Category Archives: Workers’ rights

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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‘You shouldn’t work if your kidneys are failing – but people can’t afford not to’

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Global heating is having a deadly impact on Nicaragua’s sugar cane workers, who toil in temperatures of up to 45C

At the Sacuanjoche clinic in Chinandega, the largest city in Nicaragua’s sugar cane-growing region, nephrologist Nelson Garcia does the rounds of his patients. Many are suffering from chronic kidney disease (CKD); most fell ill while working long hours under the beating sun in the nearby sugar cane fields, and now have damaged and failing kidneys.

“People arrive with a host of symptoms here; some are really nauseous, or vomiting, or have severe diarrhoea,” Garcia says, adding that although unsure exactly how many people he has treated for heat stress and related kidney diseases this year, he knows it is a lot. “Others are physically weakened, tired, or have nasty muscular cramps, while others complain about having no appetite or libido – there really are so many symptoms.”

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‘The stakes couldn’t be higher’: GE urged to invest in green US jobs

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Labor and environmental groups are demanding that General Electric stop offshoring jobs and invest in renewable energy

Kevin Smith, of Salem, Virginia, worked at General Electric for about 20 years before the town’s plant was shut down at the end of 2019, and the work moved to a factory in India.

“It was a total shock because of how things had been going, with all the overtime we were working, everything just seemed great, like there was no way this was happening. All I wanted to do was wake up, that I had a nightmare, but that wasn’t the case,” said Smith, 50, who was one of about 265 GE workers who were laid off due to the closure.

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Revealed: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe

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Thousands of outsourced workers on inferior pay and conditions to fulfil demand for cheap meat, Guardian investigation shows

Read more: ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry

Meat companies across Europe have been hiring thousands of workers through subcontractors, agencies and bogus co-operatives on inferior pay and conditions, a Guardian investigation has found.

Workers, officials and labour experts have described how Europe’s £190bn meat industry has become a global hotspot for outsourced labour, with a floating cohort of workers, many of whom are migrants, with some earning 40% to 50% less than directly employed staff in the same factories.

The Guardian has uncovered evidence of a two-tier employment system with workers subjected to sub-standard pay and conditions to fulfil the meat industry’s need for a replenishable source of low-paid, hyper-flexible workers.

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Top Thai union leader ‘targeted’ with jail for rail safety campaign

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Case is ‘major blow’ in country with weak workers’ rights and puts trade deals in question, says Human Rights Watch

One of Thailand’s most prominent union leaders is facing three years in prison for his role in organising a railway safety campaign, in a case described as the biggest attack on organised labour in the country in decades.

Rights advocates say the case involving Sawit Kaewvarn, president of the State Railway Union of Thailand, will have a chilling effect on unions and threatens to further weaken workers’ rights in the country.

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US restaurant workers are getting stiffed. It’s time for employers to pay up | Gene Marks

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The tipped wage scale allows restaurants to pay workers less than the legal minimum wage. Some unscrupulous owners nevertheless try to get away with paying even less

This may come as a shock to some but there’s a different minimum wage for restaurant employees than for workers in most other industries. In Pennsylvania, for example, that minimum wage is just $2.83 an hour.

Every statein the US has these “tipped wages”. According to minimumwage.org, the tipped wage is as little as $2.13 an hour in 19 states and as high as $10 in New York.

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‘No one may be compelled’: Zimbabwe unions go to court over Covid jabs

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Firms accused of ‘rounding up workers like animals’ for compulsory vaccination as country acts to stop spread of virus

Thousands of workers in Zimbabwe have been told they will face the sack if they refuse to be vaccinated with one of the Covid-19 jabs, according to the country’s biggest worker’s union.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), an amalgamation of 35 labour unions representing 189,000 people, has accused employers of infringing workers’ rights, saying there is no law providing for compulsory vaccinations. It has taken the government and six companies to court for ordering employees to have the vaccine, arguing that the companies are “taking the law into their own hands” by forcing the issue.

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Where’s Edelyn? The search for the Filipina maid who vanished in Saudi Arabia

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Mired in debt, the mother of three left to work as part of the Gulf’s kafala labour system. She was last heard from in 2015 and her family want answers

Edelyn Eborda Astudillo wanted a better life for her three children. The 36-year-old from Mariveles in the Philippines, and her husband, Crisanto, had been unemployed for six years and things were getting desperate. So, in early 2015, Edelyn made the decision to travel to the Middle East to get a job as a domestic worker.

After applying to a Philippine recruitment agency, Manumoti Manpower, Edelyn was soon on a flight abroad. She was placed in a house to work for a couple in Taif, in the west of Saudi Arabia.

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Qatar has failed to explain up to 70% of migrant worker deaths in past 10 years – Amnesty

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World Cup host has not properly investigated fatalities, rights group says, citing concerns over heat stress and safety

World Cup host Qatar has failed to investigate the deaths of thousands of migrant workers in the past decade, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

The human rights organisation said the majority of migrant worker deaths in Qatar are attributed to “natural causes”, cardiac or respiratory failure; classifications which are “meaningless” without the underlying cause of death explained, according to one expert cited.

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Brisbane Easi food delivery driver claims he was fired for raising concerns about pay and safety

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The Transport Workers Union has taken the case to the Fair Work Commission, arguing the driver qualifies as an employee, not a contractor

A food delivery driver who was allegedly sacked by Chinese food delivery company Easi after trying to raise concerns about pay and worker safety, has had his case taken to the Fair Work Commission by the Transport Workers’ Union.

According to the Fair Work claim, Lawrence Du, 35, started working for Easi in Brisbane in early June, but was sacked in early August, he claims after making inquiries with other workers about work safety, wages and other conditions.

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Labour says PPE contracts must not go to Xinjiang firms that use forced workers

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Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province

Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.

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