Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
Ali
protested. Surely, he could not be sacked on the spot. His company said ‘yes’.
After all, he was not on the company’s payroll. Unbeknown to him, the ‘real’ company
which Ali had been working for all these years was a labour contractor. It was
this labour contractor which is supplying workers like Ali to the company.
<P>This
is the new trend in outsourcing. </P><P>According to Monitoring Sustainability
of Globalisation director Charles Santiago, large corporations have recently caught
on to a novel twist to outsourcing which relieves them of legal and financial
obligations towards ‘irregular’ workers.</P><P>Labour contractors recruit
such workers for the manufacturing, services and plantation sectors, but may not
take responsibility for their employment rights or welfare.</P><P>Since they are
not strictly employees of companies that take them in, they cannot join unions
and are not covered by collective agreements. They are also not eligible for terms
of service available to full-time employees.</P><P>These workers are caught in
a legal no-man’s land in which neither contractor not employer can be held
accountable for violations of labour rights.</P><P>“Outsourcing today has
become very fashionable because companies divorce themselves from industrial relations
problems,” Santiago said.</P><P>“Companies will say they did not hire
the workers, but engaged the contractor who hired them to work – and they expect
workers to deal with the contractor. As such, the rights and the benefits of these
workers don’t exist.”</P><P>He called on trade unions and the government
to address this issue, by dispensing with the practice of outsourcing and ‘regularising’
irregular workers so that they are eligible for employment benefits.</P><P>Santiago,
an economist and a social auditor, said he has seen an increasing number of companies
in Malaysia and Southeast Asia resort to employing ‘irregular’ workers,
who are then open to abuse and exploitation in a number of ways.</P><P>For instance,
workers are dropped whenever there is a downturn in production or profit. In one
factory run by a multinational company, such workers were told to go on ‘leave’
every few months, only to be brought back as ‘new’ hires.</P><P>When there is
an upturn in production or business, such workers typically bear the brunt of
intensified work, on 24-52 hour overtime shifts.</P><P>In one factory, workers
were pushed to work shifts of 48-56 hours non-stop while in another, the workers
were so exhausted at the end of their shift that they could not even carry their
bags.</P><P><B>Abrupt lay-offs</B></P><P>Irregular workers also suffer the most
in the event of accidents, which occur most frequently during intense production
periods. Without documents that confirm employment by the company, hospitals are
reluctant to treat them, said Santiago.</P><P>They can also be sacked at any time.
One factory’s mode of informing workers that they had been laid off was particularly
curt.</P><P>“In the morning if they don’t pick you up, then (it means) you’re
fired,” said Santiago.</P><P>Workers in a factory producing parts for a major
telecommunications company were told while entering the premises one morning that
their services were no longer required.</P><P>Upon protesting that they had worked
there for five to six years, the company official responded, ‘No. You have
never worked for us a single day. You worked for the contractor’.</P><P>Explained
Santiago: “These guys are come every day to the company to work but are not
actually working for the company but for the (labour) contractor. It’s only a
place of work… this is a completely new concept.”</P><P>He said that companies
that do not end such exploitation will eventually be punished by consumers who
are increasingly showing abhorrence of unethical production and sourcing methods.</P><P>“The
pressure to comply with labour standards is increasing. Companies violate these
standards at their own peril,” he added.</P><P><I>Source: http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/61848</I>
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