15 September, 2010
ICEM’s Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) newsletter is a quarterly effort by Ashling Seely intended to bring the latest news, developments, and trade union initiatives against the growing use of temporary and casual work. The global, Nordic-sponsored project of the ICEM is headed by Seely, who is the Global Coordinator of the CAL Project, which is now in its seventh year.
Country Report Thailand: Exemplary Actions by ICEM Unions on CAL
To highlight how the issue of Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) is being used by companies around the world, and to demonstrate the innovative way trade unions are dealing with these issues, the ICEM CAL Project is producing a series of country reports. The first of these reports focuses on the situation in Thailand.
The use of CAL is widespread in Thailand and became even more so during the economic crisis, which hit Thailand’s export markets hard. In 2008, the Thai labour code was amended to include improved rights for agency workers, with companies being required to pay equal wages to agency workers doing the same jobs as permanent workers.
This promising piece of legislation, however, has been severely undermined by the fact that many companies simply switched to employing workers directly on short-term contracts and paying them only the legal minimum wage.
Thai unions are responding to the proliferation of CAL in various ways. Many are working to ensure that CAL workers can join the same union as permanent, directly-employed workers. TIGLU, the union representing workers at Thai Industrial Gases (TIG), Thailand’s largest provider of industrial gases and a subsidiary of German-based Linde Group, launched a campaign to secure their right to recruit CAL workers.
CAL Thai Project Manual
In early 2008, with support from the ICEM CAL Project and from ICEM affiliated unions in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, TIGLU signed a milestone agreement with the company solidifying the union’s right to organise contract and agency workers. The ICEM is working to ensure that freedom of association is respected for all workers at TIG/Linde.
Although it is often extremely challenging to recruit CAL members, a number of Thai unions have been successful in their attempts to do so. A branch union affiliated to the ICEM affiliate, the Paper and Printing Workers Federation (PPFT), successfully recruited 80 of 120 contract workers employed by Cellox, a tissue paper company in Thailand. The ICEM Asia CAL Project is working with the union and PPFT to organise union education for the new members.
Many Thai unions have made CAL a priority in their collective bargaining and organising efforts. Since 2006, the Local Union of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, called EGAT-LU, has been bargaining collectively to improve the working conditions of CAL workers at EGAT, the public-sector electric power company that employs 7,000 agency workers.
In April 2007, the ICEM-affiliated union amended its statutes to make it possible for contract workers to join. Since then, the union has negotiated a new company policy with EGAT, which not only aims to improve working conditions for CAL workers but also ensures that all workers receive the entitlements outlined in Thai labour legislation. In 2009, the union launched an organising drive and succeeded in recruiting 650 of EGAT’s 760 contract workers. The ICEM is working with EGAT-LU and the Danish Union of Electricians (Dansk El-Forbund) to organise union education for the newly recruited members.
Equal Rights for Temp Workers Becomes ‘Hot-Button’ in Germany
While European trade unions on 29 September will manifest against government austerity programmes, German trade unions will use that day – and, and in fact, all of September and throughout the autumn – to oppose not only public-sector cuts but equally to vehemently condemn the ugly social dumping caused by the boom in temporary work.
This stems from the DGB Congress last May, where the Congress made it a priority to campaign for equal pay, equal rights, and fixed probation periods before the exploited workers of the temporary sector are made permanent employees. Since that Congress, German unions have ramped up the political heat so much that the Christian-Democratic (CDU) Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen, has introduced a partial remedy in legislation that does address the downward spiral of wages brought on by more and more workers forced into temporary employment.
But the legislation does not go far enough.
Many of the major trade union affiliates of DGB, including IGBCE, IG Metall, and Ver.di, will emphasise this point in upcoming manifestations. The unions are also taking the issue into workplaces, both inside collective bargaining processes and at plant-gates in the form of protests. This month, IG Metall has introduced the “equal pay for equal work” principle in sector-wide negotiations in three German states.
DGB's Micheal Sommer
DGB President Michael Sommer said in the 6 September edition of newspaper Handelsblatt that German union members will abide by national laws prohibiting strikes over political issues, but “workplace meetings and actions at plant gates” to highlight temporary work as an abhorrent austerity measure in countering the financial crisis will occur. Sommer said this issue will also be heard loud and clear inside German work partnership structures as well.
Von der Leyen’s proposed legislation is called the “Schlecker” bill in reference to the large drug store chain that tried to sack all full-time workers and then re-hire them as contract employees at half their previous salaries. It would require “equal pay for equal work” to prevent wage dumping such as at Schlecker, with a fine of €25,000 to offending businesses.
But the legislation would fail to reverse the up-surge in temporary work because employers could still use short-term workers so long as they made equal payment for equal work. “Schlecker” also does not establish a time limit on when a temp worker must be made permanent, and it also does not include a set minimum wage for temporary workers, something that is a priority on the agenda of DGB and German unions.
On average, temporary sector workers in Germany earn 30% less that full-time, permanent staff, DGB-affiliated unions have found.
Dutch Unions Get Wage Increase with Employers’ Federation for Agency Workers
Last Spring, trade unions of the Netherlands and the Dutch Association of Temporary Work Agencies, Algemene Bond Uitzendondernemingen (ABU), agreed to an across-the-board 1% wage increase for all temporary workers in the country.
An increase of 0.5% took effect on 5 July and a further 0.5% increase will be awarded on 3 January 2011. The 1% wage increase granted to the employees was based on the average of increases taken from a selection of 30 collective agreements in other sectors.
Marcel Nuyten, Director Temp Workers, FNV Bondgenoten
The agreement was reached between the ABU, the ICEM-affiliated FNV Bondgenoten and CNV Dienstenbond, the executives’ union, and LBV, an independent union. An agreement was also reached whereby wages may be increased every year on 1 July, amending the Collective Employment Agreement for Temporary Employees 2009 – 2014.
The Collective Employment Agreement, which can be found here, stipulates conditions which must apply to temporary agency workers, including the relationships between the worker, agency, and user enterprise; training entitlement; and the conditions under which temporary employment contracts may be terminated.
Labour Broker Law in South Africa Stalls, For Now
Draft legislation in South Africa on whether to ban labour brokers or to increase regulation on enterprises that supply workers to businesses is stalled in the government, with the likelihood that revisions to the Labour Relations Act (LRA) on this key national issue will not be heard in Parliament by year end.
Four draft bills were submitted to the Cabinet in May, but have been returned to the Labour Ministry for language revisions. Even after the Cabinet accepts the draft amendments to the LRA, including revising Section 198 (temporary employment services), they must still go the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) for review, and then to public comment before the full Parliament takes up South African labour law revisions.
Besides whether or not to ban labour brokers, the proposed legislation is expected to prohibit discrepancy in wages and working conditions between temporary and permanent workers, provide protection against unfair dismissals during probation periods for workers, provide more government labour inspectors to investigate abuses, harsher fines on abusive companies that are linked to their annual turnovers, and impose extended liability on primary employers when abuses occur.
The major employer federations that cover staffing companies in South Africa, namely the Association of Personnel Service Organisations (APSO) and the Confederation of Associations in the Private Employment Sector (CAPES), are taking a pro-action position that some type of legislation must pass.
But these groups are lobbying for tighter regulation of the more nefarious side of the industry, believing that there is abusive practices by unscrupulous labour brokers that must be stopped.
Labour unions in South Africa, however, led by the Congress of South African Unions (COSATU), are holding firm that a complete ban is necessary. The unions have made it a rule to inject the ban language on labour brokers in their collective agreements, and several employers have agreed to the ban.
In the ten-day strike in August between the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the Automobile Manufacturers Employers Association (AMEA), representing BMW, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Toyota, and Volkswagen, the two sides agreed to the ban. It takes effect on 1 January 2011, with the exception of pre-existing labour broker contracts, which will be permitted to run their term.
Regarding the legislation, Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana made it clear while speaking at a labour law conference in mid-August that labour brokering in the country will definitely get a revamp with the objective of creating decent jobs.
He told labour lawyers present that the notion of treating labour as a commodity must halt. “We must stop this thing of selling labour,” Mdladlana stated.
Planned Outsourcing by Vedanta inside Zambia’s Copper Belt
The government of Zambia bent to the will of the country’s two major mining unions, including ICEM affiliate Mineworkers Union of Zambia (MUZ), to investigate and remedy the anti-Zambian outsourcing policies planned by Anglo-Indian Vedanta Resources at several of its Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) operations.
That government intervention did achieve the desired results, since KCM has now rescinded its plan to outsource major operational activities at its Nchanga mines, Chingola Copper concentrator and open pit mines, and the Nampundwe refractory to foreign contractors.
On 24 August, a tripartite dialogue consisting of the Labour and Mines Ministries, Vedanta’s senior executives, and the MUZ and the National Union of Miners and Allied Workers (NUMAW) produced an agreement that should deploy more Zambians to the country’s mines and resource processing plants.
MUZ President, Rayford Mbulu
The agreement caused cancellation of a mass demonstration at mine sites and other locations by the MUZ and NUMAW for 28 August.
According to Labour and Social Security Minister Austin Liato, the compromise with firstly, “on outsourcing, which has threatened a number of (local) jobs, it has been agreed that the issue will be stalled and the two parties shall engage each other before any decision is made.
“Then secondly, on the vice president human resources, who is about to retire, it has been concluded that the position will be advertised” within Zambia. Both the government and civil society, including the Zambia Institute of Human Resource Management, was livid that Vedanta was about to hire another foreign national in this position.
The outsourcing and offshoring issue between Zambian mining unions and Vedanta had become pitched in August, particularly at a time when Vedanta is greatly expanding many of its copper-producing facilities.
The outsourcing issue at KCM became especially exasperated when a mining boss at the Chingola mine – operated by the Brazilian contractor U & M Mining – refused to allow the deputy minister of Labour and Social Security onto the mine to inspect labour conditions.
In the days before the tripartite meeting, KCM attempted to resolve the dispute by offering any worker affected by outsourcing to transfer to the contract employer at equal pay and the same pension contributions, transfer to one of two other KCM operations, or voluntary separation under existing conditions of service. But that was unsatisfactory to the unions.
KCM is 20% owned by the Zambian government. In 2009, over 80% of Zambia’s foreign exchange earnings and 15.9% of its GDP came from copper mining. The ICEM Secretariat commends Sub-Saharan African Regional Vice President Rayford Mbula, President of the MUZ, for his leadership and vigilance on this issue with both the government and Vedanta.
Interview: Bayo Olowoshile, PENGASSAN General Secretary
Bayo is the General Secretary of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN).
How Prevalent is Contract and Agency Labour and Casualisation in Nigeria?
CAL is increasing and alarmingly taking over Nigeria’s Oil and Gas industries. It encompasses various dimensions of precarious work and the worst forms of employment. CAL gives room for unfair labour practices that are repugnant to decent work principles. About 60% of our workforce is now composed of contract and agency workers. Standard, permanent employment is declining.
Is the Issue of Casualisation and Temporary Work Practices a Bigger Problem than it was Before?
The issue is a bigger problem in the Nigeria Oil and Gas Sector now than it was before due to the fact that employers and the government’s standpoint is that CAL is now a reality that cannot be wished away. This leaves trade unions with no other option than to tackle the adverse effects of CAL, which are:
• Use of this work practice to replace direct and permanent employment;
• To adversely change employment forms and conditions, to avoid social responsibilities and obligations which employers circumvent through gaps and inadequacies in our extant laws;
• To weaken trade union membership, solidarity and relevance, and to prevent union organising and recognition of the collective bargaining principle;
• It widens the exploitation gaps particularly by user enterprises who prefer to minimise cost and increase profit, at the expense and detriment of labour;
• It increases workplace discrimination and inequitable terms and conditions of employment;
• It seriously challenges trade union ability to protect job security;
• There are conflicts in the definition of employment relationships and the obligations of user enterprises, particularly where laws and employment regulatory agencies do not clarify these issues;
• And an underlying factor, casualisation and temporary work is a growing phenomenon due to the unemployment situation. Employers are exploiting workers’ desperation for a means of subsistence for their own profit mongering.
What are Differences in Nigeria Regarding Working Conditions Between CAL Workers and Permanent Workers?
Number one, casual and temporary workers are subjected to conditions that are not in accord with the general work conditions in the Oil and Gas Sector. Where CAL workers are lucky and are allowed to organise and bargain collectively, the mandate for negotiation of a collective bargaining agreement is seriously curtailed by the contracts between the contractors and agencies on the one side and by the primary enterprise on the other side.
In addition, these workers are subject to limited or no provisions for basic welfare, pensions and social security, health, safety, security and environmental protection, and other stipulated core ILO conventions. And to cite just one small example, Global Framework Agreements that are signed with Global Union Federations, where functional, are not usually made available and applicable to contract and agency workers.
Any set of negotiations in Nigeria that involves a collective agreement for these workers is prone to grievances, disputes, threats, resistance, and action from labour unions, contractors and agencies, and user enterprises.
What are the Main Ways in which Trade Unions are Supporting Casual and Contract and Agency Labour Workers?
It has become a priority to use union resources and machineries to mobilise support and confront the overall denial that contract and agency workers’ rights have not right to organise and bargain collectively. We are doing this through increases levels of sensitisation through mobilisations, campaigns, solidarity actions, protests, rallies, pickets, strikes, media work, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, and litigation.
We now have the task of entrenching the more effective and protective organising and collective bargaining strategies for contract and agency workers, with financial and organisation support from our union’s Union Solidarity Reserve fund, from organisations like the ICEM, Friedrich-Ebert Foundation of Germany, and the US Solidarity Center.
We are constantly implementing union resolutions, directives, and decisions in the area of campaigns, lobbying, engagements, and advocacy for contract and agency workers’ issues.
Which Ways Do You Feel the ICEM’s Global Campaign on CAL can be Helpful and Most Effective in Confronting the Challenges of CAL in Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Sector?
The Global CAL Campaign of the ICEM must use donors’ resources and mechanisms to mobilise support and confront resistance to full rights of contract and agency workers to organise and bargain collectively. The ICEM must increase awareness of the CAL situation, by all possible means, and it must effectively implement the Campaign through communication, engagement and evaluation, and correcting deviations/gaps in the global campaign strategies.
PENGASSAN’s best hope is that the ICEM will carry out advocacy and lobbying for fair labour policies and laws which are favourable to contract and agency workers, as to campaign for best practices in dealing with employment and working conditions issues relating to this most serious issue.
Interview: Joseph Toe, CAL Project Coordinator, Sub-Saharan Africa Region
Joseph Toe is ICEM's Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) Project Coordinator for the Sub-Saharan Africa Region. He is a native of Togo.
How prevalent is the issue of Contract and Agency Labour and Precarious Work in Africa?
In some cases, the proportion of temporal workers may reach 80% of the permanent workforce. Deregulation of the labour market has accelerated this process.
What factors have impacted on the use of CAL?
Structural adjustments imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions adversely affecting the institutional employment context at two levels:
• The de-regulation of the labour market and the fact cry that use of labour must become more flexible; and
• The reduction of trade union participation and the inability of civil society to effectively make its voice heard over anti-social measures advocated by lending institutions.
The arrival of Asian investors has also disrupted the labour market in Africa and jeopardises previous social gains.
What is the Sub-Saharan African ICEM CAL Project?
The Sub-Saharan African ICEM CAL Project started at the end of February 2009 and covers 8 countries, Guinea, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. The selected targeted countries were all identified as nations where the issue of contract and agency labour is wide spread, but also where there are relatively strong trade unions. This means that there are possibilities of carrying out actions to achieve reasonable progress on this issue.
What are the Project Objectives?
The project aims to develop trade union strategies and seek best practices to address contract and agency labour related problems in Sub-Saharan Africa; it seeks to create a coherent regional coordination to address the problem; it advocates for governments to take the relevant initiatives and policies to halt the use of temporal contracts and to regulate private employment agencies; it seeks to carry out high level and specialised regional research; to have trained union negotiators on the issue of rights for contract and agency workers; to build the organisational capacities of the leadership in CAL campaigns; and to create a network for information- and experience-sharing of ICEM affiliates on the issue across the region.
The training is based on a number of simple and practical tools designed from examples taken from around the world. At the end of each session, a plan of action is developed on the future actions to be carried out at the national level in synergy with other GUFs’ affiliates, and guidelines are defined to be included in the ICEM Global Campaign on CAL. In order to implement the national plan, a monitoring mechanism, which is part of the plan of action is defined, and the officers in charge of its implementation are appointed.
Trade union action is indispensable to neutralising the development of outsourcing and temporal employment, particularly as it is crosscuts and affects all trade and industrial sectors. Sub-Saharan African countries are seriously affected by this problem and are reacting in order to stem and/or reduce the adverse effects. The Sub-Saharan African ICEM CAL Project also encourages and assists unions in:
• Building trade union organising and negotiating capacity;
• Institutionalising sector-based negotiations and reinforcing trade union unity of action, which is necessary to combat outsourcing, labour brokering, and contract agencies. It fights for the regulation of employment agencies and recourse to outsource, and to be involved in that redress process;
• Reinforcing solidarity between temporary and permanent workers;
• Training those who organise temporary workers;
• Negotiating collective agreements which include clauses on the systematic recourse to outsource and use casual labour with regard to the improvement of the working conditions and the reduction of the consequences of casual labour;
• Campaigns for the transformation of casual labour into permanent employment;
• Develops strategies for CAL workers, with the emphasis on decent work and inclusion of gender and race in those strategies;
• Organising campaigns and lobbying at national and international levels against casual labour, and developing plans of action aimed at ridding this phenomenon in the Export Processing Zones (EPZ);
• Carrying out studies on the consequences of outsourcing and contract labour agencies within the context of worsening disparities and inequalities of the social strata. This means addressing the Millennium Development Goals 2015, the 2007–2015 Decent Work Agenda in Africa; the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), Sustainable Human Development Programme, and the Tripartite and Social Dialogue Principles which serve as the basis of ILO.
Casual employment affects positive labour values, which develop, distinguish, and socialise the human being.
CAL Regional Conference in Latin America Gathers Important Case Studies
The Americas Regional Contract and Agency labour (CAL) conference was held in Recife, Brazil, on 27 June 2010. The conference was attended by ICEM affiliates from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay, as well as by ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda, the ICEM Vice-President for Latin America, Sergio Novais, the ICEM Women’s Officer and Latin America Contact Person, Carol Bruce, and Ashling Seely, the Global CAL Project Coordinator.
Affiliates at the conference spoke about how CAL is being used to undermine freedom of association, for example with Sintracarbón in Colombia, the ICEM’s Mine Workers’ affiliate. Representatives from that union told how trade union activists are being transferred from permanent positions into what are known as “rubbish contracts.”
CAL Project Coordinator for Latin America - Rosane Sasse
Another ICEM affiliate, Sintravidricol, the Colombian Glass Workers’ Union, spoke about how workers at Owen-Illinois are being dismissed and replaced by agency workers. Affiliates also spoke about the problems of triangular employment relationships, with CAL workers not being clear on who is ultimately responsible for their working conditions.
Participants exchanged information on the increasing efforts being made to halt the outsourcing of employment and abusive use of short-term contracts. For example, the Union of Rubber Workers of São Paulo, representing 26,000 workers, is attempting to negotiate a collective agreement clause prohibiting outsourcing in the manufacturing sector.
In Brazil’s oil sector, more than two thirds of the workforce is outsourced. The Single Federation of Oil Workers (FUP) has held several debates, regional and national meetings in various regions of the country, to raise awareness of the negative impact of CAL. The umbrella federation of oil workers’ unions at state-owned Petrobras has also worked with its affiliated organisations to encourage them to restructure in order to improve the full involvement of outsourced workers in their unions.
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda
ICEM’s Warda concluded the meeting, saying that governments must be made aware that ILO Conventions apply equally to contract and agency workers, and that, where there are obstacles to full rights for CAL workers, these should be tackled with legal actions. Warda also spoke about the need to work against the practices of the World Bank and the IFC, organisations which are still advising governments that they need to create more “flexible” labour markets.
Affiliates agreed that the day 28 July would become a day of action on outsourcing.
Brazilian Social Partners Agree on CAL Regulation at BASF
An agreement has been reached at the Labour Ministry of São Paulo, Brazil, state between BASF and the chemical workers of Guaratinguetá. The agreement aims to regulate the use of Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) and requires the company to pay the same salary and benefits to agency workers as is paid to permanent, directly-employed workers. Failure to implement the agreement will result a fine of 500 Reales per worker/per day.
This Guaratinguetá plant is the largest BASF entity in Latin America and has about one non-regular worker for each directly employed worker.
Groundbreaking Korean High Court Rule Contract Worker is Worker of Primary Company
In February 2005, Mr. Choi, a worker at a subcontracting company of the Ulsan factory of the Hyundai Motors in South Korea, was dismissed for carrying out trade union activities. Mr. Choi had been employed by the subcontractor and stationed at the Ulsan factory since March 2002.
When he was dismissed Mr. Choi, filed an application for remedy to the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) in an administrative lawsuit, claiming that it was an unfair dismissal and that Hyundai Motors, not the subcontracting company, was his real employer.
On 22 July 2010, the Korean Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Choi was an illegal dispatch worker and determined that he, in fact, became a direct employee of Hyundai the day after working two consecutive years.
The High Court wrote, “Mr. Choi was under the direct human resource (HR) management by the Hyundai Motors after being employed by one of its subcontracting companies. So, it will be assumed that he was a dispatch worker to the Hyundai Motors. Under the Act on the Protection of Dispatch Workers, etc. (Dispatch Worker Act), he should be regarded as a worker employed by the Hyundai Motors from the day after he has worked more than two consecutive years.”
Welcoming the groundbreaking ruling, the Korean Metal Workers’ Federation declared, “The ruling puts a brake on discrimination and extortion by employers for non-regular workers. We will request all the employers hiring in-house subcontracted workers including the Hyundai Motors a special round of collective bargaining and also proceed with a series of class action lawsuits gathering dismissed workers, retirees, etc.”
The International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) covered this story on 29 July and it can be found here.
Nike Takes Responsibility for Employer’s Anti-Social Actions
Following an international solidarity campaign, Nike has agreed to pay US$1.5 million to a relief fund for the former employees of two of its Honduran suppliers, Hugger de Honduras and Vision Tex, which closed plants in the Central American country without notice and without paying workers any of the legally-mandated severance payments due them.
Both factories closed in mid-January 2009, without severance payments to approximately 1,800 workers and estimated to total some US$2 million. In addition, Visions Tex failed to pay monies it had committed to paying in December 2008 following a strike, which included the legal entitlement to an annual bonus. The closure occurred just after the formation of a union at the factory.
The union representing the workers, the Central General de Trabajadores de Honduras (CGT), the Worker Rights Consortium and the Solidarity Center of the US will jointly oversee the administration of the fund. According to a joint press release by Nike and the CGT, workers will also receive a year’s access to the health care system, training, and priority hiring.
This groundbreaking agreement represents a significant step forward in the corporate social responsibility debate, with a major multinational company recognising that it must ensure decent working conditions, and the application of national legislation and international labour standards, for all those from whose labour it profits.
UN Human Rights Special Representative Ruggie Seeks ILO Help on Precarious Work
At a side meeting in Geneva at the 2010 International Labour Conference of the ILO in June 2010, the UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, requested the ILO’s expertise in determining the impact of precarious work on human rights.
In preparing to make operational the 2008, “Respect, Remedy, Protect” framework, Ruggie is consulting with a wide range of actors, including through an online consultation forum. Ruggie’s request to the ILO follows online submissions by the Global Union Federations International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association (IUF) and the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), which both highlighted the fact that CAL and other forms of precarious work are being used to undermine the human rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.
John Ruggie
In its submission to the consultations, the IMF’s statement said, “It is our submission that precarious work threatens the very survival of stable employment and collective bargaining,” adding, “As with other human rights, exercise of the fundamental enabling rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining is severely constrained by fear. That fear comes from the vulnerability that employers are imposing on workers every day, in developed and developing countries alike, with the explosion of precarious work practices.”
Ruggie’s “Respect, Remedy, Protect” framework is based on three pillars: it is a state duty to protect human rights abuses by third parties, including businesses; corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and that there must be greater access by victims to effective remedies, judicial and non-judicial.
Draft European Parliament Report on Precarious Women Workers
A draft report on precarious women workers has been presented to the European Parliament by Danish Social Democratic MEP, Britta Thomsen.
The report expresses disappointment that EU employment law and the directives on fixed-term, part-time, and temporary agency work do not adequately address the precarious nature of employment and calls on the Commission and the Member States to take further specific legislative measures, such as introducing binding minimum social standards for employees and granting all employees equal access to social services and benefits, including maternity leave, health care, and pensions, regardless of their employment conditions.
The report underlines the need for unionisation of women in precarious jobs and calls on the Member States to penalise those who create obstacles to trade union participation.
Danish Social Democratic MEP, Britta Thomsen
Member States are encouraged to combat undeclared work by means of preventive measures, such as granting immunity from prosecution to employees who report their illegal employment status and taking dissuasive action against employers. The report further calls on the Commission and the Member States to improve data collection and monitor progress in this field.
The Commission and the Member States are called on to enhance their monitoring of minimum health and safety requirements in the workplace, paying particular attention to the specific risks to female workers.
With regard to migrant workers, the report calls on the Commission, in its new gender equality strategy, to strengthen its commitment to promoting gender equality in migration and integration policies, in particular with a view to fully utilising migrant women’s employment potential and encourages employers to take specific measures to facilitate the social integration of women migrant workers.
Attention is drawn to the limited amount of research on the subject of precarious work and the report calls on the Commission and Eurofound to initiate targeted research in order to assess the cost of the de-skilling and welfare loss resulting from precarious employment.
The report will be voted on by members of the European Parliament Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality on 10 October 2010.
US: 25 Companies, 700,000 Jobs Lost Due to Outsourcing during Financial Collapse
According to Economic Populist and based on reliable data from a company that monitors layoffs, 25 American-based companies were responsible for 700,000 jobs lost during the financial crisis. And the statistics reveal that most of the lost US jobs were caused by outsourcing jobs offshore.
The list of 25 includes a few industrial companies, but the most consisting of tech companies, service-oriented forms, and, of course, financial services.
The 25 are: General Motors, 107,357 jobs lost due to outsourcing; Citigroup, 73,056 jobs gone; Hewlett-Packard, 47,540 jobs eliminated due to outsourcing; Circuit City Stores, 41,495 (not attributed to outsourcing); Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, 40,650; Verizon Wireless, 39,000; Pfizer, 31,771; Merck and Co., 24,400.
Lehman Brothers, 23,340; Caterpillar, 23,024; JP Morgan Chase, 22,852; Starbucks, 21,316; AT&T, 18,401; Alcoa Aluminium, 17,655 jobs lost to outsourcing; Dow Chemical, 17,530; Dupont, 17,000; Berkshire Hathaway Capital, 16,900 jobs lost due to unknown reasons;
Ford Motor, 15,912; KB Toys, 15,100; US Postal Service, 15,000; DHL Express USA, 14,900; Sprint Nextel, 14,500; Sun Microsystems, 14,000; Boeing Aviation, 13,715; and Chrysler, 13,672.
Many of these companies demanded US taxpayers’ dollars in the form of stimulus monies, all the while they were loping jobs.