general, higher skilled workers are admitted rather easily anywhere in the world and for the most part have access to permanent residency and eventual citizenship. Lower skilled workers are being increasingly relegated to a temporary status with no mechanism to obtain residency or citizenship. This relegates the lower skilled workers to an unfortunate status analogous to slavery—a group of persons who fill the hardest manual labor jobs but have no access to equal rights or citizenship. For the global economies to increasingly promote a segregated labor regime is an alarming shift backwards for a civilized society.
Due to these and many other issues raised at the Global Community Forum, it was apparent that migrant advocates must build a movement independent of the government process. Although the advocates will be present at the next Global Forum on Migration and Development in Manila, Philippines in 2008 it is important to build our own agenda and movement to ensure that the human rights of migrants is front and center on the world stage.
July 9, 2007
Global Workers was one of the 200 NGOs worldwide selected to participate in the Civil Society Day of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (www.gfmd-civil-society.org/index.html) on July 9 in Belgium. The Civil Society Day was created as a means of quasi participation in the government-only Global Forum on Migration and Development (www.gfmd-fmmd.org). During the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development in September 2006 (written about in detail in previous blogs), the governments made it clear that they were willing to discuss labor migration but preferred to do so outside of the United Nations system. The government of Brussels volunteered to host the first Global Forum.
Many advocates saw the departure as an effort to avoid the human rights protections, which are integral to the UN’s approach. In addition, a new regime also meant that NGOs have no right to participate, an important and hard earned right gained at the UN. Complete alienation of NGOs at the Global Forum proved politically unviable, however, and the Civil Society Day was born. Subsequently, twelve Civil Society attendees were selected to represent all 200 of us during the first morning of the government forum.
For Global Workers it was an incredible opportunity to meet with members of civil society (which comprised migrant associations, NGOs, businesses, churches, and international organizations) from all over the globe. Global Workers was pleased that the concept of portable justice that we champion was highlighted in the background paper on Temporary Migration, at the closing plenary, and in the final report. Importantly, the significance of transnational justice for migrant workers is working its way into the global debate.
Unfortunately the day closed on a disappointing note. To the utter amazement of the migrant activists present at the closing plenary, the UN’s Special Representative to the Secretary General on Migration, Peter Sutherland, discouraged civil society from raising the issue of human rights with the states. In his opinion, it was a no-starter issue; that is governments would not engage if NGOs insisted on linking human rights with migration. Furthermore, he noted that having a separate day to organize was the most civil society could expect because we were not wanted at the government table. If migrant activists followed the Special Representative’s advice and played the passive role he suggested, human rights would certainly be divorced form the discourse and migrants would be dehumanized into another commodity to be exported and imported. Shocked by his statements, several advocates subsequently called for his resignation.
June 30, 2007
Canada’s non-agricultural or Temporary Foreign Program (TFP) has similarities to the USA’s H-2B guest worker program. According to Canadian advocates, the TFP has grown exponentially, with 40,000 workers coming to the province of Alberta alone in 2006. Employers are not required to provide housing, transportation, or cover recruitment costs. It is typical for employers to rent housing to the workers, oftentimes charging inflated rents. Under payment of promised contract rates is rampant and enforcement is scare. On a positive note, although difficult, it is possible to switch between employers who have already been approved to hire foreign workers.
Notably different from Canada’s SAP program is that it does not rely on sending country governments to select the workers, but instead engages private labor recruiters to hire the workers. As discussed in regard to the USA programs, unregulated labor recruiters who are free to charge workers as they see fit, can force the worker into such tremendous debt that they are placed in extremely vulnerable positions when laboring abroad.
Global Workers thanks CALL for the invitation to share information and ideas about temporary labor programs and looks forward to continued collaboration to raise the bar on protections for the world’s most vulnerable workers.
June 29, 2007
Invited by the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers (www.call-acams.com/en-guest/), a Global Workers representative traveled to Yellow Knife, Canada to speak on the USA guest worker program. It was a unique opportunity to discuss the USA program with top Canadian labor lawyers and learn about the Canadian system from its leading experts.
The Canadian guest worker program is touted by many institutions world wide as the program to emulate, the “best practice” model. That myth is now unceremoniously debunked. Unfortunately, Global Workers learned that the Canadian program is very similar to the USA program and is almost as equally flawed. From the perspective of employment and labor rights, Global Workers has yet to encounter a temporary labor program (as they are better known globally) that satisfies even the most minimal rights.
Similar to the USA, the Canadian program is divided into agricultural and non-agricultural temporary labor programs. The agriculture program is known as the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAP). The SAP program, with the exception of Guatemala, which sub contracts the recruitment to the IOM as a pilot project (mentioned in previous blog entries), is run as a government to government program. That is the Canadian agricultural employers petition the Canadian government that then requests the foreign governments to select and send the farm workers to Canada. Currently Canada has Memoranda of Understanding with Mexico, Jamaica and various Caribbean countries, which send approximately 20,000 temporary farm workers to Canada each year.
Although the SAP program is better than the USA H2-A program in some important ways (e.g. the portable pensions,) the Canadian advocates cited four main obstacles that ultimately prevent the temporary farm workers from being able to defend their basic rights.
1. Repatriation. Workers are sent home for “non-compliance, refusal to work, or any other sufficient reason.” Fear of deportation is the employers’ omnipresent trump card. 2. Labor Mobility. As in the USA, the farm worker can only work for the employer identified in the visa. If there is a problem, they must leave Canada. 3. No Access to Citizenship. Unlike domestic workers who can apply for citizenship after two years, temporary farm workers never can. 4. Conflict of Interests. For fear of losing out to another more compliant country, the sending countries often discourage their farm workers from complaining about working conditions. Advocates contend that this could violate Canada’s Unfair Labor Practices Act. Due to these issues, workers are vulnerable to exploitation and face multiple obstacles to addressing them while they are still physically present in Canada.
June 7, 2007
Global Workers attended a House of Representative’s Education and Labor Committee Hearing on “Protecting U.S. and Guest Workers: the Recruitment and Employment of Temporary Foreign Labor.” Representative George Miller called the hearing, in part to discuss his bill (H.R. 1763) on labor recruiter accountability. The hearing mostly discussed broad points of immigration reform. Three of the witnesses (including Global Workers’ Advisory Board member , Mary Bauer) highlighted the major flaws with the current H-2 Guest Worker program (no real labor test to determine lack of available US workers; chronic exploitation of the guest workers; legal obstacles to organizing guest workers) while one witnesses argued to stream line the administrative process and expand the program.
Although the time was limited (5 minutes each of witness testimony then questions from the committee members), the lack of portable justice issues was notable. The immigration reform debate is so polarized that it remains on a superficial level (guest workers or not; legalization of unauthorized persons or not). As a result, it lacks an in-depth and serious examination of the current guest worker program and how it affects the foreign workers while laboring in the USA and in their own countries. Global Workers wil contnue to monitoring and write more about the current immigration debate on the hill.
May 15, 2007
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Dr. Jorge Bustamante, is currently finishing up an official fact-finding visit to the United States. As the UN expert on migration, he is meeting with government officials, NGOs, and migrants to evaluate the state of migrant protections in the United States. He has traveled to California, Arizona, Florida, Atlanta, New York and will finish in Washington, D.C. Although most of the visit has been quite smooth, he was inexcusably denied entry to two immigration detention centers.
As part of the three-week USA tour, the Special Rapporteur attended a public hearing in New York City on May 12. Global Workers and the ACLU organized a workers rights panel during the public hearing. Taxi workers, domestic workers, street vendors, and construction workers testified how they were targeted for exploitation due to their status as migrants. Global Workers used the opportunity to raise awareness about the United States government lack of cooperation to reduce the recruiter exploitation in the sending countries for the Guest Worker program (see prior blog entries for more detail). Global Workers is hopeful that this issue, plus those he learned about in New York City, will be highlighted in the Special Rapporteur’s final report.
April 21, 2007
As a result of the positive feedback from the Ministry of Labor training described in the April 10 entry, the Ministry of Foreign Relations (MFR) requested Global Workers to repeat the training on the USA guest worker program for its senior staff. The Ministry plays a complementary and additional role in the protection of Guatemalan migrants. Due to diplomatic protocol, the Ministry of Labor must work through the Ministry of Foreign Relations in order to address any problems with a foreign state (e.g. asking the US consulate to cooperate to reduce problems with the guest worker program). Additionally, the MFR is in charge of ensuring the safety of Guatemalan citizens abroad. Therefore, the MFR is needed to not only address the abuses of the Guatemalan workers in the USA, but the foreign temporary labor programs in Guatemala as well. Needless to say, its plate is full.
As discussed during the training, a regional strategy may be the most effective. The guest worker abuses are the same in at least Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Although Global Workers does not have first hand knowledge, it can make an educated guess that the abuses (i.e. recruiters charging obscene amounts of money to go to the USA as a guest worker) occurs in every country in which the program operates. The Guatemalan government will likely have more success negotiating with the USA State Department about consulate cooperation if multiple countries act together. This week is the Regional Conference on Migration (Global Workers attended the meeting last year in El Salvador see May 5, 2006 entry) where Minister of Foreign Relations from North and Central American come together to discuss migration policies. Hopefully, this year the discussion will move beyond managed migration and into substantive migrant rights. Global Workers will continue to work closely with the Guatemalan government to support its effort to improve the lives of its migrants.
April 17, 2007
Global Workers traveled to the northwest state of Huehuetenango, the biggest migrant-sending state, to strengthen contacts with lawyers willing to collaborate with the program and identify some new ones. The goal is to have two advocates from three Guatemalan states selected for the initial training, which will likely occur in September. With the newly empowered advocate network trained and in place, Global Workers will be able to facilitate a heavy case load of labor cases for Guatemalan migrants.
A likely ally will be the Catholic Church’s Human Mobility Pastoral Service. The network, especially in Huehuetenango, is impressive. They have an educational, empowerment training program for pastoral lay agents. The program, which already includes information on migrant rights, commits the lay agents to conduct workshops in their parishes in order to pass on or multiply the new knowledge. With representatives in 30 of the 32 counties in Huehuetenango, the potential to reach out to migrants about their rights, is astonishing. The church also has a legal department to provide free legal services. Discussions are under way about the church’s formal collaboration with Global Workers in Huehuetenango.
While in Huehuetenango, Global Workers met with the Ministry of Labor’s local office to discuss the guest worker recruiter abuses. Although the local supervisor expressed keen interest in the issue, the lack of resources (the office does not even have a telephone) will likely limit their ability to investigate and halt the illegal recruitment practices.
April 13, 2007
Global Workers recently learned of the brutal murder of a US union organizer in Mexico on April 9. After wining an historic contract with the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) opened an office in Monterrey, Mexico to administer the contract for the Mexican guest workers hired by the NCGA. On Monday, organizer Santiago Rafael Cruz was beaten to death in FLOC’s office. Apparently, FLOC staff had previously received death threats. More details can be found on www.floc.com .
Global Workers is shocked, outraged, and saddened by this event. The US guest worker program is operating lawlessly, fostering an environment where the murder of a person defending the rights of guest workers can occur. The program must be brought under the rule of law, both abroad and at home. The US government must cooperate in a more transparent manner with the foreign governments. Both Mexico and the US must thoroughly investigate and bring to justice Santiago’s murders. Lastly, citizens of Mexico and the US must demand that the guest worker program change so that something like this will never occur again.