8:18 AM Apr 18, 1997

LABOUR: TEMPORARY MIGRANT WORKERS NEED PROTECTION

Geneva 18 Apr (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- More and more countries needing workers are turning to "temporary migrants" as source of cheap, unskilled or semi-skilled labour, and on best estimates their numbers run to some 42 million, with some 44-55 million dependants.

These workers face a constant danger of exploitation, often sacrificing family and home life for low pay, poor working conditions, and inadequate job security, says the International Labour Office document prepared for a tripartite expert group meeting here 21-25 April.

The meeting, convened by the ILO Governing Body's Employment and Social Policy Committee, is a first step in a process that this could ultimately lead to an ILO Convention or Conventions to deal with the problems and protection of such workers.

The number of economically active people living outside their countries, the ILO adds, may be greater than the 42 million, if refugees and asylum-seekers and illegal workers are included.

In addition to sub-standard working conditions, migrants may be put up in substandard housing at exorbitant rates, at the mercy of unscrupulous employers to whom they are tied for the duration of their admission. They may be also obliged to contribute to social security funds without ever receiving anything in return.

The activities and rights of guest workers are as a rule, restricted, atleast initially. Despite the low levels of social protection, they are often left to their own devices once the work is finished and even prevented from moving to non-seasonal employment.

And temporary admission of non-nationals for work has undoubted short- and long-term benefits for a migrant-receiving country, although it may also result in management problems concerning the return of workers - with the respective government being held responsible by the migrants' country of origin for any maltreatment of such workers.

The benefit to the receiving country arise from the fact that a vacant job can be filled immediately; wages or salaries are unlikely to suffer upward pressure; infrastructural expenditure on housing or schools may be much reduced compared to national workers or permanent foreign migrants.

For migrant workers these represent the other side of the coin. For e.g. where family migration or reunification does not take place, promiscuity may ensue with adverse effects on safety and health of migrants.

Even some of the economic benefits (to the receiving country) may be undermined by potential productivity losses or unfair advantages to certain employers allowed to employ foreigners while others are not.

A United Nations brokered legal instrument, "The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families" was concluded in 1990.

The ILO office says this convention, aiming to extend protection to categories of (temporary) migrant workers, has not entered into force and is unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future due to its complexity and all encompassing scope.

The UN instrument needs atleast 20 ratifications, and has so far garnered only eight, all from the migrant labour exporting countries. None of the countries that take in such migrant labour (and thus would have to undertake obligations to protect them) have so far ratified or shown any inclination of doing so.

Among the major and significant temporary migrant labour receiving countries are the US, Europe and Japan, some of the Gulf states, as also some in South-East Asia (like Malaysia and Singapore).

ILO officials explain that the UN convention was concluded on the initiative of developing countries, and sought to cover all kinds of such migrant labour and their problems, and thus has not attracted any ratifications.

But given the record of the United States (of non-ratifying ILO convention, except for a handful, and that too not the core conventions), it is not at all clear that any new ILO instrument would attract ratification of the US, European or other migrant labour receiving countries either.

And while in the past the US could atleast contend that its domestic laws and constitution provide some guarantees, recent US legislation, hitting both legal and illegal immigrants, show that protection of rights of temporary migrant workers is as much a problem there.

The ILO has some conventions that cover migrants under permanent settlement policies or those involving admission to jobs in all walks of life, but subject to specified time-limits (characteristic of West European countries who were seeking 'guest workers'):

* The Migration for Employment Convention (revised) of 1949 (that came out of the post-war European situation and to facilitate transfer of surplus from Europe to other continents);

* The Equality of Treatment (Social Security) Convention of 1962;

* Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975; and

* Maintenance of Social Security rights Convention of 1982.

But none of these cover the temporary migrant workers and their problems.

Legislators, administrators, employers, judges and other policy-makers, ILO says, have to balance the rights and obligations of nationals against those of non-nationals. They must weigh nationals' legitimate expectations for preferences against possible inequities suffered by migrant workers and members of their families.

The ILO does not comment or explain why it is illegitimate to balance interests of national vs foreign capital (as a factor of production), but legitimate to do so for labour as another factor.

It however says labour is not a commodity, either within countries or when it crosses borders. Inequities are particularly likely to be present when non-nationals are admitted temporarily for the purpose of fixed term employment: migrants may be put in substandard housing at exorbitant rents, be at the mercy of unscrupulous employers to whom they are tied for the duration of their admission, be forced to contribute to social security funds without ever receiving anything in return, and so forth.

Among migrant workers having now no protection are seasonal workers; project-tied workers (mostly skilled or unskilled), often admitted under a collective visa or individual visa tied to the employer permitted to undertake a project on their territory (as in Germany); special purpose workers - a catchall category of non-national wage or salary earners admitted temporarily for defined transitory functions or work for a limited duration providing clerical, commercial, technical, academic or highly specialized skills.

The cross-border provision of services by self-employed workers, involving physical movement, ILO notes is another category of growing importance, particularly after the Uruguay Round accord on trade in services including through movement of natural persons for delivery of such services.

The ILO report notes that the trend toward temporary employment prevails irrespective of geography or levels of economic development of receiving countries.

In Canada, a traditional immigration country, number of temporary worker visas quadrupled during the last decade - with the average inflow of temporary workers becoming 2-1/2 times larger than permanent immigrants or 234000 temporary workers to 114000 immigrant workers. Similarly, in the US the number of non-immigrant workers increased from 340000 in 1990 to 413000 in 1995. And if business workers were included, the number of working, non-immigrant arrivals would have climbed from 3 to 3.6 million. A similar pattern also prevails in Australia, another traditional immigration country.

France has about 100000 permanent immigrants, with 80000 of them from outside the EU, while temporary workers include some 11000 seasonal workers from Morocco and Poland. Germany has about 150000 seasonal workers and another 100000 foreign guest and contract workers.

Mexico, a middle income country, admits each year about 70,000 workers from Central America for seasonal work in agriculture.

The Pacific Rim, where there is hardly any permanent migrant-for-work schemes, has come a relatively newer destination for migrants.

Japan in early 1990s, has established an elaborate system of more temporary openings for highly qualified foreigners and persons of Japanese descent. South Korea has developed a similar training-with-employment scheme for the small- and medium-sized enterprises, and the numbers of have trebled in recent years reaching 136000 in 1996.

Private, fee-charging recruitment agencies are rapidly coming to dominate the organization of temporary migration: as much as 80% of all movements of labour from Asian to Arab countries are handled by private agencies.

In Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, the private agencies dominate the organization of migration for employment abroad, "accounting for anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of all migrant workers hired."

While the private sector has an undoubted efficiency and mobility in matching workers to jobs, comments the ILO report, it has a number of undesirable consequences including fraud, exorbitant fees and unacceptable conditions of employment for the migrant workers.

The effect of these private agencies have been specially hard on unskilled and non-technical workers.

The expert group meeting is aimed at providing guidance on how governments could improve protection of migrant workers in temporary employment and those recruited by private agents.