This will be a boring column. Workers’ rights are so passé, so yesterday, so out. Suffice it to quote the Prime Minister’s tweet on May 1 of this year: “On Workers’ Day we are putting forward two projects for the south: a new educational venture and a new national natural park.” No need whatsoever to talk about mind-numbing things like worker solidarity and working conditions, then.

Except the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (EUFRA) has just published a long report on the severe exploitation of workers moving within and into the EU. It’s a pretty sobering read, for various reasons.

But first, it might be useful to note that the topic of exploitation tends to be pushed backwards, or outwards. We seem to think that exploited workers exist in history, or in the kind of far-off places we normally associate with poverty and missionaries and such.

The expression ‘kemm kienu jbatu’ (‘life was hard’) is used to describe working conditions in Malta in the past. It likes to keep the company of stories such as that of the stevedores who unloaded coal at the Marsa docks, and who would be pushed right off the gangplank into the sea if they showed the slightest urge to slacken.

Another tells of the crowds of day-labour hopefuls that gathered every morning outside the main gate at the dockyard.

The best they could hope for was to work hard to be able to live from hand to mouth.

I live in a harbour city and such stories are used as an everyday currency that funds the grander narrative of worker emancipation under the benevolence of Dom Mintoff.

The point is that cruel working conditions are thought to be a thing of the past. Unless we move away from Malta and towards the rough edges of the world, that is, in which case systematic exploitation appears alive and well. I imagine very few people were surprised when the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed two years ago, killing over a thousand garment workers.

That’s because Bangladesh is imagined as a backward place (‘għadhom lura’), a place where things like garment sweatshops and concrete of dubious quality are standard fare. Such is not the case in European countries, and certainly not in Malta.

Only it is, if the EUFRA report is to be believed. The report says nothing about concrete. It does however say quite a lot about the very many people in Europe today who find themselves trapped in circumstances of severe labour exploitation.

I’ve read the report, and I can vouch that it’s not remotely another case of disaster porn intended to satisfy the kind of lust that burns holes in the pockets of consultants.

Severe labour exploitation, for example, is narrowly defined as “all forms of labour exploitation that are criminal under the legislation of the EU”.

We seem to think that workers’ rights are fait accompli

In other words, this isn’t some fuzzy-edged notion of work-life balance. We’re deep in workers’ rights ODZ here, so to say.

The report also limits itself to the working conditions of migrants moving within and into the EU. Not that severe labour exploitation is limited to migrants. I’ve met people in Malta who were probably descended directly from the Christians who kissed Count Roger’s ring, and whose salaries and conditions were atrocious to say the last.

And yet even within these fairly limiting boundaries, the EUFRA researchers discovered a whole universe of experience. Theirs was a fact-finding mission that sought to look beyond the more spectacular and headline-mongering aspects of migration. Sadly, they weren’t disappointed.

One of their key findings was that European societies are generally very tolerant indeed of the labour exploitation of workers from other countries. Partly this is because such workers are thought to voluntarily accept their conditions. In other words, there is a tendency to justify things by adding the prefix ‘self-’ to ‘exploitation’.

A second problem was that of grey areas. Domestic work, for example, or caring for children or the elderly, has emerged as one such grey area in which the lines between (morally and legally) acceptable and un­acceptable practices are blurred.

There is also a serious difficulty to apply legislation. Migrants very often find themselves in complex political situations that make it very difficult for them to access legal remedies. Indeed their problematic status means they find it hard to fathom what rights and remedies they might have in the first place. It doesn’t help that labour exploitation can and often does occur on projects commissioned by public institutions.

There are numerous case studies that add value to the EUFRA report. Malta has the dubious honour of serving up two of these. Strangely, the case of Leisure Clothing is not mentioned. In the first, employers denounc­ed their third-country national workers to the police, having not paid them for months, to ensure their deportation and avoid payments.

The second takes us back to 2005 when a group of Indian men were hired by a Saudi Arabian contractor to work on a ‘large, government-funded infrastructural project’. They were very badly paid and their conditions were appalling. I’m beginning to wonder if ‘Mater Dei’ is the sickest christening joke in the history of humanity, but never mind.

The rather more pressing matter is what to do about all of this. There is mention in the report of consumers making ‘informed decisions’ on which products and services they ought to buy, based on whether or not these products and services originate in exploitative situations.

I’m not entirely convinced. I’m a zealous believer in the market and its choices but I also think this is one area where market-based arguments are simply a case of the State abdicating its responsibility.

Do we rely on ‘informed decisions’ when it comes to, say, choosing where to build, or paying taxes? Of course not.

The reason why many of us enjoy decent salaries and working conditions has little to do with cleverness and assertiveness, or market demand. Rather, it’s down to a history of social contracts, and of politics and structures rooted in the State. Speaking for myself, I don’t think that my salary has anything to do with the huge market demand for anthropologists.

And yet we seem to think that workers’ rights are fait accompli. Even as thousands of workers suffer here and now, we drone on about the past, foreign lands, and our own middle class. And about grand projects that will make millionaires of all of us.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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