25/01/2021
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Wage theft: g
the missing middle in exploitation of migrant
| openDemocracy
pp workers
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To maintain these objectives, policies on temporary labour migration in
destination countries generally provide very limited exibility for migrant workers
to change jobs of their own volition. Their legal status is directly tied to their
employer, preventing them from leaving their employment without losing
permission to stay and work. Moreover, the opportunity for migrants to organise
into trade unions to bargain collectively and access legal assistance is limited
within many destination countries. The restriction of their basic rights creates a
dependency that is easily exploited.
With these enabling factors in place, wage theft cannot be regarded as an
unintended consequence of illiberal labour migration governance regimes.
Systematic measures to decrease the ability of migrant workers to avoid, seek
redress for, or leave abusive situations have a calculated recoupment e ect on
wages. It has been argued that the cost of migrants’ rights are in fact directly
priced into the formulation of migration policies in destination countries.
Lack of wage protection enables discriminatory pay
practices
Migrant workers are more commonly employed in informal sectors of work which
are not fully covered by labour laws. As a result, they are exempted from key wage
protections such as a legal minimum or overtime pay. This contributes to arti cially
low wages and segmentation within national labour markets.
The fragmentation of employment relationships in recent decades has also
reduced labour and social protections for migrant workers. Due to externalised
work arrangements through outsourcing and misclassi cation of employment,
employers now have considerably less statutory responsibility for the pay and
bene ts provided to migrants.
Framing exploitation as resulting from criminality is a convenient
distraction from an immensely uneven distribution of global wealth.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/wage-theft-missing-middle-exploitation-migrant-workers/?utm_source=tw
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