Republished by Ilo.org

Twice a week, training specialist, Rania Shanti, visits a garment factory in the industrial city of Sahab, Jordan, and talks to small groups of workers about sexual harassment.

She tries to create a comfortable and – crucially – confidential atmosphere that will encourage participants to speak freely.

One of them is Indrani, a Sri Lankan woman who has worked at the factory since 2009.

“I always thought that when women spoke about being sexually harassed, they meant they were raped. Now I understand that sexual harassment can take place in many different forms,” she says.

Like Indrani, many of the workers at the factory are foreigners – mainly from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. So, Shanti, from the ILO’s Better Work Jordan programme, often has to communicate through a translator.

“It’s difficult to assess sexual harassment in these factories due to the sensitive nature of the issue and fears of reprisals among workers. It’s never guaranteed that the workers will label themselves as being victims of sexual harassment,” she explains.

Two years ago, allegations were made of widespread rape being committed against workers at one of Jordan’s largest clothing factories. Although the allegations were not substantiated, reports of unwanted sexual advances towards workers are common across the global garment manufacturing sector.

Better Work Jordan’s own investigation found that many workers had very little understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment – even though they were concerned about it.

As a result, Better Work Jordan launched a pilot sexual harassment prevention awareness project with Indrani’s employer, the Jerash Garment and Fashion Manufacturing Company, which aims to teach line workers, managers and supervisors about how to identify, prevent and report instances of sexual harassment.

During one session held in mid-June, Indrani joined a group of shy and soft-spoken women, who told fellow workers about being groped, having their skirts lifted and even being sexually assaulted by taxi drivers.

Priyadorshani, another Sri Lankan worker at the factory, said the project helped them better understand Jordanian laws and regulations relating to sexual harassment in the workplace.

“We are foreigners in Jordan, so we do not know much about the laws, rules and procedures,” she said. “After the training, I now have a better idea of how to deal with the situation if something happens.”

Shanti notes that while some relevant laws exist, the most powerful and effective policies are those created and adopted internally by the factories, which address all forms of sexual harassment.

“Part of the training is to help the factories create their own policy on sexual harassment prevention. We share our model policy, which they can adapt,” she explains. “This has had a great impact on the factory’s management, as it has given them a great sense of responsibility where they now feel that they are in charge of the situation and can take control.”

Sanil Kumar, the company’s compliance officer, agrees.

“The training helped the managers and supervisors on issues which they were not aware of before, such as certain forms of sexual harassment and how to prevent it or deal with it. And following advice from the Better Work team, we have developed our own internal sexual harassment prevention policy for the factory which has been adopted by the management.”

Unions are also trying to play a role says Mervat Abdel Kareem al-Jamhawi, of the General Trade Union of Workers in Textile, Garment and Clothing.

“We try to raise awareness of the issues among female workers in factories but there are many challenges, such as cultural and language barriers. It is definitely a high priority for us and we need more support from projects like Better Work Jordan to conduct more programmes in a range of factories.”

Better Work Jordan plans to help create independent counseling and referral systems for workers who feel sexually harassed or under threat. The pilot project will also extend to several other factories next year – some of which employ up to 7,000 workers from as many as eight countries.

“We will continue with our training,” says Shanti. “We will continue to spread our message, especially to migrant workers, by telling them that they are not victims, they are not weak. They have come from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and other parts of the world to work here, so they must be strong women,” she said. “They need to know that there are actions that can be taken. If they don’t want to talk to their managers about sexual harassment, they can talk to us.”

The national Union of High School Teachers (OLME) has proposed taking industrial action for six days during university entrance exams (National Exams), which begin tomorrow, Friday 17 May, and come at the end of the academic year.

The strike action – reportedly endorsed by the local teacher’s unions – is in protest at a decision in late April to increase teachers’ working hours. Teachers’ unions claim the change will result in substantial layoffs and a downgrade in the overall quality of education in the country.

In a bid to quash the strike, the Greek authorities are reportedly invoking special legislation to force teachers to keep working. Teachers could face criminal charges and a minimum of three months’ imprisonment if they fail to comply – if charged, they face immediate suspension from their duties and a prospect of losing their jobs.

“A blanket prohibition on teachers’ right to strike, imposed by means of criminal prosecution and the threat of prison sentences, is clearly unnecessary and disproportionate and would violate Greece’s international human rights obligations,” said Jezerca Tigani, Deputy Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International.

“Times of financial hardship don’t absolve governments from their obligations to uphold all human rights, and workers’ rights in particular should not become a casualty to the crisis.”

Under Greek law the government has powers to compulsorily mobilize workers during peacetime in the event of a sudden incident that requires the adoption of urgent measures to deal with the defence needs of the country or an urgent social need – for example, a natural disaster or a public health risk.

When it announced the use of this legal provision against the teachers’ strike, the government argued that the measure was necessary “to prevent a severe disturbance in the social and financial life of the country and to safeguard public order and the health of the prospective university students”.

Under international law, Greece has binding obligations to respect and protect the right to freedom of association, which includes the right to organize – to form and join trade unions – and the right to strike. These obligations are set out in international human rights treaties to which it is a state party. These include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; the European Convention on Human Rights; and the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize.

These rights can only be limited under very specific circumstances if it is demonstrably necessary and proportionate, and will protect national security, public safety, public health or morals, or the rights and freedoms of others.

On this basis, very narrow restrictions of the right to strike can be permissible. This could apply to the armed forces, the police and other public servants who exercise authority in the name of the state. It could also apply to workers in essential services – services which, if interrupted, would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the population.

ILO experts have noted that the education sector does not constitute an essential service in that strict sense of the term and, more generally, that any limitations on strikes must be reasonable and must not place a substantial limitation on trade unions.

Since 2010, Greek workers have staged a number of anti-austerity strikes to protest at severe cuts to salaries and government programmes.

Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013: A generation at risk attributes that high number to persistent unemployment, a proliferation of temporary jobs and growing youth discouragement in advanced economies; and poor quality, informal, subsistence jobs in developing countries.

The report, published by the International Labour Organization (ILO), states that the weakening of the global recovery in 2012 and 2013 has further aggravated the youth jobs crisis and the queues for available jobs have become longer and longer for some unfortunate young jobseekers.

“So long, in fact, that many youth are giving up on the job search. The prolonged jobs crisis also forces the current generation of youth to be less selective about the type of job they are prepared to accept, a tendency that was already evident before the crisis.”

It adds that increasing numbers of youth are now turning to available part-time jobs or find themselves stuck in temporary employment. Secure jobs, which were once the norm for previous generations – at least in the advanced economies – have become less easily accessible for today’s youth.

The global youth unemployment rate, which had decreased from 12.7 per cent in 2009 to 12.3 per cent in 2011, increased again to 12.4 per cent in 2012, and has continued to grow to 12.6 per cent in 2013.

Youth unemployment and its scarring effects are particularly prevalent in three regions: developed economies and European Union, the Middle East and North Africa. In these regions, youth unemployment rates have continued to “soar” since 2008, says the report.

By 2018 the global youth unemployment rate is projected to rise to 12.8 per cent, with growing regional disparities, as expected improvements in advanced economies will be offset by increases in youth unemployment in other regions, mainly in Asia.

“We have never before seen a crisis like the one facing young people today and it’s a crisis that requires everyone to act together,” says Gianni Rosas, coordinator of the ILO Youth Employment Programme and co-author of the report.

“That means Governments together with the social partners have to address the crisis now through strategies that focus on growth and jobs, and through policies and programmes that prioritize young people.”

Mr. Rosas says that a global framework, adopted by representatives of Governments, employers and workers organizations calls for action in five main policy areas: employment creation, education and training, targeting the disadvantaged, entrepreneurship and labour rights.

The best employment programmes, he adds, combine education and training with work-experience and job-placement support. They include incentives for employers to hire disadvantaged youth, such as wage subsidies, tax cuts or social security exemptions for a limited period.

“The current young generation is worse off than we were 20 years ago and we need to urgently expand action to address the current youth employment crisis,” he states. “We must keep the objective of improving the economic and social situation from one generation to another as it has been in the past. We cannot afford to go backward.”

Based on more than 650 interviews conducted over a two-year period in Jordan Lebanon, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, the study Tricked and Trapped: Human Trafficking in the Middle East sheds light on the situation of trafficked adult workers in the Middle East, the complex processes by which they are ‘tricked and trapped’ into forced labour and sexual exploitation, and the constraints that prevent them from leaving.

It also examines the responses to human trafficking recently put in place by governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations and other stakeholders and provides regional policymakers with recommendations to help them effectively counter the phenomenon.

The Middle East hosts millions of migrant workers, who in some cases exceed the number of national workers substantially. In Qatar, for example, 94 per cent of workers are migrants, while in Saudi Arabia that figure is over 50 per cent. In Jordan and Lebanon migrants also make up a significant part of the workforce, particularly in the construction and domestic work sectors.

“Labor migration in this part of the world is unique in terms of its sheer scale and its exponential growth in recent years,” says Beate Andrees, Head of the ILO’s Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour. “The challenge is how to put in place safeguards in both origin and destination countries to prevent the exploitation and abuse of these workers.”

Although data is scarce, the ILO estimates that there are 600,000 forced labor victims in the Middle East.

The report singles out the Kafala (sponsorship) system – which governs the lives of most migrant workers in the Mashreq and GCC countries – as “inherently problematic” because it creates an unequal power dynamic between the employer and the worker.

It points to deficits in labour law coverage that “reinforce underlying vulnerabilities of migrant workers” as well as significant gaps in national legislation that “restrict the ability of migrant workers to organize, to terminate their employment contracts and to change employers.”

It notes that the lack of inspection procedures maintains the “isolation of domestic workers in private homes” and heightens their vulnerability to exploitation. It also highlights the “real” risks of detention and deportation for workers who are coerced into sex work in the entertainment industry.

Reforming the Kafala system would significantly improve labor migration governance in this regard.

The report proposes empowering ministries of labor to oversee recruitment processes, to handle complaints by migrants and employers, and to verify allegations of mistreatment and respond accordingly as a viable alternative to the Kafala.

It highlights the need to extend legal coverage and equal rights to all categories of workers, revise standard employment contracts, end wage discrimination, improve recruitment systems, strengthen legislative frameworks, and enhance labor inspection.

“While fiscal and competitiveness goals are important, it is crucial not to tackle them through austerity measures and structural reforms that do not address the root causes of the crisis,” says the ILO in a snapshot of the EU labour market launched ahead of its 9th European Regional Meeting that opens in Oslo on Monday. “Instead, moving to a job-centred strategy could serve both macroeconomic and employment goals.”

The employment situation has continued to deteriorate since the introduction of fiscal consolidation policies. Following a pause in 2010-2011, unemployment has kept growing and shows no signs of improvement. Over the past 6 months alone, one million people have lost their jobs in the EU.

The are now more than 26 million Europeans without a job, with young and low-skilled workers being the hardest hit.

Only 5 EU countries out of 27 (Austria, Germany, Hungary, Luxemburg and Malta) have witnessed employment rates above pre-crisis levels. Countries like Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain have seen their employment rate drop by more than 3 percentage points in the last two years alone.

Long-term unemployment is becoming a structural problem for many European countries. In 19 of them, more than 40 per cent of the unemployed are now long-term unemployed, meaning that they have been out of a job for twelve months or longer.

The worsening employment situation also means that the risk of social unrest is now 12 percentage points higher than before the start of the crisis.

Forced labour includes people coerced into jobs which they cannot leave, trapped in debt bondage, trafficked for sexual exploitation and even born into slavery, according to the report by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“While most countries have adopted legislation criminalizing forced labour, punishment is not always strong enough to act as a deterrent, in some cases amounting to fines or very short prison sentences,” the agency said in a press release.

Many forced labour victims work hidden from public view, on fishing vessels and construction sites, in commercial agriculture and in factories. Identifying these victims remains a major challenge. The ILO reported that some countries fail to sufficiently support labour inspections which allow cases of abuse or possible abuse to be found before degenerating into forced labour.

“Forced labour encompasses brick kiln workers trapped in a vicious cycle of debt, children trafficked for forced begging and domestic workers deceived about their conditions of work,” according to the report.

There are an estimated 5.5 million children under the age of 18 forced into labour, or about 26 per cent of the 21 million victims worldwide.

According to the report’s authors, “vestiges of slavery” still survive in some countries, where “conditions of slavery continue to be transmitted by birth to individuals who are compelled to work for their master without payment” to pay off inherited family debt.

Domestic workers, the majority of whom are women and girls, are often victims of abusive practices by employers, such as non-payment of wages, deprivation of liberty, and physical and sexual abuse.

Forced sexual exploitation affects about 4.5 million people or 21 per cent of forced labour, according to 2012 figures released in the report.

In some cases, the victims are children trafficked across borders and abused. The ILO warns trafficking of people could increase in the future as a result of unemployment and as workers search for jobs in foreign countries.

Youth are especially vulnerable as they increasingly face bleak job prospects, with almost 74 million people in the 15-to-24 age group unemployed around the world, translating into a 12.4 per cent unemployment rate, ILO said in its Global Employment Trends report released last month.

ILO’s report is being released ahead of a meeting set for next week in Geneva with experts on forced labour representing government, workers and employers. The meeting will focus on prevention, victim protection, including compensation and trafficking for labour exploitation, and will re-examine the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention and the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention.

New figures in the ILO’s Global Employment Trends 2013 show that 42 per cent of workers in developing countries – nearly 1.1 billion workers – are now “middle-class,” living with their families on more than US$4* per person per day. The rise is particularly marked in East Asia.

Since 2001, an additional 400 million workers have joined the ranks of the middle- class, with their incomes sufficient for their families to consume between US$4 and $13 a day per person. This is a doubling of the number of workers in the emerging middle class. A further 186 million workers are now living on more than $13 a day.

By 2017, the ILO estimates that an additional 390 million workers in the developing world could be middle-class.

“Over time, this emerging middle-class could give a much needed push to more balanced global growth by boosting consumption, particularly in poorer parts of the developing world,” said Steven Kapsos, one of the authors of the report.

Middle-class workers can invest more in health and education, leading to healthier and more productive lives. In turn, this means higher productivity and faster economic development, Kapsos explained.

The rise in the middle-class has been matched by a fall in the numbers of workers living in extreme poverty – living on less than US$1.25 a day. Some 397 million workers now fall in this category – a drop of 281 million since 2001.

Another 472 million are living on between US$1.25 and $2 a day, a drop of 35 million since 2001.

But the number of “near poor” -those living on between US$2 and $4 a day – has increased by 142 million in the past decade, making a total of 661 million people.

Many of these “near poor” are not covered by social insurance, and risk slipping back into poverty in the event of an economic crisis.

In South Asia, 92 per cent of the workforce is either poor or near poor, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, 86 per cent of workers are in these categories.

“Much work remains to be done to raise productivity levels and expand the number of quality jobs, in order to spur the growth of the developing world’s middle class.Unfortunately, the crisis affecting global labour markets threatens to slow progress,” concluded Kapsos.

In its annual Global Employment Trends report, released yesterday, the International Labour Organization (ILO) notes that despite the positive trend of falling unemployment over the past two years, the number of unemployed worldwide rose by 4.2 million in 2012 with gloomy expectations of a further increase in 2013.

“An uncertain economic outlook, and the inadequacy of policy to counter this, has weakened aggregate demand, holding back investment and hiring,” Guy Ryder, the ILO Director-General, announced in a news release accompanying the report.

“This has prolonged the labour market slump in many countries, lowering job creation and increasing unemployment duration even in some countries that previously had low unemployment and dynamic labour markets,” he added.

In particular, the report singles out the impact of the global unemployment crisis – already afflicting over 197 million people worldwide – on the world’s youth, who risk losing vital professional and social skills as the length of their joblessness continues to grow. “Many of the new jobs require skills that jobseekers do not have,” Ryder confirmed.

According to the ILO, some 35 per cent of unemployed youth in advanced economies have been out of a job for six months or longer – an absence which directly impacts their long-term career prospects as their skills deteriorate. Others, meanwhile, get discouraged and leave the labour market altogether.

With almost 74 million people in the 15 to 24 age group unemployed around the world, translating into a 12.4 per cent unemployment rate for this subset, job prospects for the world’s younger workers are looking increasingly bleak, says the report.

The UN official pointed out that regional differences in youth unemployment were likely to be marked, with the situation expected to improve slightly over the next five years in the developed economies while emerging economies in Eastern Europe, East and South-East Asia and the Middle East would continue to see rising joblessness among its young labour force.

He added, however, that it was incumbent on international policy-makers to find a coordinated response to reversing the problem and urged governments to establish coordinated retraining activities to help young people bridge the skills gap caused by extended bouts of joblessness.

“The global nature of the crisis means countries cannot resolve its impact individually and with domestic measures only,” declared the ILO Director-General.

The report specifically calls on policy-makers to engage in three areas crucial to employment generation, including injections of public investment into job-creating initiatives while private funding remains shy; addressing rising labour market mismatch problems through retraining and re-skilling programmes; and focusing action on youth joblessness.

“The high uncertainty, which is holding off investments and job creation, will not recede if countries come up with conflicting solutions,” cautioned Ryder. “The costs of inactivity, of allowing long-term unemployment to grow and young people to disconnect further from society, would be far higher.”

Yemen’s first national child labour survey – which was carried out with the support of the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Social Development Fund – revealed that of the country’s 7.7 million children in the 5-17 age group, 17 per cent are working, with many performing unpaid work.

“The survey reveals the alarming extent to which Yemeni children are deprived of their rights,” said ILO’s Regional Director for the Arab States, Nada al-Nashif. “The protection of Yemen’s children must be a priority for the international community. Yemen’s development depends on it.”

Child labourers are defined by the study as “anyone under the age of 14 who is employed, and those in the 14-17 age group who work more than 30 hours a week, or are involved in any designated hazardous economic activities and occupations.”

In addition to the 1.3 million child labourers, the report finds that more than 300,000 children aged 14 to 17 work in conditions and activities considered unsuitable for their age.

The report goes on to state that working children and child labourers are far more likely than others to skip or drop out of school. It also stresses that widespread poverty, population pressure, political instability and limited opportunities for employment outside agriculture have a significant impact in their livelihoods.

In a news release, ILO noted that Yemen has ratified its two key conventions on child labour accepting that 14 is the minimum age for employment, and recognizing that children under the age of 18 cannot be employed in hazardous work.

While a majority of countries have adopted legislation to prohibit or place severe restrictions on the employment and work of children, conventions on child labour continues to exist on a massive scale, sometimes in appalling conditions, particularly in the developing world, the agency added.

“Domestic workers are frequently expected to work longer hours than other workers and in many countries do not have the same rights to weekly rest that are enjoyed by other workers,” said the Deputy Director-General of the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), Sandra Polaski.

“Combined with the lack of rights, the extreme dependency on an employer and the isolated and unprotected nature of domestic work can render them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse,” she added.

According to the ILO report, Domestic workers across the world, more than 52 million people worldwide are employed as domestic workers. While a substantial number are men working as gardeners, drivers or butlers, 80 per cent of them are women.

Of the 52 million domestic workers, only 10 per cent are covered by labour laws to the same extent as other workers, and more than one quarter are completely excluded from national labor legislation.

This disparity in conditions translates in longer, more unpredictable working hours with no appropriate remuneration for domestic workers, rendering them highly vulnerable economically, as well as affecting their health.

The report states that more than half of all domestic workers have no limitation on their weekly normal hours of work and about 45 per cent have no entitlement to weekly rest periods or paid annual leave. In countries such as Qatar, Namibia, Tanzania and Saudi Arabia, the average hours of domestic workers range from 60 to 65 per week, largely surpassing the statutory limits set by virtually all countries of 40 to 48 hours per week.

“Long working hours, night working and patterns of shift work that involve an irregular distribution of working hours are among the factors that have the greatest negative effects on workers’ health,” said an ILO domestic work specialist, Amelita King-Dejardin. “They carry especially important risks for women during and after pregnancy and for young workers.”

Long working hours are especially common among live-in workers – many of whom are migrants – who are expected to be available at all times of the night, the report notes. Many migrant workers also lack knowledge of the local language and laws, which makes them especially vulnerable to abusive practices, such as physical and sexual violence, psychological abuse, non-payment of wages, debt bondage and abusive living and working conditions.

“The large disparities between wages and working conditions of domestic workers compared to other workers in the same country underline the need for action at the national level by governments, employers and workers to improve the working lives of these vulnerable but hard-working individuals,” said Polaski.

The report’s findings are intended to act as a benchmark against which progress in extending legal protection for domestic workers will be measured. It also calls for joint actions taken at a national level by governments, trade unions, employers and domestic workers’ organizations to bring about reform in legislation as well as in practice.

Domestic workers across the world follows the adoption in June 2011 of a new ILO Convention and Recommendation on domestic work which sets a standard for equal treatment between domestic and general workers in relation to working hours, rest periods and annual leave.

The Convention will come into force in September this year. So far, it has been ratified only by three countries: Mauritius, Uruguay and the Philippines.