moonriver posted on Mar 08, 2009
| views: 361
Today, I am chatting and laughing and engaged in cheerful banter with a whole roomful of girls.
They are eight in all—young women of small physical build and timid manners. Years of hard work and hunger are etched on their weary faces and prematurely wrinkled hands.
They are migrant workers, just a small number among dozens who had been summarily fired from their work in a nearby factory and thrown out of their factory dormitories.
They have nowhere else to go, and thus they sought refuge in this shelter for homeless and jobless women. They’ve been staying here for more than two weeks now.
Since I arrived in this city, I’ve been closely in contact with an non-government, non-profit, voluntary-service organization that works among indigenous people and migrant workers who live here in large numbers.
A couple of weeks ago, this organization (let’s call it VSO) emailed me about a meeting of migrant workers at which I’m supposed to give a talk. A few days ago, my VSO contact (let’s call her Kristy) asked me to meet her at this shelter where the eight were staying.
I wasn’t supposed to be involved in the case of the women workers. I was supposed to only see Kristy there, to finalize the details of the meeting.
But I arrived an hour early, and Kristy called up with a sudden change of plans. I was to meet her much later that day for dinner at her flat, a long bus ride away.
Thus, I had five hours to kill in the meantime.
The shelter consisted of a small one-desk office and reception room, a recreation hall, and living quarters. It occupied one floor of a nondescript five-storey building in the old business district of the city.
I decided to meet the eight women staying there. Or rather, they got wind of the information that a researcher or journalist was visiting the facility, and asked the administrator to allow them to see me.
We sat down in the narrow reception room. Here, they told me their story of exploitation.
They were recruited from a neighboring country, by a labor-provider agency that promised them the equivalent of 170 US dollars per month as basic salary, 2 USD for the first two hours of overtime work, plus additional benefits. At least they signed contracts that said as much.
In exchange, each one paid the labor recruiting agency with 1,000 USD, which they obtained as electronic-cash loans, payable against deductions from their salaries for the next several months.
Upon arrival in this city, however, a local labor subcontractor took them in and forced them to sign new contracts in a language they couldn’t understand. It was only months later that they would discover that they were being paid a much lower amount, on a variable daily piece-work basis, at an undefined rate per piece, and also at lower overtime hourly rates.
A few of them who refused to sign the new contract were promptly sent back to their country of origin, penniless and deeper in debt by at least 1,000 USD.
The majority, however, decided to take the risk of continuing work as migrant laborers under a revised contract they barely understood, and with hardly any protection from an alien set of labor laws that barely applied to them.
They didn’t know it yet then, but they were bound to become meat for the industrial kill, fleshy carcass for the vulture capitalists of this land.
The workers have spent many months of filing and following up complaints with the government’s labor agency. Just last month, after a long period of waiting, more than a dozen of the most vocal complainants found themselves fired from work and thrown out of their dormitory rooms.
They are pursuing a legal case against their employer and againt the labor recruiters, even as they struggle to subsist from day to day in the shelter.
Oh, the stories they told me in that tiny reception room of this small shelter.
Of the feudal abuses in the rural villages they left behind.
Of the multifarious kinds of swindles and exactions they suffered from labor recruiters.
Of the squalid and dreary living conditions in the factories they found themselves in.
And of the utter loneliness and helplessness they feel living here at the shelter, especially on those days when the subsistence allowance they receive is not even enough to buy daily necessities like coffee, sugar, soap, and toothpaste.
Most especially when they don’t receive any word from their families and co-workers.
There are tens of thousands like them across Asia: victims of modern human trafficking, victims of modern wage slavery.
They are prisoners, confined within invisible walls built not by the penal system but by archaic social institutions.
But today, I am chatting and laughing and basking in cheerful banter with the eight girls and VSO members who try to provide them with a daily support network.
We spent most of the day in a tree-lined park, meeting and talking with dozens of other migrant workers – many of them indigenous and impoverished peasants from neighboring countries—and shared what little food and drink we have.
They insist that, since I’m still technically a journalist, I should write news stories about them and have these stories published or aired.
I remind them that I’m no longer a working journalist, but someone on another mission, another advocacy.
But I promise them that I’ll do whatever I can to help their case, and to gather support from the other organizations I belong to.
In my last blog, I described myself these days as an indolent swine, lazily splashing mud at random as he kills time and watches pretty girls go by.
It isn’t exactly true, as you can see.
It’s days like these that remind me of the real reasons that I’m here for.
And it’s a special day like this that should remind us all of the sweat, the blood, the tears that incessantly flow, the real source of the fuel that runs the engines of society 24 hours a day, every day of the year—the source of the brightest lights of the world.
Today, of course, is March 8, International Working Women’s Day.
I haven’t forgotten.
I will never forget.
Comments
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CreativeWoman said on Mar 08, 2009....
This is a very touching post, Moon. You surely gave those women hope if not a little peace in the fact that someone listened to them.
CW
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quietone said on Mar 08, 2009....
Thank you moon for giving us a little more insight on how things are in these Asian countries. We hear, but we don't really understand I think. It is an eye opener. I am glad that you are the kind of person that takes the time to give these women a little reprieve in their lives, even if it was just a few hours... you gave them hope.
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moonriver said on Mar 08, 2009....
hi cw, quietone.
thank you for your comments.
we should be mostly thankful to a wide range of organizations, rights advocates, and volunteers who do the daily legwork of following up their cases, raising funds to keep such shelters and supply lines open, etc.
yes, i feel lucky just being there to be with them, and to support their cause (and case) in actual deed.
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Me-Myself&I said on Mar 08, 2009....
we need more folks like you in this world. we here in the usa have no idea how others in their country live.... our heads are up our butts. we think it is bad here in the states.... it never became good for others in these countries.
your compassion is to be praised! thank you for helping with whatever you do....just listening, spreading the "truth" and putting smiles are folks faces. your heart ....beautiful!
thank you too for the insight into the people you help and into what you do too!
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gingersoul said on Mar 08, 2009....
Moon.......me too. I thought about it yesterday. You know how i feel about it.
They are right....this is a story that should be published. But i know you will do whatever you can to help them.
And.... i didn't believe one single moment that you could spend so much time lazily and carefree, as you wrote in the other post....:-)
Its just stronger than you....the reasons why you do what you do are very clear (again) here.
Giornata della donna. 8 Marzo.
And now this woman has to run to pay her taxes. Talk about discrimination in the great Western hemisphere....we are still paid less than a man for the same amount of time and labor. -
beyondtheveil said on Mar 08, 2009....
mrmoon- Kruu has been writing about women lately and myself also. In a comment to her I mentioned the labor conditions in more 'civilized' countries from the industrial revolution through the early 20th century in America. The story of child labor is especially disturbing.
A few days ago I read an article about women enduring what you speak of centering around Thailand mostly.
I try hard to keep my view of humanity in a healthy form, but am constantly besieged by news and articles of what 'those who can', do to 'those who can't' and 'those who need'.
I envisioned the eight girls you spoke of and recieved the usual feelings of sadness, anger, and helplessness - and go on through the day in my nice house with plenty of food, a little more guilty, a little more dreary, sometimes thinking of the very rich over here that through greed helped place them in their plight.
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IAlone said on Mar 08, 2009....
Wow! That was very enlightening and beautifully written! I have read little on this subject but your blog has sparked my interest. Thank you! -
IAlone said on Mar 08, 2009....
Wow! That was very enlightening and beautifully written! I have read little on this subject but your blog has sparked my interest. Thank you! -
kruuyai said on Mar 08, 2009....
These types of labor scams are rampant in Mexico as well. Often, people put up huge sums of money, payable to a bank account which later disappears and can't be traced, and they are never sent to work at all, never leave the country. And when they do, just as in this case, it's for very little money. -
the_infernal_optimist said on Mar 08, 2009....
Ah, moon...such stories you have...they are fortunate if in nothing else, to have someone such as you as their voice beyond voices' normal reach.
Thank you for sharing their story with us. It angers me and breaks my heart that people are treated like that while others sit in oblivious comparative luxury, myself included. They deserve everything I have, and if it were within my power, they would have at least that much. They would be able to go to their families and not worry about how to scrape by. And it would never happen again to anyone else, because things would change...
~Infernal
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fragglesrock said on Mar 08, 2009....
what an awesome post...i bow to your awesomeness...for a long while i have been interested in learning more about human trafficking...when i first read of it a few years ago in an article i was utterly shocked and appalled that such things still happened (in my country also) thank you for the insight -
Lucytorial said on Mar 08, 2009....
it is sad that women are still being abused in this way, yet it is our capitalism that does it.
Women lose jobs here as multi corporates take their manufacturing to asia, creating demand for cheap labour, putting these women and their families at such risk.I hope..no I trust what you are doing their will help in the long run. -
secretlife said on Mar 08, 2009....
....the sweat, the blood, the tears that incessantly flow, the real source of the fuel that runs the engines of society 24 hours a day, every day of the year—the source of the brightest lights of the world.beautiful.
i'm sure your mom is smiling down on you; very proud.
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moonriver said on Mar 08, 2009....
hi memy.
i think american workers can see beyond their own day-to-day problems.
the u.s. has a long history of migrant (even migratory) labor, not to mention the earlier and more brutal forms of slave labor and coolie labor.
so there's actually a huge base of collective historical consciousness among workers and the public in your country to be sympathetic to the current problems of migrant laborers worldwide.
it's understandable, though that what tends to loom hugely in everyday life is the all- too negative picture of hordes of latin american and asian migrant laborers taking away jobs from the more established american labor force.
hi ginger.
yes, friend, i think i have some idea of the depth of your own sympathies for the issues of women, especially the problems of working women (not to mention the additional plight of single working mothers...)
it's weird, really, how employers use all the hoary and ancient arguments about macho superiority, to justify the practice of lower pay for women doing equal work--even in the more advanced countries of north america, europe, japan and anz.
i had wanted to write a series of articles about migrant workers, and send them to my "mother newspaper" (i still call it that fond name after nearly a year of my absence). but i feel i need more research to do justice to their issues. but the news is now being carried by some print and broadcast outlets.
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moonriver said on Mar 08, 2009....
hi mrbeyond and kruu.
yes, i had read your recent blogs and exchange of comments--well-thought and researched--on the various interrelated subjects of women's issues, labor rights, and the feminist movement.
i'm sorry if i had not much time to read them in detail and more carefully, and to participate in your exchanges. know that i can follow the main threads of discussion, and see where the gray areas remain.
i tend to shy away from theoretical and political discussions here at sc, not because i'm not interested or have no time in absolute terms, but perhaps the reason is the very opposite. i breathe the air of theory and drink the water of politics daily in real life--which is probably why my sc persona is more like a swine who wallows in pig slop, a monkey who plays word pranks on everyone, and calls it humor, haha.
march 8, though, is one date that so far i've never missed to blog about at sc. but even in this case, my writing remains very person-focused. like my march 2008 blog about a radio romance with a working woman, or my 2007 blogs about three woman that made me cry and the mirabal sisters aka las mariposas.
hi kruu, mexico and the smaller central american states seem to be the most direct labor pool for these kinds of scams because of their proximity to the u.s., to the "big apple." similar scams--basically a form of human trafficking and forced labor or wage slavery--can be seen all over, but particularly rampant in asia and africa.
some interesting facts:
* ILO estimates that of the 175 million migrants worldwide (2005 figure), about half are migrant workers.
* the same 2005 ILO study estimates 9.5 million victims of forced labor in asia alone.
some useful websites on this issue:
http://preventhumantrafficking.org/
http://issues.tigweb.org/migration
http://ucl.broward.edu/pathfinders/Migrant%20Workers.htm
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gingersoul said on Mar 08, 2009....
Moon.....thought you wouldn't mind if i posted these videos ......
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moonriver said on Mar 08, 2009....
hi ialone.
thanks for reading this blog and expressing interest in working women's issues.
i'll take a look at your blogs later today.
hi again ginger.
no, i wouldn't mind at all, sweet friend.
they are a perfect audio-visual window to the broader issues of VAW and women workers' rights.
i'll watch the clips later today...
hi infernal, fraggles, lucy, and secret.
in 5 minutes, i'll be proceeding to a meeting that will discuss exactly these issues.
i hope to get back again to this blog later today, and write individual replies to your comments (which i already read).
gotta go, friends.
indolent swine's gotta transform himself into a paddy-plodding water buffalo earlier than usual... ;-)
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GrapeKoolaid said on Mar 08, 2009....
But you gave them a voice here.
You may not consider this to be a big or an important step, but in a lot of ways, it is the most important step (among the fine many others you take, I'm sure).
After all, even a journey around the world but begins with a single step, does it not?
I admire your work, sir.
Here and elsewhere.
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MsStar39 said on Mar 08, 2009....
Moon thank you for the wonderful work that you are doing. -
phoeby said on Mar 09, 2009....
that type of social justice is one of the reasons why im studying what im studying...it sickens me but what was lovely to read is that those women are doing something to sort of advocate for change. i hope they can make some movement in the right direction for the entire region.phoeby -
PAPERBACKWRITER said on Mar 09, 2009....
Dearest moonie...
...I was choked reading this...made my eyes glistened with tears, as I was transported to a time 1993, to a place - UAE, where I met women from my home country, and other asian countries - also in a small gathering, in a small room...I was lucky...not so many were...
...maybe I will tell my story one of these days..
I feel so moved with your words, and a certain joy because I know there are people who want to make a difference...I hope someday soon, I could to...
You remain an inspiration, always.
<3
papel ~
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Hegemone said on Mar 09, 2009....
Moon, what a very informative and touching post. Its something that not a lot of people would have talked about. It should certainly not be forgotten. That was definitely some story to read, my head is still trying to wrap fully around it. Thank you for sharing this though! -
phoeby said on Mar 09, 2009....
oops 'in-justice' is what i meant! (musta been zoo hour when i wrote that!) -
moonriver said on Mar 09, 2009....
grape: thanks for the reminder.
requiesce in pace.
hi msstar, thanks for the kind words. march 11 isn't far off, and can i request a postponement? ... ;-)
hi phoeby, now you've got me curious about your field of study.
the organization that i gave the name VOS (not its real acronym) is a network with a near-global reach.
indeed, it has done and is doing a lot to address the plight of women workers.
i'm just a tiny drop in a huge bucket.
btw, zoo hour is good for the soul too... :-)
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moonriver said on Mar 09, 2009....
hi ate papel.
i'd be very interested to hear about stories of migrant workers drawn from your own experiences, my friend.
thank you for your ever-thoughtful comments.
hi hegemone.
the plight of migrant workers who fall into the status of victims of wage slavery, human-trafficking and similar abuses, is world-wide.
thanks for expressing interest in the issue.
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moonriver said on Mar 09, 2009....
hi infernal.
what i did that weekend was a tiny drop in a huge bucket of sympathy and support, my friend.
but yes, i would definitely like to do more support and advocacy for their cause.
we can all do our share in at least alleviating their plight.
hi fraggles.
many UN agencies are now grappling with the worldwide phenomenon, which increased under the era of WTO-led globalization.
but the work of UN agencies is simply not enough to stem the tide.
the root causes are systemic, so that all affected countries (both the supply-side and demand-side) should look at how their own economies and structural inequities might be aggravating the situation, and what reform policies and remedial measures should be put in place.
thanks for your nice comment, and let me bow to your awesomeness too, lady.
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moonriver said on Mar 10, 2009....
hi lucy.
what you mentioned is very true:
the migration of entire industries into countries with cheap-labor regimes has a double-edged-knife effect.
on one side, ANZ-based manufacturing suffers from job losses.
on the other side, sweatshop conditions and cheap migrant labor in many asian countries are most susceptible to the worst kinds of employer and recruiter abuses.
there is yet another adverse effect:
Australia and New Zealand themselves become susceptible to the entry of human trafficking operations to fill the vacuum created by industrial displacements and social disruptions: the arrival of hordes of asian sex workers, undocumenteds in the informal service sector, etc.
look at this UNCHR report, for example.
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MsStar39 said on Mar 10, 2009....
Moon I have been so looking forward to meeting on March 11, but
with the wonderful work that you are doing to help these poor women just make you that much more special.
A postponement is in order until you have the time.
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moonriver said on Mar 10, 2009....
hi secret.
your comment hits closest to home.
i wrote those specific lines at the end of this post, with one thought foremost in my mind: a chinese proverb that said, "women hold up half the sky."
it was sophie who taught me the proverb.
she had worked in china at one time under the auspices of a UN agency and a uk-based women's network.
she constantly reminded me (often to the point of nagging...lol) of how this proverb applied within a marriage, within a household, as well as within a still basically feudal society at large.
i knew all these in theory, of course.
but sophie -- she was (still is) a fierce fighter for women's rights at the gut and gutter levels, having experienced more directly than me the worse effects of poverty and deprivation on girls and young women.
(btw, maybe that was one huge reason why my father and mother instantaneously took to her and took her in as their own daughter. she went on to become much closer to them than i ever had. but this is for another blog.)
thanks for the nice words, my friend.
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moonriver said on Mar 10, 2009....
hi msstar.
i knew you'd understand.
i have prepared something for you on march 11, nevertheless.
it probably won't be a hot date as i had earlier imagined, but i hope it would still be interesting for you to read... ;-)
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MsStar39 said on Mar 10, 2009....
Moon how sweet you are, I was looking forward to that hot date but whatever you
do to replace it will be fine.
You do have a special way with words.
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Lucytorial said on Mar 10, 2009....
Yes I know, in every country you will find the deeds of greedy men with no morals or easily bribed ones.Its sad that these women struggle so and I do hope that in the light of what you do at some point it will benefit them, education can come in many forms but most of all it takes passion and correct direction (some fucking fu tzu saying) to really make a difference.btw we celebrate national womens day here on a different day but our local womens business club celebrated international womens day on the 11th. I could not attend as I was.... working. -
moonriver said on Mar 11, 2009....
msstar -- thank you very much. i know there will be other dates.
lucy -- i like the fucking fu-tzu saying that you paraphrased. nothing can substitute for passion and direction.
here where i am, some of the commemorative activities were held on the 7th and 9th (as well as on the 8th itself) because of different work skeds.
it really doesn't matter when, though, just as long as the spirit and expressions of unity are there.
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phoeby said on Mar 11, 2009....
hey there, glad to hear the issue is exposed and on the agenda...oh yeah, zoo-moments keep me on my toes that's for sure!phoeby -
moonriver said on Mar 17, 2009....
hi phoeby.
sorry i missed replying to this.
and also the mian/men noodle recipes... ;-)
later, my friend.
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