MH’s victory is a victory for all women workers everywhere

September 3, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg Leave a Comment

At the end of July, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom handed down its judgment in the case of H (Appellant) v Allen and another (Respondents), In their unanimous decision, the Court decided to protect and strengthen the rights of women workers, and in particular of migrant and immigrant women workers, irrespective of legal status. It’s a great decision and an important victory for women everywhere.

Lord Nicholas Wilson, Justice of the Supreme Court, explained the case and the Court decision as follows. On 28 January 2007, “Mrs. Allen” brought “Miss H”, aged around 14, into the United Kingdom on a visitor’s visa. Miss H is described as illiterate. She had lived with Mrs. Allen’s brother in Lagos. Miss H was brought into the United Kingdom under two false claims. First, her age was listed as 20. Second, she was claimed as the granddaughter of Mrs. Allen’s mother. Miss H was “aware” of the false pretense. She knew that she could only stay for six months and that she could not legally work for pay.

Miss H, illiterate and 14 years old, “entered into a contract” with Mrs. Allen to help with Mrs. Allen’s children. Miss H never received any pay, nor was she ever allowed to attend school. Further, Mrs. Allen verbally, emotionally, and physically abused Miss H, and repeatedly threatened her with prison, explaining that since she was “illegal”, if she were caught on the streets, she would go to jail. Miss H lived under these conditions for a year.

On 17 July 2008, Mrs. Allen pushed Miss H out of the house, locked the door, and that was that. Miss H was found by someone, who took her to Social Services.

Miss H sued Mrs. Allen for discrimination, since she was brutally mistreated because of her Nigerian nationality and her unlawful immigration status. The Employment Tribunal agreed with Miss H and demanded that Mrs. Allen pay compensation. Mrs. Allen appealed the case, claiming “the defense of illegality.” That is, Mrs. Allen claimed that since Miss H was working illegally, she could not sue. The Court of Appeals agreed with Mrs. Allen.

The Supreme Court unanimously reinstated the Employment Tribunal’s decision. For two of the Justices, “the defense of illegality” did not hold, and so that alone sufficed to throw the appeal out. For the remaining three, the more compelling argument was that Miss H had been trafficked. They argued that the public policy of maintaining the integrity of the legal process was secondary to the public policy of opposing trafficking and protecting the rights, if not the well being, of vulnerable people. To accept Mrs. Allen’s claim of “defense of illegality” and to refuse Miss H’s appeal would be, in the words of Justice Wilson, “an affront.”

Anti-trafficking activists and others have hailed this decision as an important step forward. The immigration status of a worker has no bearing on the labor rights of that worker, including the right to sue the employer in court. In the United States, women understand that courts matter. In South Africa, women understand as well that judges matter. And in this decision, in the United Kingdom, MH, who as a child labored in virtual slavery in someone’s house, has demonstrated that courts matter, judges matter, justice matters, women and girls matter. All women. All girls. Always.

(Video Credit: UK Supreme Court / YouTube)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: child domestic workers, Dan Moshenberg, domestic workers, Haunts, immigrant women, United Kingdom, women, women workers

Solidarity with Greek women cleaners against austerity!

July 7, 2014 by Brigitte Marti 6 Comments

The women cleaners of the Ministry of finance in Athens have been demonstrating that the fight for life and dignity should know no rest. Since being laid off eleven months ago, thanks to austerity measures, they have been in front of the Ministry, standing there to show that life cannot be neither brushed aside nor contracted.

First, they turned to the court of justice, as labor rights must be defended by all means. The District court of Athens rule in their favor. The minister did not budge. A month ago, a court decision in Athens vindicated them and ordered their immediate reinstatement. The government responded with what the neoliberalist dogma orders: demanding submission and dependency and going after the women cleaners. The government dismissed the judgment and bypassed the court of appeal, going straight to the higher court Areios Pagos.

At the same time, the conservative press, media, politicians have broadcast negative images of the cleaners, calling them shirkers, accusing them of receiving undue privileges.

Meanwhile, the women cleaners who lost their meager salary (around $1000/month) are regularly physically assaulted by riot police, and suffer injuries requiring hospitalization.

Why is the government in Greece going after the women cleaners with such rage? Why do the State despise their lives and livelihood so much? Isn’t the state responsible for the well being of all its members including low wage women?

Who is the government serving?

In the late 70s, when the dollar was `floated’, the market system encompassed the idea of floating currency in relation to the idea of floating work value. As a result, the value of work as well as the value of life became increasingly indeterminate. The goal became the promotion of indeterminacy as a way of life, going against all efforts to create a socially responsible state. Austerity measures, and structural adjustment programs implemented in the South, opened the way to establishing a contracted work force by erasing the notion of public services and public responsibility. Austerity and structural adjustment `liberated’ public funds to the indeterminate market system.

Women are more dependent on public services and related jobs and comprise the vast majority of the growing underpaid and unemployed population in Greece. The government has argued that the termination of their work was for the public interest, intentionally confusing reduction of public sector with public interest. The State claims that the decision should be made in an administrative court, which would to make it a permanent labor rule.

The fact that the women cleaners were no fiscal burden, and their replacement by contracting businesses is more costly and less effective does not matter. The issue is not the way work is done but rather the profit making market system that thrives on the floating value of work. This is a legal issue and justice should protect life and way of life.

The fight of the women cleaners and their determination, despite their increasingly precarious situation as the result of no pay, is an example for all of us who understand that the threat is global and broad.

In building solidarity with the women cleaners there is a chance to direct the focus to respect for life that can override the ruthless neoliberal attack on human dignity.

Solidarity is the people’s weapon!

(Photo Credit: Greecesolidarity.org)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: austerity, Brigitte Marti, cleaning women, Greece, Resistance, solidarity, women, women workers

Considering that domestic work is mainly carried out by women and girls

July 2, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg 6 Comments

Five men on the US Supreme Court decided this week that women workers [a] aren’t really workers and [b] don’t really work. Therefore, women workers don’t deserve the protections, and the power, that a trade union can confer on its members. Many have written on this decision, and many more will. Much of the response has avoided that frontal attack on women workers, preferring instead to focus on labor unions or on household workers. Although the majority opinion doesn’t specify women, it’s clear that the workers under attack are women.

On June 16, 2011, the International Labor Organization recognized as much, when it passed the Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers. The Convention defines domestic work as “work performed in or for a household or households”, and defines domestic worker as “any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship.” The ILO was careful to note that its Convention applies to all domestic workers.

But before the ILO launched into the nuts and bolts of decent work for domestic workers, it set the global table, specifying the place of domestic work in the global economy and the place of women and girls in domestic work. In other words, the International Labor Organization recognized and considered women as the key.

And so, without further ado and as an alternative to the narrow, misogynistic world view of the U.S. Supreme Court, here’s a sampling of the opening of the Text of the Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers:

“Recognizing the significant contribution of domestic workers to the global economy, which includes increasing paid job opportunities for women and men workers with family responsibilities, greater scope for caring for ageing populations, children and persons with a disability, and substantial income transfers within and between countries, and

“Considering that domestic work continues to be undervalued and invisible and is mainly carried out by women and girls, many of whom are migrants or members of disadvantaged communities and who are particularly vulnerable to discrimination in respect of conditions of employment and of work, and to other abuses of human rights, and

“Considering also that in developing countries with historically scarce opportunities for formal employment, domestic workers constitute a significant proportion of the national workforce and remain among the most marginalized, ….

“Recognizing the special conditions under which domestic work is carried out that make it desirable to supplement the general standards with standards specific to domestic workers so as to enable them to enjoy their rights fully, and ….

“Having decided upon the adoption of certain proposals concerning decent work for domestic workers, which is the fourth item on the agenda of the session, and

“Having determined that these proposals shall take the form of an international Convention;

“adopts this sixteenth day of June of the year two thousand and eleven the following Convention, which may be cited as the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011.”

(Photo Credit: UN Human Rights)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers, Dan Moshenberg, domestic workers, Haunts, ILO, women, women workers

“Entrepreneur Barbie” Crushes Communities on Her Way to the Top

June 24, 2014 by Leo Settoducato 4 Comments

When Mattel announced that Barbie’s next career ensemble would position her as a tech entrepreneur, The Huffington Post offered a sympathetic piece detailing why the challenges of being a female entrepreneur would make this job Barbie’s “toughest yet.” While Mattel views this career choice as an opportunity for Barbie to “break through plastic ceilings” alongside actual female entrepreneurs (featured in a photo collage with Barbie in the center), the news of this doll—and the mainstream media’s response to it–immediately made me cringe.

The Huffington Post is absolutely right to call attention to gender wage gap, workplace discrimination, and underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. And with her hot pink corporate battle armor, “trendsetting” attitude, and upper class white background, Barbie is in a relatively advantageous position to face those challenges. However, the article glorifies female executives like Sheryl Sandberg as groundbreaking role models for Barbie and the enterprising young girls who play with her. This line of thinking is problematic.

By suggesting that women’s reluctance to more firmly advocate for themselves is the primary obstacle in achieving equality, Sandberg’s philosophy of Leaning In ignores external obstacles and systems of oppression that cannot be overcome with a positive attitude alone. Moreover, an increase in female CEOs is a solution reliant on capitalist systems in a society where high profile, high earning jobs are deemed the most valuable. This perspective overlooks the struggles of the many working class women who make up today’s globalized workforce.

Looking beyond Lean In, Entrepreneur Barbie (along with everyone who supports her) seems blind to the issues of gentrification and displacement that have faced Bay Area communities in the wake of Silicon Valley’s successes. For example, research from UC Berkeley shows that when companies like Google expand and use buses to transport their employees to and from work, they drive up the rents in the neighborhoods where those bus stops are located. This often means that the original residents can no longer afford to live there, or must struggle to maintain their standard of living, especially when landlords realize that they can make far more profits from new tech employees than from allowing their current tenants to remain.

In a political moment where communities of color in particular are being targeted and displaced from their homes, supporters of Entrepreneur Barbie are off the mark in hoping that the doll will “bring the next generation of girls with her on her journey to entrepreneurship.” This vision of trickle-down equality is dependent on maintaining the status quo for those already in positions of privilege and suggests that any upwardly mobile path is a good one, regardless of the cost to local communities. Barbie is not “uniquely equipped for this challenge because she’s a trendsetter;” she’s uniquely equipped because she is a marker of privileged whiteness and omnipresent corporate dominance. While Mattel may be aware of gender inequality in the workplace, Entrepreneur Barbie loses any redeeming value when she spreads ignorance of race-and-class-based struggles that no amount of Leaning In can ever solve.

(Photo Credit: Adam Hudson / Truthout)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Barbie, Elizabeth Settoducato, women, women workers

Did Mother’s Day end early this year?

May 20, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg 15 Comments

Mother’s Day seemed to end early and abruptly this year.

In Australia, under the proposed new national budget, women who have a child, otherwise known as mothers, face paying 30% more on student loans than their male counterparts. No matter that another government policy encourages women to have three children, one for ma, one for pa, and for the nation down the road: “These aren’t choices we force on men. These are penalties we extract from women, based on their gender.”

Speaking of penalties, this week, the Pennsylvania ACLU revealed that in Pennsylvania, pregnant women prisoners are routinely shackled, including during childbirth. Pennsylvania is one of the states that actually has a law, the Healthy Birth for Incarcerated Women Act, which prohibits this kind of treatment. That law was passed in 2010. The ACLU has written to the Attorney General of Pennsylvania asking her to `clarify the law.’

Speaking of clarifying the law, Marissa Alexander still can’t catch a break. For having shot once in the air and not endangered anyone, in order to ward off an abusive partner, Marissa Alexander still faces a possible 60 years behind bars. While her lawyers may have all sorts of new evidence, the prosecuting attorney says the evidence isn’t new enough and the judge is worried about the precedent set by having a second Stand Your Ground hearing. Happy Mother’s Day.

But for the women farmworkers of Immokalee, it may just be a Mother’s Day to celebrate. For the fourth year in a row, farmworker mothers, members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, stormed the ramparts of Publix, armed to the teeth with hope, a vision of a decent and dignified future for all, a dream of industrial democracy, and a letter, which read:

“May 11, 2014
Mother’s Day

To Publix:

We are farmworker women. This is the fourth celebration of Mother’s Day in which we are writing to Publix to ask that you join the Fair Food Program.

As mothers, we work in the fields to support our families, especially to help our children through school.

As mothers, we do not make enough to fully support our family. And the little that we do make is not easy to earn: We work under the sun and rain of Florida. We do everything so that you can have tomatoes: we plant, we tie up the plants, we harvest, and then we do it all again the next season. In spite of all that, it seems that you do not understand and do not want to hear the voice of farmworkers.

Publix profits from the sweat of those of us who work in the fields. We deserve respect and we deserve a fair wage.

Now is the time to join the Fair Food Program to protect the rights of workers and ensure a fair wage, with the penny per pound that 12 other corporations are already paying. What are you waiting for, Publix?

Sincerely,

The Women’s Group of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers”

After delivering the letter, Lupe Gonzalo reported, “Publix presumes to say that they support families — but in reality, we don’t see this support. And we are not afraid to tell them that what they are saying is not true. We are not afraid to come and protest in front of their stores. Because we are speaking the truth, with our heads held high. For all of us, when we speak to our children, we tell them the truth. And we tell them that Publix has not signed onto the Program because they are afraid. Even children can see that. But what does Publix say to its children? Only lies? Is that how they are educating their children? That is not how we prepare our children for the future.”

Others, like Nely Rodriguez, mother of four, agreed. Now is the time!

Thanks to the work of women like Marissa Alexander, Lupe Gonzalo, Nely Rodriguez, maybe Mother’s Day didn’t end early this year, because, for them, the struggle of women continues, and that’s what Mother’s Day is all about.

(Photo Credit: Coalition of Immokalee Workers)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Australia, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Dan Moshenberg, debt, Haunts, Lupe Gonzalo, Marissa Alexander, mothers, Nely Rodriguez, Pennsylvania, pregnant prisoners, prison, shackling, women, women farmworkers, women prisoners, women workers

In Athens, women cleaners reject austerity’s mess

April 6, 2014 by Brigitte Marti 21 Comments

595 cleaning women of the Greek Ministry of Finance have organized against austerity measures. They were there when Goldman Sachs coached the Greek authorities to hide the deficit with neoliberal “financial innovations” and then bet on it to make outrageous profits. They were there when the Greek authorities admitted that these “financial innovations” did not work and had to be paid for by the Greek population. They were also there when the Troika came to give the prescription of austerity measures. They cleaned the mess and emptied the trashcans.

One day they learned that their already meager salary was going to be amputated of 75% of its value. Without warning one morning they learned that they would have only 325.88 Euros to take care of their families, as many of them are single mothers and over 50 years old. Then they learned that they were to be replaced by contracted workers. For women, losing a job under these conditions means losing access to pension, health care, social protection. It means becoming part of the 62.8% unemployed women in Greece.

The women refused. They organized and showed the power of solidarity. Every day, they stand in front of the ministry and shout at the Troika personnel, at the government and all the financial puppets that come and go. They protest that they cannot be dismissed. They shout that they have rights that shouldn’t be wiped out just to serve their markets and their private interests. The Troika, the State and the stooges know that the cleaners’ meager salaries are not going to solve the Greek deficit. They remind everyone that the ministries and other public spaces are not in danger of not being cleaned anymore. Once again in the neoliberal order of things, public money will be transferred to private hands through contracted work. Ordinarily contracted cleaning work costs more, but women workers’ wages are lower since they either have no contracts or have to sign blank `contracts’ that make them vulnerable to total exploitation.

In 2009, Kostantina Kouvena, an immigrant cleaning woman who was a trade unionist for cleaning women union, was attacked with vitriolic acid because she was exposing these abuses. Her employer was a politician from the Social Democrat party, Pasok, who had created a service company. Making contracted work the norm is central to neoliberal labor policies, to the point that killing the resistance to this move is accepted.

The cleaning women haven’t stop fighting, and their tenacity has become an example for many in Greece, especially women who are more likely to be employed in the public sector.

Last March, the repression was even more violent as they were still demonstrating in front of the Ministry. Their solidarity has been an example that has inspired a larger European and international movement.

Over fifty thousand people from twenty-one countries went to Brussels this past Friday to demonstrate against austerity. The message from the European Trade Union Confederation was clear: these policies are wrong and do more harm than good. Austerity measures don’t serve the people, they serve the financial markets that thrive on volatility and make victims, like the Greek population, pay the price of their gameThe cleaning women of Athens keep watch for us on the comings and goings of the virtuosi of austerity rhetoric. They tell them that they know who they are. They know that underpaid contracted cleaning/janitor works are the signs of the marginalization of women in a low wage debt economy and a sign of the rise of submissive policies that annihilate the public voice. And to that, the cleaning women of Athens say, “No!”

(Photo Credit: Autostraddle.com)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: austerity, Brigitte Marti, cleaners, Greece, Resistance, women, women workers

Devyani Vs. Sangeeta: Domestic Workers’ Rights

February 16, 2014 by Pramila Venkateswaran 8 Comments

Sangeeta Richard

The recent strip search, including cavity search, of a female Indian diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, in New York, raised a hue and cry in India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, including much of the administration and the public, denounced the U.S. act as demeaning, primarily because a body search of a female is considered dishonorable by Indians for it brings shame upon the woman, her family and the country, and secondly the Indian court would not consider a salary issue between an employer and her maid tantamount to a crime that necessitated a strip search.

But we need to look at some underlying blind spots this issue glaringly reveals:

1. While Devyani’s experience of undergoing a strip search is demeaning, I believe that such a treatment of any woman in the U.S. who is in police custody or in customs/immigration, whether the crime is unremarkable or severe, as unacceptable. We have not protested enough about strip searches of women especially since such searches are now placed within the umbrella of security and anti-terrorism jurisdiction.

2. While there is now a history of protest to raise minimum wage in the U.S. and the pay discrepancy between men and women is a hot button issue, brought to light by the Lilly Ledbetter bill signed by President Obama in 2009, enforcing this in reality has been tough. But many grassroots movements, such as Working Families and Occupy, are making their mark in trying to make employers conscious of pay gaps and inequities. While Devyani’s lawyer may argue that she has done everything legal under the contract with the maid, Sangeeta Richard, nevertheless, the reaction of the Indian government and a mortified public brings up the fact that Indians have internalized the notion that since most of middle class has maids and there are no unions to protect their wages or their treatment, that there is nothing shocking in the continuation of this practice when domestic workers work in Indian households locally or abroad. The protest about wages and treatment of domestic workers both local and migrant is heard loudest only among feminist organizations. Governments have not taken it seriously; there is no proper jurisdiction regarding wages for domestic work, therefore the issue prevails in the shadows.

3. The irony of the Devyani case is that Devyani is Dalit herself—the oppressed class in India’s caste system. The Dalit movement began during the time of India’s nationalist movement for Independence from British rule. Although the reservation system (similar to Affirmative Action) was put in place to address the rights of the underprivileged castes in the caste hierarchy, nevertheless the oppression of Dalits continues. Devyani’s family is Dalit, but well to do, and she is a diplomat employed by the Indian government. It is indeed a lesson in the nature of oppression to see one who has risen to a privileged position in terms of economic class and status to pay a low wage to a woman she hired to work in her household. Of course, since this act is an allegation until proven, and Devyani may after all be innocent, nevertheless this case brings to light two questions: Should foreign diplomats be allowed to get away with anything because they have diplomatic immunity? Should the U.S. use cavity search and strip search on women in immigration violation cases? How can we separate wage issues from labor trafficking cases, since labor trafficking is another charge brought against Devyani? How can we take personal responsibility to make sure someone we know is not being paid below minimum wage?

(Photo Credit: Times of India)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Devyani Khobragade, immigration, India, Pramila Venkateswaran, strip-search, United States, women, women workers

Why Are We Not Enraged By The Fire In A Sweatshop In Bangladesh?

February 7, 2014 by Pramila Venkateswaran 6 Comments

Why is it when women jumped to their deaths to escape the deadly fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City in 1913, we are even today able to be horrified at the management’s cold blooded view of workers as expendable? But why is it we are not as enraged when hundreds of women were killed in the April 2013 Rana Plaza Factory fire in Bangladesh? Even when we know that the workers were making products for Disney and Walmart, why aren’t we horrified? Shouldn’t we be enraged that workers anywhere are killed because of lack of safety standards, regardless of which company they are working for, whether it is a multinational company or a local company? Once we put an American face on the sweatshop, one hopes that will generate some amount of questioning, such as why Walmart has not followed safety standards in Bangladesh, what companies are overlooking safety regulations, why they are exempt from local laws regarding worker safety, and so on. More importantly, when we see advertisements showing how most of us profit from shopping in Walmart because of their low prices, shouldn’t we be asking how we are implicated in Walmart’s ability to keep prices low? Who benefits? At whose expense are we enjoying bargains? But, perhaps, we are so conditioned by the system of consumption, where the ideal customer is often confused with the ideal citizen, that we do not see the shadows of workers behind the aisles of clothing or behind the glass cases holding our electronic gadgets.

The worker has become as intangible to us as a theorem or a cosmic body. How can we see/feel/touch/hear/smell workers in the business of making our life livable?

Once the American consumer is able to SEE the connection between his/her “deals” and “specials” and the masses of brown, malnourished women working in unsafe factories making the goods that flood markets in the U.S., the consumer will become informed and this would be the beginning of addressing the rights of both the worker and the consumer. But this connection cannot be established if the consumer is not really given the full “news” about the conditions of workers. Just as we know so little about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we do not have complete knowledge about sweatshop atrocities. The news media has not shared with the American public images of sweatshop workers dying and injured in the Bangladesh factory fire. As Amy Goodman says in an interview about the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, if Americans were to see graphic pictures of war, they will urge their government toward other means of resolving conflict. Images of workers’ in unsafe conditions will have the necessary effect on consumers, which will then propel companies to act and governments to enforce laws protecting workers. It is a shame that the U.S. multinational companies can shelter under the very laws that are meant to protect workers.

Elizabeth Cline points out, “In 2009, the Ninth US Circuit of Appeals ruled that workers in foreign factories that supply Walmart can’t hold the company responsible for their workplace conditions, despite the retailer’s code of conduct that’s supposed to hold its contractors to decent labor standards. This lack of liability is enjoyed by every retailer that uses contracted factories, which they do not own. It’s this loophole, the one that legally distances clothing companies from the very people who actually make the clothing, that has consistently and historically wrought disaster and human tragedy. This chilling othering of the worker makes us lose our very humanity.

We can create a movement by posting images of atrocities as a way of mobilizing the public to stand up against a greedy capitalism that is eroding both worker rights and our rights as citizens. It is time to say, we are global citizens, not consumers. It is time to claim our humanity.

(Photo Credit: Trusted Clothes)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Amy Goodman, Bangladesh, Elizabeth Cline, garment workers, Pramila Venkateswaran, women workers

In Cambodia, the women are saying, “No!”

January 6, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg 36 Comments

Yorm Bopha

Yorm Bopha, Tep Vanny, Phan Chhunreth, Song Srey Leap, and Bo Chhorvy – five women land rights activists – were arrested today, while peacefully petitioning for the release of other Boeung Kak lake activists arrested over the weekend. Boeung Kak lake, in the heart of Phnom Penh, has been the site of major `urban development’, which means mass evictions. And women have been the heart of the Boeung Kak lake pro-democracy, women’s rights, community rights, land rights movements.

These arrests take place against the backdrop of the recent women garment worker demonstrations across Cambodia, and the State response of criminalization and repression of public dissent and gathering. Women workers have been protesting for over a year. In many ways, they have been protesting for decades.

This is the face of Cambodian `stability’ and `development’: women facing mass eviction, women facing super exploitation. In both instances, the logic has followed the gender of sacrifice. Women must give up land and lives for `the good of the nation.’ Around the world, this is a familiar tune, the song women as silver or diamond, and the women of Cambodia reject it, as they have for decades.

At one of the intersections of land rights, workers’ rights, and women’s rights stands Mu Sochua.

As government forces attacked women garment workers, over the weekend, Mu Sochua, an opposition Member of Parliament, explained and contextualized. She explained that the workers’ demonstration were about a living wage and about democratic governance. She explained that, for the first time, all the trade unions had joined together and had joined together with the Cambodia National Rescue Party. When the State fired its AK47s, it took aim at both labor and democracy, and the heart of those movements, this weekend as so often before, is women workers, organizers, and advocates.

According to Mu Sochua, “The workers are now hiding. They’re living in fear. Do you want to wear clothes made by people who live in fear? With the wages they get today, they can’t even get three nutritious meals in a day. … Does the international community want to continue to support this kind of dictatorship … and support international buyers who make billions while our workers are deprived of basic rights?”

Mu Sochua has been posing the question, and pushing the crisis, of human rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, democracy in Cambodia for a long time. Sochua has been targeted by the State and has kept on keeping on. She led the struggle against the hyper-exploitation and abuse of Cambodian women and girls working as domestic workers in Malaysia. She connected the development logic of landgrabbing within Cambodia to the export of women workers by Cambodia. Sochua founded Khemera, the first women’s rights organization and the “first indigenous NGO” in modern Cambodia. She has faced imprisonment and worse, and much of this while a sitting Member of Parliament.

Throughout, Mu Sochua’s message has been clear. Democracy matters. Women matter. Justice matters. Cambodia matters. The garment factories of Cambodia have been reaping mass profits while cutting workers’, women workers’, salaries. The State has been claiming democracy while ignoring the will of the people, in development projects for the rich, in industrial production, in national elections. Do you want to support dictatorship, political, economic, and `developmental’? In Cambodia, the women are saying, “No!”

(Photo Credit: Lauren Crothers/The Cambodia Daily)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Bo Chhorvy, Cambodia, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, Mu Sochua, Phan Chhunreth, Song Srey Leap, Tep Vanny, women workers, Yorm Bopha

Labor, Migration, and the Movement to Stop the Traffic in Women

December 10, 2013 by Roxana Galusca 3 Comments

The traffic in women (or sex trafficking, as it is usually called) has gained central attention in the humanitarian world of nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations. The emergence of sex trafficking as the ultimate humanitarian crisis has led to an uncritical, melodramatic discourse. Governmental and non-governmental organizational rhetoric posits women and children as the main protagonists in a tale of capture, rescue, and redemption. Slogans such as “Free the slaves,” “End slavery,” and the authenticity-promising “Sex trafficking through the eyes of survivors,” prod audiences to learn about human trafficking and embark on rescue campaigns, by donating to anti-trafficking causes or by founding anti-trafficking NGOs.

Human trafficking (sex trafficking included) is a serious problem. What is unrealistic and uncompassionate is anti-trafficking activists’ presentation of trafficking in a political and economic vacuum, and the resultant erasure of capitalist socioeconomics, including labor migration and trade globalization. The Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) sums up the problem best: “Don’t talk to me about sewing machines. Talk to me about workers’ rights.” The slogan refers to the frequent brothel raids undertaken by western humanitarians, raids that result in the so-called rehabilitation of sex workers as employees in the textile industry. Rejecting their easy subsumption under the logic of capitalist accumulation, sex workers mobilize the language of rehab only to reinvest it with their own struggles as workers and women living in deeply racialized and inequitable local and global economies. The APNSW re-channels the trafficking conversation into debates about labor exploitation, in the process recognizing sex work as a legitimate part of the labor sector, as well as situating human trafficking in the broader context of work migration.

So who are the sex trafficked? According to most anti-trafficking activists, the story is simple: the sex trafficked are non-western women and children coming from poverty-stricken places and desperate to move west for a better life. Enter pimps, traffickers, and organized criminal groups who pry on desperation and poverty. The poster child of anti-trafficking campaigns is the naïve and innocent young woman or girl — unfamiliar with capitalist transactions and ignorant of the perils of immigration — beaten into prostitution, her body a living testimony to the cruelty and inhumanity of the sex industry. The reality of migration is messier and less straightforward. As scholars and activists Laura Augustín, Jo Doezema, Kamala Kempadoo, among others, have shown, women migrate for a variety of reasons (poverty being only one of them) and go through a variety of situations that rarely resemble the absolute captivity envisioned by mass media.

The easy equation of sex trafficking and sex work jeopardizes anti-trafficking initiatives. Sex workers, not anti-trafficking activists, are more successful at fighting forced prostitution. The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee in Sonagachi, the largest red-light district in Kolkata, India, is a network of sex workers who take upon themselves to locate underage sex workers or those workers who are in the trade against their will. Committee’s success in removing sex workers forced into prostitution should represent a lesson for the anti-trafficking movement. Despite evidence to the contrary, however, anti-trafficking scholars and activists continue to discount sex workers as reliable allies in the fight against human trafficking.

The misguided conflation between trafficking and prostitution has had serious effects on AIDS prevention programs. The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR requires all organizations that receive PEPFAR funding to oppose prostitution and trafficking, both seen as equally oppressive. This anti-prostitution pledge has had negative effects, such as forcing the closure of AIDS prevention programs geared towards sex workers. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the provision as unconstitutional.

Equally pernicious are the law enforcement and rescue paradigms that characterize current approaches to sex trafficking. In 2004, the U.S. Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General created the Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center (HSTC), a center that brings together officers and investigators from the FBI, CIA, and the Homeland Security to combat the traffic in women. The makeup of the Center mirrors the State Department’s punitive anti-immigration approach to human trafficking. The law enforcement approach relies on raids of red light districts and indiscriminate arrests of sex workers. The migrant women rescued during these raids have two options: return to their countries or testify against their so-called traffickers. Following the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Section 103.8, women must also prove that they suffered “severe forms of trafficking” in order to qualify for the T-Visa that enables them to remain in the United States.

Returning to the APNSW, one is puzzled by the exclusion of issues of labor and migration. What would change if activists were to heed the APNSW slogan and consider the rights of women as workers in a globalized capitalist economy. What if anti-trafficking activists acknowledged the fight of migrant women and sex workers for decent work, respect, and social inclusion? While this alternative is unlikely to dominate the anti-trafficking community too soon, the prospect of a justice paradigm centered on labor and migration will continue to inspire migrant workers, sex workers, and their allies.

(Photo Credit: Twitter / Lela Who)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, India, labor, migration, PEPFAR, prison, sex workers, trafficking, women workers