Video Message of APMM on International Labor Day 2020
The Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) joins all workers around the world in this year’s commemoration of International Labour Day. As the working people reel from the impacts of the current pandemic, we salute all trade unions and worker’s organizations who – with militancy and creativity – still mark this day with various actions that highlight the issues and calls of workers, including migrant workers.
Indeed, the working people are some of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. From frontline health workers who fell ill or died to deliver the necessary services to the people, to those who lost their jobs and are facing a future of insecurities. From those whose wages were reduced, to those who don’t receive any with the widespread work stoppage.
In Asia-Pacific, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated a loss of 125 million jobs for the second quarter of this year amidst production slowdown and factory closures such as in the garment industry in South and Southeast Asia. As many industries in the region are tied to those in countries most affected by COVID-19 – United States, European Union and China – the economic impact of the crisis surely will hit hard workers especially the estimated 1 billion workers in vulnerable jobs.
Asia Pacific is both a source and host to millions of migrant workers who are part of the working people who suffer from these impacts. Many countries are reliant on migrant labor either as cheap workers in various sectors or for the remittances they receive such as the case of Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Indonesia. On top of livelihood concerns for those who remain overseas and those forcibly repatriated, migrants are also excluded from economic aid and relief by host and even by their own governments.
The ravages that COVID-19 is heaping upon the health, livelihood and life of workers, including migrants, laid bare the exploited and precarious situation of workers brought by the neoliberal design on labor. Asia Pacific is a region where neoliberalism has resulted to 400 million people living with less than USD1.9 and 800 million living with more than USD1.9 but less than USD3.2 a day, according to ESCAP estimates.
In the interest, especially of big businesses, the previous decades with neoliberalism as its holy grail heightened various forms of flexible labor and other schemes that reduced the economic and political rights of workers in the interest of private profit-making and -taking.
COVID-19 is a disaster waiting to happen for the working people as healthcare has been aggressively privatized in the past, wages have been pegged even below survival level, decent jobs have been scarcer, and the right of workers to unionise has been threatened. Sixty-percent (60%) of people in Asia Pacific have no social protection coverage.
Labor-sending countries continue to wallow in poverty, unemployment, foreign debt, depletion of resources for foreign interests and landlessness of peasants that continue to be a rich breeding ground of the displaced who are forced to seek employment overseas and get exploited before, during and even after their return from overseas employment.
Meanwhile in countries that host migrants, flexible labor schemes for foreign workers are designed to keep them cheap, docile, and excluded from benefits that the labor movement has fought for. Migrants are often trapped in debt and bonded labor, or are working and living in extreme conditions as exposed by recent cases of COVID-19 infection among foreign workers.
This is exactly how neoliberal framework on migration has designed the place and treatment of migrants. Coupled with war, military intervention and aggression with the region as a centerpoint, forced displacement has subjected millions to vulnerable conditions in foreign soil.
While in the past years, the slogan of migration and development has been propped up, the resulting situation of migrants amidst the current pandemic has shown how hollow and flawed such framework has been with its denial of forced migration, commodification of migrants, and modern servitude that neoliberalism exacts from migrants.
The mantra of migration for development has been championed in various arena such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) as well as the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). Throughout the GFMD’s existence and the negotiations and eventual adoption of the GCM, grassroots migrant workers – despite the limited space provided for their voice and participation – have consistently raised their concerns on how the GFMD and the GCM are not taking head on the root causes of their forced migration, and their exploitative and oppressive condition.
In a condition where neoliberalism and war and militarism rules, migration for development will remain flawed and a mere cosmetic that a crisis such as COVID-19 can unmask.
As workers and people’s movements increasing call for changes to the inequitable and unjust system that the COVID-19 has exposed, grassroots migrant workers are also set to heighten their struggles against exploitation and commodification of migrant labor. Migrants and advocates in Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other countries are now raising pertinent crucial issues of labor, living condition and migrant’s inclusion; and at the same time, promote mutual aid and campaign for immediate relief for migrants and refugees. Through their organisations and unions, grassroots migrants continue to build their unified ranks and advance their solidarity with local workers and people for common struggles on labor rights such as with trade unions and migrants in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and South Korea,
As we all commemorate the global day for all workers, the APMM also reiterates our commitment to support the building of a strong movement of grassroots migrants that, by themselves, will champion and usher in the system changes that will truly ensure that the rights and wellbeing of migrants and all forcibly displaced workers and peoples.
Long live the working people!
Long live international solidarity!