Category Archives: Workers’ rights

‘Illegal’ extradition of Bahraini dissident from Serbia calls Interpol’s role into question

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Abuse of the policing body’s ‘red notice’ system is blamed as an activist is forced to return to life in prison in the Gulf state

Marko Štambuk arrived at Belgrade district prison on a Monday morning in late January, only to be told his client was no longer inside. “Immediately I knew something had happened,” he said.

Štambuk, a lawyer, had spent the previous Friday frantically obtaining an injunction from the European court of human rights (ECHR) demanding Serbian authorities halt the extradition of his client, Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali, a Bahraini dissident. This banned the Serbian authorities from extraditing Ali until late February, and warned them that doing so would constitute a rare breach of the European convention on human rights.

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Indian supplier to UK fashion brands agrees to pay £3m in unpaid wages

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Shahi Exports, which makes clothes for the UK high street, has agreed to pay staff minimum wage and arrears

India’s largest garment company has paid out an estimated £3m in unpaid wages to tens of thousands of workers, after two years of refusing to pay the legal minimum wage.

Last month Shahi Exports, which supplies dozens of international brands, agreed to pay nine months of back pay to about 80,000 workers, with further payments expected in the coming months that will increase the total paid back to workers to £7m.

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‘A bad dream’: Nepalis who made UK’s PPE speak out on claims of abusive working conditions

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Glove manufacturer Supermax has repeatedly won NHS contracts during the pandemic, despite claims of forced labour. Now, a group of former workers are seeking justice

“I don’t have any dreams for the future because every dream depends on money,” says Resham, a 45-year-old from Banke, a district in Nepal bordering the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. “Time is passing and I’m getting older. Whatever comes my way, I will face it and go ahead with life.”

Last year, Resham returned to Nepal after spending 10 years working at Supermax, a company producing medical gloves in Malaysia. In October, the US banned imports from Supermax based on evidence “that indicates the use of forced labour”, and the month after, Canada terminated its contracts. The UK, meanwhile, has named the British subsidiary of Supermax as an approved supplier in a new £6bn contract for gloves for NHS workers.

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Revolutionary roads: how the army tried to crush Yangon’s most anti-coup district

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Hlaing Thayar was at the centre of Myanmar’s protests, but brutal crackdowns and the collapse of the local garment industry have taken their toll

As Thitsar* walked through her neighbourhood one December morning, she was struck by its emptiness. The bamboo shacks that line the streets of Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial township on the outskirts of Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, lay in tatters, overgrown with weeds. The vendors who once weaved through traffic had vanished, as had many of the informal settlements where they lived and the roadside tea shops where they gathered.

Streets that had once resounded with chants for democracy were now eerily silent.

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Allegations of worker exploitation at ‘world’s greatest show’ in Dubai

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Migrant workers employed at Expo 2020 allege confiscated passports, racial discrimination and withheld wages

Security guards, cleaners and hospitality staff at Dubai’s Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are allegedly working in highly abusive conditions that may amount to forced labour, according to a human rights group.

Migrant workers employed at the international fair in the UAE – taking place now after being delayed by Covid – allege they have been forced to pay illegal recruitment fees, suffered racial discrimination and had wages withheld and passports confiscated, said the report by Equidem.

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US bans imports of disposable gloves from Ansell supplier in Malaysia over allegations of forced labour

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YTY Group accused of ‘deception, intimidation and debt bondage’, says it is ‘working to improve conditions of migrant workers’

US authorities have banned disposable gloves from a manufacturer in Malaysia over allegations it uses forced labour, sending the share price of global protective equipment group Ansell into a tailspin.

The customs and border protection unit of the US Department of Homeland Security said it had “information that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor in YTY Group’s manufacturing operations” and banned the importation of gloves made by the company.

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Fruit pickers lured to Portugal by the dream of a ‘raspberry passport’

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Farm workers from south Asia describe exploitative conditions at the heart of Europe’s soft fruits industry

Three days after Sagar* arrived as a worker in Portugal from Nepal, he began to worry he had made a terrible mistake. “I had expectations to get good work, good money,” he says. “But the reality was different.”

The only job Sagar, 21, could find was on one of the country’s berry farms in Odemira, a rural region on the south-west coast. Earning less than the legal minimum wage to work 16-hour days in 40C heat, he knows he is being exploited. But quitting could jeopardise his residency application – and that’s a risk he cannot afford to take.

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Workers paid less than minimum wage to pick berries destined for UK supermarkets

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Exclusive: Workers in Portugal picking berries ending up on the shelves of Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Tesco allege exploitative conditions

  • Photographs by Francesco Brembati for the Guardian

Farm workers in Portugal appear to have been working illegally long hours picking berries destined for Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose for less than the minimum wage, according to a Guardian investigation.

Speaking anonymously, for fear of retribution from their employers, workers claimed the hours listed on their payslips were often fewer than the hours they had actually worked.

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‘No running water’: foreign workers criticise UK farm labour scheme

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Government report on post-Brexit recruitment finds staff citing no health and safety equipment, racism and unsafe accommodation

Seasonal workers in the UK on a post-Brexit pilot scheme to harvest fruit and vegetables were subjected to “unacceptable” welfare conditions, according to a government review.

Issues cited by workers included a lack of health and safety equipment, racism, and accommodation without any bathrooms, running water or kitchens.

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‘They want to remove us and take the rock’, say Zimbabweans living near Chinese-owned mines

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As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted land

A convoy of trucks laden with huge black granite rocks trundles along the dusty pathway as a group of villagers look on grimly.

Every day more than 60 trucks take granite for export along this rugged road through Nyamakope village in the district of Mutoko, 90 miles east of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

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‘They are fed up’: US labor organizing rises in 2021 after decades of decline

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Workers went on strike and pushed union drives in record numbers after corporations made giant pandemic profits

In 2021 workers appear to have had enough.

Amid constant claims from some industries of labor shortages as the economy recovers from Covid-19 shutdowns, workers have been pushing employers and elected officials to raise wages, improve working conditions and benefits such as paid sick leave through walkouts, protests, rallies and strikes.

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‘Worst fashion wage theft’: workers go hungry as Indian suppliers to top UK brands refuse to pay minimum wage

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Shortfall of 16p a day leaves children living on just rice as suppliers to Nike, Zara and H&M in Karnataka underpay by estimated £41m

Garment workers making clothes for international brands in Karnataka, a major clothing production hub in India, say their children are going hungry as factories refuse to pay the legal minimum wage in what is claimed to be the biggest wage theft to ever hit the fashion industry.

More than 400,000 garment workers in Karnataka have not been paid the state’s legal minimum wage since April 2020, according to an international labour rights organisation that monitors working conditions in factories.

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Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila

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Improving migrant workers’ lives in Qatar | Letter

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Faha Al-Mana responds to a report on allegations of exploitation and abuse by migrant workers in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup

Your report (‘We have fallen into a trap’: Qatar’s World Cup dream is a nightmare for hotel staff, 18 November) fails to acknowledge the progress Qatar has made to improve living and working standards for foreign workers, including those in the hospitality sector.

The impact of Qatar’s reforms is best highlighted through its numbers: over 240,000 workers have successfully changed jobs since barriers were removed in September 2020; more than 400,000 have directly benefited from the new minimum wage; improvements to the wage protection system now protect 96% of eligible workers from wage abuse; and hundreds of thousands of workers have left Qatar and returned without permission from their employer since exit permits were abolished.

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The road to reform: have things improved for Qatar’s World Cup migrant workers?

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A year before kick off, workers claim companies are refusing to enforce sweeping new labour laws created to stamp out human rights abuses

When Qatar won the bid to host the World Cup in 2010, the triumphant Gulf state unveiled plans to host the most spectacular of all World Cup tournaments and began an ambitious building plan of state-of-the-art stadiums, luxury hotels and a sparkling new metro.

Yet, over the next decade, the brutal conditions in which hundreds of thousands of migrant workers toiled in searing heat to build Qatar’s World Cup vision has been exposed, with investigations into the forced labour , debt bondage and worker death toll causing international outrage.

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Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

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‘We have fallen into a trap’: for hotel staff Qatar’s World Cup dream is a nightmare

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Exclusive: Seduced by salary promises, workers at Fifa-endorsed hotels allege they have been exploited and abused

When Fifa executives step on to the asphalt in Doha next November for the start of the 2022 World Cup finals, their next stop is likely to be the check-in at one of Qatar’s glittering array of opulent hotels, built to provide the most luxurious possible backdrop to the biggest sporting event on earth.

Now, with a year to go before the first match, fans who want to emulate the lifestyle of the sporting elite can head to Fifa’s hospitality website to plan their stay in the host nation. There they can scroll through a catalogue of exclusive, Fifa-endorsed accommodation, from boutique hotels to five-star resorts.

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Pride and poverty: Qatar’s World Cup fever tempered by legacy of labour abuses

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With a year to go, the new stadiums, hotels and roads are finished and locals are excited, but the low-paid workers who built them are ambivalent

When asked if he’s looking forward to the World Cup, Mohamed, an Indian salesman, grins as he casts his fishing line off the promenade in the heart of Qatar’s capital, Doha. “Very much,” he says. “I love cricket!”

With a year to go until the football World Cup kicks off, Mohamed’s response may have the event’s organisers worried. After all, about 70% of Qatar’s population are from the cricket-loving subcontinent.

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The men who built Qatar’s World Cup dream deserve some of David Beckham’s pay packet | Pete Pattisson

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The ex-England star’s deal for his ambassador role is in marked contrast to the wages of the host nation’s migrant workers

I doubt Nirmala Pakrin knows who David Beckham is, but she knows about Qatar.

Her husband, Rupchandra Rumba, a 24-year-old from Nepal, died in 2019, gasping for breath in a squalid camp for labourers on the outskirts of Doha, while working for a contractor on one of the new World Cup stadiums.

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Global heating ‘may lead to epidemic of kidney disease’

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Deadly side-effect of heat stress is threat to rising numbers of workers in hot climates, doctors warn

Chronic kidney disease linked to heat stress could become a major health epidemic for millions of workers around the world as global temperatures increase over the coming decades, doctors have warned.

More research into the links between heat and CKDu – chronic kidney disease of uncertain cause – is urgently needed to assess the potential scale of the problem, they have said.

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