How About Some Justice for Those Risking Their Safety Putting Thanksgiving Dinner on Our Tables?

By Charlotte Williams
Alternet, November 24, 2010

Turkey workers, primarily Latino, African American, Somali and Burmese, will find this increased production time particularly difficult.

Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army


It’s that time of year again when people are busy planning and hosting seasonal celebrations that honor various cultural, religious and social traditions. Over the next six to eight weeks, gatherings will be held in homes, banquet halls, and houses of faith. Although the meaning of these celebrations may vary, rest assured, there will be plenty of good food on hand including ham, vegetables, fruits, nuts, dairy products of all kinds, and lots of turkeys.

While some families prepare to make their traditional holiday trek to enjoy time with family and friends, hundreds of thousands of low wage, immigrant food workers are sequestered in meatpacking, poultry processing and dairy plants, and laboring in fields in order to meet product demands for the celebrations set to commence this week. Turkey workers, primarily Latino, African American, Somali, Burmese and representatives of other immigrant and refugee communities, who come to this country to support their families, will find this increased production particularly difficult. Their experiences mirror the majority of food industry laborers who work to bring food to our tables.

It is estimated that 46 million turkeys were eaten at Thanksgiving and 22 million at Christmas in 2009, and food industry workers will labor countless hours over the next few weeks so that we can enjoy a variety of foods offered during this time of year. When seasonal processing kicks into overdrive, a sobering number of turkeys processed (some 30 turkeys a minute), it creates dangerous working conditions for the workers and compromises consumer food safety standards. However, in states where workers annually process some 60 million and over 40 million turkeys, North Carolina and Minnesota respectively, neither workers or consumer safety are the priority -- profits and dividends are. Poultry companies have even expanded turkey consumption beyond holiday dinner tables by creating new products, including deli-style breast meat and turkey dinosaur wings.

Evidence shows that worker safety is not the priority of the owners of processing plants. It’s difficult to grasp the depth of political wrangling among the government agencies charged with oversight of the industry particularly in the face of an urgent need to improve both the working conditions for turkey workers and the overall food safety standards for consumers. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Food Safety Inspection (FSIS), regulates the maximum line speed of the slaughtering process, which has increased as the lines have become more automated. But it’s regulated only in order to allow federal officials to adequately inspect the process. On the other hand, the health and safety of plant workers (those harmed by those increased line speeds) is under the jurisdiction of the Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) which includes training workers on safe worker practices and holding industry owners accountable for the safety, or lack thereof, of industry workers. That said, it’s time for unprecedented cooperation and accountability from the USDA, OSHA and plant owners in order to address some of the pressing issues in the food industry.

At the recent State of the Plate -- 2010 event, held November 17 in Chicago, conference planners sought to develop and share best practices, information, and strategies for creating a sustainable food supply in the region. Some panel participants (which included food producers, distributors, chefs, restaurant and hospitality professionals, decision makers, elected officials and other leaders), condemned the unjust treatment of food industry workers, the inhumane slaughter of animals, and the rampant greed of food industry giants who are in a race to produce the cheapest food.

Through its organizing efforts in several states and a new food justice initiative, the Center for New Community focuses on worker safety while confronting the racial structure of the food system in the U.S. Our food justice work envisions a food system supported by both ethical and just practices in order that everyone authentically shares in the bountiful harvest.

Revelations of Extreme 'Slave-Like' Working Conditions and Billions in Wage Theft Drive Nationwide Protests

By Art Levine
Alternet, 13 November 2010

As much as $19 billion is stolen from American workers annually in unpaid overtime and minimum wage violations and through the human trafficking of legal immigrant workers.



Activists in more than 30 cities, organized by Interfaith Worker Justice and backed by labor groups, are staging a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft on November 18. "As the crisis for working families in the economy has deepened, so too has the crisis of wage theft," says Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) Executive Director Kim Bobo, perhaps the country's leading reformer addressing the ongoing scandal.

As much as $19 billion is stolen from American workers annually in unpaid overtime and minimum wage violations and, in some cases, through the human trafficking of legal immigrant workers. The latest case to come to light involves alleged horrendous conditions for immigrant workers reportedly hoodwinked in Mexico by a food services contractor for the New York State Fair and kept in near-slavery conditions of $2 an hour.

Indeed, the scandal surfaced when some of these legal guest workers showed up several weeks ago at a Syracuse area clinic, severely dehydrated and malnourished after allegedly being kept in virtual imprisonment in a trailer at the fair and at other locations; they were reportedly being denied thousands of dollars in legal wages owed them while working about 100 hours a week at fairs for months, according to legal filings and Danny Postel, communications coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice.

"It's one of the most shocking cases of wage theft," Postel says.

The contractor, Pantelis Karageorgis, is the target of a labor standards class-action lawsuit filed last month by Farmworker Legal Services and a Labor Department investigation. But criminal charges by the U.S. Attorney's office have been dropped— "dismissed without prejudice"—and instead a modest settlement involving some back payment for the workers is being hammered out, knowledgeable sources say. In These Times spoke to the vendor's attorney Thursday seeking comment, but didn't hear back as of this writing.

While Obama's Labor Department under Hilda Solis has been winning high marks for adding new inspectors and its tough rhetoric, as well promoting outreach to workers victimized by wage theft, the on-the-ground enforcement remains uneven. One reason: the under-funded, outgunned Wage and Hour Division has a spotty record for cooperating with local advocates and workers' centers.

Kim Bobo says, in a tempered statement:

Interfaith Worker Justice is pleased with the new DOL leadership’s commitment to wage theft enforcement...Nonetheless, given the crisis of wage theft around the country, the partnerships between the Wage and Hour Division and local workers centers need to be strengthened, and a Wage and Hour Director should be nominated who can develop aggressive and creative approaches to stopping and deterring wage theft.

In fact, one activist notes in blunter terms "The Wage and Hour Divison is way behind OSHA in having a culture of aggressively targeted investigations."

Today's OSHA, of course, despite some new inspectors, is widely viewed as still failing to effectively protect workers. With just a thousand inspectors to oversee abuses and wage theft affecting over 20 million low-wage workers -- the primary but not the sole victim of a crime affecting white-collar workers, too -- the Wage and Hour Division hasn't been able to turn around yet the willful flouting of labor laws essentially encouraged by the Bush Labor Department's years of neglect. (The problem is only worsened by the grossly under-manned state labor agencies, which, a new study by Ohio Policy Matters finds, have less than 700 total investigators enforcing minimum wage and related labor laws in the over 40 states surveyed.)

Indeed, as Ted Smukler, IWJ's policy director sums up, "Secretary Solis is using her bully pulpit and hired 250 additional investigators, but Obama needs to get a Wage and Hour administrator confirmed [there's only an acting director] and they could be doing a lot more in enforcement."

Whatever the Department of Labor is attempting to do in this arena, it's clearly not had much of a deterrent effect. A new IWJ video underscores the scope of the continuing unstopped corporate crime wave.

Cincinnati workers bilked out of overtime pay

The failure to effectively enforce wage theft has allowed employers to underpay and stiff workers with impunity. For instance, one alleged scheme by owners of a Cincinnati animal hospital reportedly involved paying immigrant workers overtime, but then demanding the pay be returned to the owners in the form of cash kickbacks.

Daniel Sherman, the director of the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, contends, "It's one of the most egregious examples of wage theft"—but hardly unique in his area. He contends, "The law is not very strong and it is not pursued."

As the Cincinnati Enquirer reported late last month:

Three undocumented workers say they were extorted into kicking back $24,000 in overtime pay to the owners of an animal hospital under the threat that if they didn't come up with the money they'd be deported.

Those workers and advocates for immigrants say the practice is not uncommon in Greater Cincinnati and is a growing problem.

The former employees of the Hamilton Avenue Animal Hospital and Clinic in Pleasant Run and the Sycamore Animal Hospital in Symmes Township say veterinarians Michael Cable and his daughter, Stephanie Cable, first accepted their payments in personal checks but later required them to pay in cash.

Two of the workers placed a hidden camera in the Sycamore Animal Hospital on Montgomery Road and filmed themselves three different times giving cash to Stephanie Cable. One worker rented the apartment above the animal hospital and installed the camera from there.

Jose Aguilar and another worker, Salvador Martinez, 20, gave the Enquirer the video, pay stubs and a series of canceled checks that had been deposited into the animal hospital's account at Huntington Bank...

The video provided by the workers shows three men paying Stephanie Cable cash.

"Hey, Steph - how much I need pay back for overtime this check?" asks Aguilar in the video.

"Uh, I think it's in my car - I really need to start bringing my bag in," Stephanie Cable says on the video.

In one scene, she takes the money from a man and quickly puts it in her back pocket....

But the attorney for the Cables, Steve Goodin, told In These Times, "The Cables have categorically denied that they were extorting or threatening to deport their employees." Because of pending investigations, he says, he can only say about the alleged labor law violations: "We're urging everyone not to rush to judgment," noting that there was a bomb threat aimed at the owners after the Enquirer story appeared.

Yet it's also clear the Cables are planning to mount an aggressive defense: they've already filed a criminal complaint with the county sheriff against the workers who arranged the filming for allegedly violating wiretapping and trespass laws, although Goodin concedes a criminal prosecution seems unlikely. They're also planning a civil suit on similar grounds. Still, he says of the owners, "They were friendly with these guys."

He also argues that an earlier 2007 settlement the Cables made with the Department of Labor for allegedly underpaying overtime to 19 former employees—in which they admitted no guilt but paid about $9,200—is completely unrelated to these latest violations.

Employers act with near impunity

Whatever the merits of the new charges against these owners, advocates at these privately-funded workers' centers often affiliated with IWJ, including Daniel Sherman in Cincinnati and Rebecca Fuentes in Syracuse, regularly field complaints from the victims of employers who routinely ignore labor laws with little fear of timely or effective punishment.

As one national activist told In These Times privately, the Department of Labor usually has to go to court to enforce its own regulations, and so "the smart [employers]" just wait for the interminable legal process to play itself out or get dropped altogether—assuming any enforcement efforts are even started.

As a result, Sherman and other advocates report, new abuses keep cropping up. In yet another case of labor trafficking, for example, he learned just last month about 12 immigrant laborers working about 120 hours a week for $1,000 a month each, housed at the warehouse where they worked—and who were essentially forced to sleep inside just four hours a night.

Sherman's organization only discovered the abuse after one worker jumped out of a warehouse window and escaped to a church for help. "The church called us," he says, and he in turn contacted the Department of Labor to pursue labor law violations-- and the FBI, to investigate human trafficking. But he's not confident that there will be any prosecutions for trafficking because the threatened and intimidated workers were theoretically free to leave.

But in another recent case, Sherman says, the employer just pulled a gun on two immigrant workers who complained about not getting paid. No criminal or legal actions have yet been pursued because the families of the workers are too scared, he observes.

'Perfect conditions' for 'slave-like situations'

The allegations made against the New York food vendor illustrate some of the ways employers can purportedly intimidate and abuse workers. In a startling affidavit filed by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") agent that accompanied the arrest of Pantelis Karageorgis in September (again, the charges have been dropped at the request of the prosecutor), Special Agent Thomas Kirwin outlines some of the alleged tricks of the labor trafficking trade used against employees hungry for work. The agent's affidavit and the original class-action lawsuit filed by Nathaniel Charny as the lead counsel of Farmworkers Legal Services on behalf of four named workers and others paint quite an ugly picture.

And the local workers' rights advocate, Rebecca Fuentes, who helped discover and expose the alleged Syracuse worker abuse, points out, "The guest worker visa program is very flawed, and it ties workers to one employer. That creates perfect conditions for almost slave-like situations," like those facing the apparently starving New York State Fair workers. (She also claims that, at least in her region, the federal Department of Labor is more responsive than the state labor department, which dawdles for months in the face of serious wage theft complaints - a pattern afflicting many weak state labor departments.)

The food-stand employees were recruited this past summer in Mexico with allegedly "fraudulent" promises of a relatively well-paying job, complete with written contracts, as legal guest workers under the H-2B visa program. They were hired as workers in the Karageorgis firm's Greek food concession stands that accompanied some carnivals and fairs in the United States.

Starting in Buffalo in August, then moving to Syracuse, agent Kirwin reported, the workers arrived with no food or money, were allowed to get their meals solely by eating at the concessions stands only once or twice a day, and were housed in trailers on the fair sites, working 16 or more hours each day. "On the last day of the [Syracuse] fair, the employees worked 24 hours consecutively," he noted about the state government-sponsored fair. "At the conclusion of the fair in Syracuse, the defendant paid each of the employees $260."

Yet by some estimates, for the months of nonstop work at a promised $10.71 per hour and extra overtime pay, the workers actually should have each received closer to $30,000. But for approximately 280 hours of work in just a three-week period, each worker got a mere $360, Kirwin stated.

When the employees complained about not getting their full wages, Karageorgis allegedly made a variety of threats, including potentially firing them, cutting their pay even further, or having them deported—and barring them from ever working in the U.S. again. Kirwin added, "The defendant, who traveled with the Employees the entire time, routinely berated and sought to demean them, calling them, for example, `pussies' if they complained about illness or injury."

One of the sadder ironies of the entire case is that some of these victims, also cited in the civil suit, such as Adonai Vasquez, started working for the vendor, Peter's Fine Greek Food, Inc., as far back as July, 2008. But they kept returning on different work trips for as little as $1 or $2 an hour—despite the previously broken promises of $10 to $12 per hour in wages. This is the reality of the "race to the bottom" in the Wild West-style globalized economy: Immigrants are literally starving to work in the United States.

The still-pending civil suit filed in October alleges, "For a period at least as far back as six years from the date of commencement of this action, there have been hundreds of Mexican national treated in the same violative fashion in regards to the payment of wages."

At the same time, the lawsuit claims, "Upon information and belief, Defendants [Karageorgis and his firm], grossed more than $500,000 in the past fiscal year."

Even though one of Karegeorgis's lawyers, Dawn Cardi, was unable to comment as of this writing, the ICE agent's affidavit recounts Karageorgis's version of events. The Greek food entrepreneur explained his operation: his agents recruit workers in Mexico and he submits their legal paperwork to U.S. labor and immigration authorities. But he claimed to be surprised to learn that they were promised $10.71 an hour. He conceded to Kirwin he hadn't yet paid his workers in full, but intended to do so—while somehow asserting that none of them ever worked in Buffalo for him and thus they weren't owed money for that work. He also denied making any threats against his workers, except that he'd notify his attorney if they quit.

But the observant immigration agent also noticed that Karegeorgis wasn't short of cash at the time of his arrest. "He had in his pants' pockets three bulky wads of cash and also had a briefcase that he said contained money, the security of which he was concerned about," Kirwin noted dryly. Despite the defendant's claims, Kirwin added, the agent requested that the food merchant "be dealt with according to law."

So far, though, he seems unlikely to face any criminal prosecution.

Activists to demand reform around country

It's small wonder, then, with employers apparently stealing wages with so much impunity, that a groundswell by activists is building to take action, even in a still-weakened regulatory climate. At a preview for next week's events, for instance, hundreds of workers and allies marched in Minneapolis last Saturday demanding fair wages, an end to wage theft and safe working conditions for retail cleaning workers at major stores, including Supervalu and Target.

The worsening economy makes it even easier to rip off workers desperate for work, the protesters declared (hat tip to Workday Minnesota). “Corporations are responsible for pitting cleaning companies against each other which results in plummeting wages and increased workloads,” said Veronica Mendez, an organizer with Center for Workers United in Struggle, a IWJ-affiliated labor-faith coalition. “The only way to stop this is for these retail chains to meet with workers to establish fair standards. These poor working conditions affect everyone in our communities..."

Interfaith Worker Justice and its allies have ambitious plans for its nationwide local protests next Thursday:

Events on the National Day of Action Against Wage Theft will include protests at businesses guilty of wage theft to demand back wages for workers and events at which political leaders, workers, faith leaders, community groups, and labor unions will present new initiatives to end wage theft.

In Houston, a worker center will release a local report on wage theft and will send a "Justice Bus" around the city to call attention to local businesses that steal their workers' wages. Other innovative local events include a text messaging campaign, a “Worst Employers” Awards ceremony, “Know Your Rights” workshops for workers, a jazz funeral for lost wages and a Thanksgiving-themed auction and a dramatization against wage theft in Memphis.

Yet the Republican take-over of the House and rising anti-union sentiment have already changed one of their primary legislative goals. The coalition's call for action includes this sweeping reform priority:

On September 29, Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL) introduced the Wage Theft Prevention and Community Partnership Act (H.R. 6268), which would authorize the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to establish a competitive grant program to prevent wage theft. The bill would expand the efforts of enforcement agencies and community organizations to educate workers about their rights and the remedies available to them, while educating employers about their responsibilities under the law.

"That's dead," one knowledgeable activist admitted. "He lost the election."

Art Levine is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly and a regular blogger for Working In These Times. He has written for Mother Jones, The American Prospect, The New Republic, AlterNet, Truthout, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon and numerous other publications

Modern-day slavery: horrific conditions on board ships catching fish for Europe

From The Guardian, posted Thursday 30 September 2010
By Felicity Lawrence and Robert Booth

Exclusive: Crews marooned at sea off Africa found in squalor, with cardboard bunks, 18-hour shifts, and payment in fish

When environmental campaigners began tracking a hi-tech South Korean trawler off the coast of West Africa, they were looking for proof of illegal fishing of dwindling African stocks. What they uncovered was an altogether different kind of travesty: human degradation so extreme it echoed the slavery they thought had been abolished more than a century ago.

"It was horrendous," said Duncan Copeland, a senior campaigner at the Environmental Justice Foundation, who boarded the South Korean-flagged trawler at the end of 2008 with naval forces from Sierra Leone.

"The men were working in the fish hold with no air or ventilation in temperatures of 40-45 degrees. It was rusty, greasy, hot and sweaty. There were cockroaches everywhere in the galleys and their food was in disgusting boxes. All they had for washing was a pump bringing up salt water. They stank. It was heartbreaking."

As their investigation continued, the EJF found vessel after vessel, some up to 40 years old, rusted and in terrible repair, engaged in pirate fishing – an illegal trade that damages already fragile marine stocks and exploits human labour in shocking conditions.

The 36 crew members on the boat boarded by Copeland came from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. Eight men shared a tiny windowless area of the fish hold with four cardboard "bunks" resting on planks. Four worked in the hold sorting and packing fish for the European market while four slept, and they would alternate, literally rolling out to allow the next to roll in.

The Sierra Leonean crew members said they were not paid with money but in boxes of "trash" fish – the bycatch rejected by the European market – which they would be given to sell locally. If anyone complained, the captain would abandon them on the nearest beach, they said.

"The conditions aren't good, but we can't do anything about it," a worker on another South Korean-registered ship told investigators. "We live with it, because it is hard to find work. If someone offers you a salary of $200 to support your family it's not good, but we have to live with it."

In May, about 150 Senegalese men were found labouring in a ship off Sierra Leone; working up to 18 hours through the day and into the night, eating and sleeping in spaces less than a metre high. The vessel carried a licence number for importing fish to the EU, showing it had passed apparently strict hygiene standards.

EJF also found several apparently redundant trawlers out at sea still with crew on board, some of whom had been there more than a year with no radio or safety equipment.

"I was sent here by the company," said one fisherman on a trawler off the coast of Guinea. "The company sends a boat with supplies to bring me food like fish and shrimps. Nobody wants to come here."

The fishermen's tales reveal the human toll of pirate fishing, a business thought to produce a catch of at least 11m tonnes of fish a year worth more than $10bn (£6.3bn).

Living quarters inside one of the pirate fishing ships. Photograph: EJF

Vessels often stay at sea for months on end, with reefers coming alongside every couple of weeks to unload the catch and resupply them. As they operate in remote waters, they can avoid detection for long periods. The crew are effectively imprisoned, most cannot swim and many of those interviewed by EJF meet the UN definition of forced labour. Reports of violence, withholding of pay and retention of documents are common, said Copeland.

The investigators found a crew of 200 Senegalese operating off Sierra Leone in 2006. The men were living in a makeshift structure built on the stern of the ship, divided into four levels with barely a metre of headroom and cardboard packing boxes crammed together to serve as mattresses.

The ship did not appear on the official list of vessels licenced to fish in Sierra Leone at the time of sighting. Records show that it has visited Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, which is the largest landing point for west African fish into Europe and has been criticised by senior EU officials for its lax inspection regime.

But the investigators' original interest in fish stocks also produced worrying evidence.

Several of the vessels boarded by EJF are bottom trawlers, licensed to import to the EU, catching high value fish such as shrimp, lobster and tuna. Bottom trawlers drag heavy chains across the sea bed, scraping up everything in their path including coral. In one case, the boat had been dumping more than 70% of its catch overboard, including sharks – once the fins had been removed for the Asian market.

The vessel's owner had been putting its Senegalese crew out to sea in small boats to bring in tuna and shark to sell as caught by "hook and line, having first identified fishing targets with global positioning software. Many of the Senegalese were fishermen unable to sustain a livelihood in their own waters because stocks have been decimated by overfishing by hi-tech trawlers.

The EJF believes most illegal fishing is carried out by ships flying flags of convenience. Under international maritime law, the country where a ship is registered is responsible for its activities. Some countries allow vessels of other nationalities to register with them for a few hundred dollars and are known to ignore offences.

Pirate vessels can re-flag several times a season and frequently change their name. They are often backed by shell companies, which makes their real owners hard to trace and law enforcement extremely difficult. The maximum fine for illegal fishing is around $100,000, which is typically less than two weeks' profit from the trade, according to EJF.

The South Korean captain, first mate and engineer of one of the ships were arrested by the Sierra Leone navy and fined $30,000 plus their catch for fishing in the country's inshore exclusion zone. The same ship was however spotted in August, fishing again off the coast of Sierra Leone and Liberia according to EJF.

All at Sea, the Abuse of Human Rights aboard Illegal Fishing Vessels, EJF. www.ejfoundation.org

Does illegal fish make it to UK?

Deciding whether the fish on your plate is from an illegal catch from west African waters remains difficult, but it should be getting easier after a crackdown in recent months by the British and European authorities.

Under an EU regulation brought in this year, it is forbidden to import fish into the member states unless it has been certified as legal by the flag state of the vessel. That means if a ship sails under a Spanish flag, Spain has to certify the catch as legal. Campaigners believe the problem remains that some countries, including South Korea and China, are not effectively policing fishing vessels using their flags.

Investigators believe pirate fish are "laundered" – packed in boxes with the stamp of a licensed fishing boat. During checks in 2006 and 2007 the Environmental Justice Foundation found west Africa-caught denton, commonly sold in the UK as snapper or sea bream, in London fish markets. Some boxes of frozen denton carried the logo of a Chinese company that operates many of the illegal fishing vessels the EJF had observed operating in Guinea. The problem of pirate fish reaching the plate is thought to be greater for consumers in southern Europe, which consumes the bulk of west African fish, shrimp, prawn and lobster.

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/sep/30/modern-day-slavery-fishing-europe?intcmp=239

Even illegal workers have rights

Even illegal workers have rights
By Danielle Celermajer
The Sydney Morning Herald, September 23, 2010

The death last month of Myung Yeol Hwang, a South Korean who had been working in Australia for 12 years, brings into sharp relief not only the tragic vulnerability of the world's millions of migrant workers, but the reality of their suffering in our backyard.

The Australian government can no longer turn a blind eye to the suffering of migrant workers - whether they have legal status or not. Both ethically and according to international law, all migrant workers, no matter their official status, are subject to the basic human rights covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

At the minimum, that includes emergency medical care in the face of irreparable harm to one's health, something that would probably have saved Hwang's life.
Advertisement: Story continues below

It is disturbing that so much of the reaction to Hwang's death, reported in the Herald this week, has circled around objections Australians have to people working ''illegally in our country''.

Australia, like any sovereign state, has a right to make and implement laws about who has permission to enter and to work. The very international laws protecting the rights of migrant workers explicitly recognise that states have this right.

But we live in the real world where not only finance and financial crisis, but also labour (mostly cheap labour) circulates fairly freely and globally.

Like it or not, the Australian labour market includes many more people like Hwang, working at the periphery for low wages, often in dirty, dangerous and degrading jobs (the three Ds of migrant work conditions).

Despite our objections at an official national level, clearly we, as employers, don't seem to mind.

We like to be able to pay lower wages, to employ people casually and to run our businesses outside a formal economy that might curb our flexibility and our profits.

These are the indisputable facts, and the Australian government has an obligation to ensure basic human rights of those workers are not violated.

But disturbingly, Australia has ensured that technically it would be incorrect for me to claim that it has an obligation under international law to afford illegal migrant workers such protection.

That is because it has refused to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

In refusing to do so, Australia has effectively said that the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights do not apply to this subclass of human beings.

Let me make it clear: we are not talking about guaranteeing illegal migrant workers the same type of welfare and social services we provide people who are legally in the country. Australia retains, and should retain, the right to draw distinctions between legal and illegal workers.

What we are talking about are those most basic rights that the nations of the world declared belong to every single human - rights to be protected from discrimination or abuse, to be treated with dignity and not be left to die without basic medical care.

Irrespective of the legal technicality of whether Australia has ratified the convention that explicitly states those rights apply to migrant workers, our obligations under the international bill of rights already require that we do so. That's the thing about human rights - they apply to everyone, without distinction.

And irrespective of concerns that Australian citizens might have about the negative economic impact of an unregulated labour market, surely we still believe that our shared humanity with the people who lay the tiles in our bathrooms or wash the dishes when we eat out makes it unacceptable for us to treat them like refuse.

There are 90 million migrant workers around the globe, many of them working under irregular conditions or without documentation. This is a part of the reality of globalisation that we cannot ignore. And yet our international system of protection lags behind this global reality.

No longer protected by the laws of their countries of origin and not yet protected by the laws of their host countries, these millions - who care for our children, deliver our groceries, construct our buildings and indirectly fuel our economies, dangle in a dangerous gap where they are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and the vagaries of sickness and industrial accidents.

We live in a world where there is a disconnect between the global movement of workers and the failure to ensure the protection of their fundamental human rights. We want to receive the benefits of globalisation, but seem unwilling to swallow the responsibilities. A few weeks ago, Australian news carried the shocking story of a Sri Lankan woman who returned from her work as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia with 30 nails in her body. I am sure most Australians who read it recoiled in horror that someone could be treated in this way. But this is just the acute end of an epidemic that has followed hot on the heals of the globalisation of cheap and unregulated labour.

If Australia wants to hold its head up not just as a prosperous nation, but as an ethical one, too, it should take the step of ratifying the Convention to Protect Migrant Workers and advocate their protection throughout the rest of our common world.

Dr Danielle Celermajer is director of the University of Sydney's masters of human rights and democratisation program.

URL: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/even-illegal-workers-have-rights-20100922-15mw9.html

Afghan gang smuggled in compatriots to live and work in pizza takeaways

By Robert Booth
The Guardian, Friday 5 June 2009

The leaders of an Afghan criminal network which smuggled in hundreds of compatriots to work in pizza takeaways were jailed today for terms ranging between seven and 12 years.

Abdul Hameed Sakhizada, 32, and his brother Ahmed Shah Sakhizada, 23, both of Northampton, and Abdul Wakil Niazi, 35, of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, ran what police believe to be one of the most lucrative smuggling networks uncovered in Britain.

The gang is known to be responsible for smuggling 230 Afghans into Europe; around half to the UK. The network operated for at least three years and detectives recorded Abdul Sakhizada claiming he smuggled at least 1,800 people into Europe in just over two months.

Sakhizada, who was jailed for nine years at Kingston crown court, south-west London for conspiracy to facilitate illegal immigration, was told by Judge Welchman: "You, as you boasted, were the smuggler of Europe."

Niazi and Ahmed Sakhizada were also convicted of facilitating illegal immigration as well as conspiracy to launder the proceeds of crime. They were sentenced to 12 years and seven years.

The gang used agents to smuggle Afghans across Iran and Turkey, by sea to Greece and then, hidden in the backs of freight lorries, across Europe to Britain. Many paid off debts to their smugglers by working in a chain of 16 pizza takeaways in which the gang were involved. These included branches of well-known franchises Tops Pizza, GoGo Pizza and Perfect Pizza across southern England.

The smuggled Afghans often lived above the shops sleeping on rugs and fed on pizza until their debts were cleared by baking and delivering pizzas. They earned as little as £150 a week, while their typical debt to the ring was £5,000.

Abdul Sakhizada specialised in smuggling Afghans by sea from Turkey to the Greek islands, while Niazi operated the network of smugglers across Europe. The court heard that some of the smuggled Afghans were in debt bondage to Niazi. Ahmed Sakhizada provided false documents and transferred funds overseas.

The Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which led the investigation, estimated the gang earned between £200,000 and £300,000 from 2005 to 2008 when they were arrested.

On one occasion Sakhizada spoke of 10 people having arrived and taking $30,000 to $40,000. In a later conversation he discussed taking $38,700 to smuggle 43 people from Iran to Turkey, and $27,000 to move 34 from Turkey to Greece. He chased money transfers, hired ship captains and even fielded complaints from disgruntled relatives of passengers.

Before establishing their operation, Niazi and Abdul Sakhizada were themselves smuggled into the country. Niazi travelled from Parwan province in northern Afghanistan to Britain in the back of a lorry in 1999 and Sakhizada was smuggled from Mazir-el-Sharif but was deported from the UK once in 2003. He returned in a lorry in 2007. Immigration authorities granted them indefinite leave to remain.

Soca investigators uncovered evidence of 175 Afghans who worked in takeaways which provided guaranteed labour to ensure they would repay debts. During raids they discovered lists and notes relating to the men, their debts and earnings.

Sakhizada boasted that other vessels would sink with loss of life but his never did. He also offered to send clients across again without charge if they were caught and police recorded him saying he sent 20 people from his home town for free.

Keith Hadrill, defending Abdul Sakhizada, said: "He felt he was undertaking humanitarian aid to assist others to overcome the harshness of reality in their home country."

A 27-year-old Afghan man now working under new management at Tops Pizza in Tunbridge Wells, which used to be run by Niazi, said: "Niazi was a good person. They charged him as a people smuggler, but it was nothing like that. He would take people to the doctor and give work to people."

The raids in January uncovered 52 illegal workers, 42 of whom were claiming asylum, awaiting removal or had been allowed to remain. Ten who were unknown to the authorities are in custody.

Ali Yazdi, director of Topps Pizza, said his company had no idea Niazi was operating from their outlet in Tunbridge Wells.

Shar Shah, manager of Pizza Go Go head office, said: "We have no involvement in any of these wrong doings."

Perfect Pizza declined to comment.

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/05/afghan-gang-pizza-takeaways