CONDITIONS FOR OVERSEAS EMPLOYEES

Working Conditions for Overseas Employees

Working Conditions for Overseas Employees

Introduction

Ninety million people migrate for work globally every year and an increasing percentage of those workers are moving between emerging economies, rather than to industrialized nations. Otherwise known as South-South labour migrants, these workers are filling jobs in manufacturing, agriculture, construction and service industries in countries like Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt. Migrant workers provide a cost-effective and hardworking labour force in labour-intensive industries, but they are also vulnerable, isolated and often heavily indebted. Reports of abuse, forced labour and human trafficking are increasingly common. Overall, current regulation in emerging economies largely fails to adequately protect foreign contract workers (Gugler, 1995, 541).

As a result, migrant workers have become akin to other sourced commodities, with a premium on price over rights and protections. Systemic change is required to create the conditions under which labour migrants can safely move from one emerging country to another, contributing to the economic growth of both their origin and destination countries as well as their own personal livelihoods (Befort, 2009, 61). International companies1 are largely unaware of violations against migrant workers and the shortfalls in regulatory protections. As the drivers of the global demand for labour, businesses are in a unique position to affect sustained change through improved standards in their supply chains and enhanced engagement with policymakers and other key stakeholders (Budd, 2010, 201).

Plan of Action for Companies

International stakeholders are increasingly holding businesses accountable for the treatment of migrant workers in their supply chains, much in the same way as other labour rights issues in contract facilities. Media and civil society attention to migrant worker treatment in numerous countries has uncovered egregious labour violations, bringing the topic onto many companies' agendas for the first time. Migrant workers are valued for numerous attributes including: filling local labour shortages; lower wages; limited taxes and social security payments; reduced likelihood of absenteeism and low turnover; and willingness to work overtime. However, migrant workers also possess enhanced vulnerabilities, as illustrated by the common violations described adjacent. These violations create unique needs of migrant workers relative to national workers, needs which too often go unaddressed in global supply chains. To date, the reaction from business to such violations has been based almost entirely on risk avoidance in particular geographies. Such reactive policies can be ineffective and have limited impact on issues that are global in scope (Laycock, 2002, 566). Moreover, policies introduced under such circumstances can prove.

In the future, BSR encourages companies to examine the South-South labour migration system as a whole, and to begin to address the systemic issues throughout their own supply chains and beyond in order to achieve meaningful and sustainable impact on migrant workers' rights protections.

The First Step: Educate Yourself

The first step is to identify the presence of migrant workers in your supply chains, and then to investigate the degree to which these workers' human rights are being protected (Kritz, 1993, ...