Migrant Workers and Refugees in Asia Pacific are United Against Neoliberal Globalization!
International Migrants Alliance – Asia Pacific Region Statement for International Labor Day
For International Labor Day, the Asia Pacific Regional Chapter of the International Migrants Alliance calls on migrant workers, refugees, and displaced people to unite with working and oppressed people to oppose neoliberal globalization. Workers all over the world are confronting the worst economic crisis of the present time with full-time jobs being lost in the hundreds of millions replaced by corporations with contractual, precarious, or temporary labor arrangements. With many businesses closed due to the pandemic, most working people are forced to take low-paying jobs, without security of tenure, and with long working hours.
The Asia Pacific region has seen some of the most intense effects of the worsening crisis of imperialism and its neoliberal policies. The region is host to most of the world’s population, with its labor pool becoming a major target for market domination by monopoly capitalists, and its natural resources being eyed as targets for extraction. As of 2020, 169 million people in the region are considered labor migrants, 48% of whom are women. A large part of the labor force in the region are also seafarers, with the region supplying the most seafaring workers. Most of the migration in the region is temporary labor migration and seasonal workers, a majority that is included in the 90 million of total international migrants coming from the region. The region includes 6 of the top 20 destination countries and 8 of the top sending countries.
Our region is one of the staging grounds of the intensification of the contradiction between imperialist powers and is where the economic, political, and military powers of chiefly the United States and China are concentrated. The US has led the intensification in the region by implementing its pivot to Asia strategy resulting in more aggressive military agreements, more military bases, increased military exercises, and a greater deployment of troops. The countries in the region are vulnerable to being embroiled in the conflict between imperialist powers.
The desire of imperialist countries for a greater share of the market, more cheap labor, and more natural resources to extract has caused hunger, poverty, and destitution in the region. Neoliberal policies force most countries into agreements that mandate them to deny basic social services, including appropriate health care and education. The working people of the region are further devastated by stagflation, making it difficult to afford the rising prices of basic goods and commodities. Furthermore, when workers demand their rights, they are met with extrajudicial killings, union busting, and other means to undermine their collective bargaining rights and other labor and human rights.
We, migrants, refugees, and displaced people experience the effects of these contradictions and policies every day. We face discrimination, sexism, exhausting work hours, and other forms of abuse, with even prominent lawmakers in Hong Kong calling us “products” that “do not match the description.” We, parents and particularly mothers, suffer the anxiety from being separated from our children risking their welfare to people who might then physically and emotionally abuse them. Even if we brought our children with us, we can still experience unsafe housing conditions such as the nursery in Singapore that was a fire hazard and an illegally built floor. Even in industries as wealthy as the FIFA World Cup, we face high death rates due to unsafe work environments, inadequate pay, and little benefits and services. Due to government abandonment, we often rely on each other for comfort, community, and support.
Daily, we fight to uphold our rights and welfare. Recently, in South Korea, we opposed the government’s crackdown of thousands of undocumented workers in the construction and agricultural sectors that they imported during the pandemic and now want to remove from the country. We also rallied against the Hong Kong government’s decision to criminalize job hopping in Hong Kong and denying workers, particularly migrant domestic workers, their right to change employers freely. We continue to defend the rights of migrant workers, particularly domestic workers and caregivers, who face physical and emotional abuse from their employers and commemorate those who have been killed due to the same treatment, such as Flor Contemplacion and Jullebee. We exposed the conditions of the migrant workers in Auckland and the inadequate government protections when they experienced severe flooding. In Taiwan, we protested entry policies that only restricted migrants and required them to do an expensive 7 day quarantine in hotels while other entrants no longer needed to. We have stood with migrant workers and working people all over the world as they fight for their right to collectively bargain and organize, while facing constant attacks against their freedom of assembly and expression. We have ourselves fought for unionization in places like Taiwan to resist problems such as high placement fees, debt bondage, confiscation of our documents, unsafe working conditions, and unequal treatment. We unite with seafaring workers who continue to fight for better training and orientation to avoid labor and human rights violations while they are vulnerable at sea.
#mayday
We, the migrants, refugees, and displaced people of the region, must stand and unite with working people all over the world and advance our demands and struggle to win against neoliberal globalization. It is only through our unity, militancy, and commitment that we can make gains toward system change. United with working people globally, we echo these demands: we demand decent jobs that are safe, dignified, and secure; we demand an end to forced migration, to ensure jobs back home and not to be forced to seek jobs outside; we demand living wages to provide for our family with a respectable standard of living; we demand our right to form organizations and bargain collectively; we demand an end to contractual and precarious work; we demand the rich be taxed based on their income to fund health care and social protection for all; we demand an end to austerity measures due to debt payments; we demand the prioritization of the people and the planet over that of big capitalists, to cut carbon emissions, stop extractivism, and compensation for loss and damage due to climate disaster; we demand an end to all wars of aggression; we demand an end to cartels and monopolies; and we demand a people’s trade agenda where global trade is governed with equality and parity among nations, prioritizing the interest of the people and the planet.
International Labor Day is not just a celebration. It is a reminder that our unity and commitment has won us significant changes before and that we can do it again.
Workers of the World Unite! We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Chains!
Migrant Workers and Refugees Unite with Working People Against Neoliberal Globalization!
Long Live International Solidarity!
#InternationalLaborDay #migrantworkers #InternationalSolidarity
