Saturday, August 27, 2016
Refugees: Europe's new forced labour?
A few weeks ago, our housemate, Ahmed (names changed to protect identity), came home excited. "I am going to get payed!"
He had been volunteering at a chain of charitable flea markets for months (let's pretend it's called "FADI"), putting in between 4-8 hours a day, carrying heavy furniture donations in their warehouse. When his family started facing financial difficulties back in Iraq (his family decided to move away from a dangerous area, shortly after which, a bomb went off near their home, and so they were unable to sell their house), he decided to ask DAFI whether they would actually hire him.
A verbal contract was made for ONE week of work. I'd never seen Ahmed quite as happy as when he worked there that one week.
A couple weeks later, things got messy. "They cannot pay me," he said one evening. "I don't have a passport, so they cannot give me salary because I cannot open a bank account. Also, my social worker will cut all my money for the month if I get paid. So FADI told me it was volunteer work."
I was astounded, so I asked a few clarifying questions. Why can't they give you your salary in cash? Who said they can't? Why can't you just go buy something for the owed amount and give them the receipt instead? If you are legally allowed to work after 6 months with no passport, then surely that means there also has to be a way for you to get paid for it?
So DAFI had promised him work on the basis that he was legally allowed to. When pay day came around, and it was discovered that Ahmed had no bank account, they said he must open one. But he can not open one, because he has no passport, says immigration. DAFI says paying salary in cash is not legal. Perhaps we can pay the salary into 'Harry's' account instead, and you can have it at the next pay day?
Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but this is my understanding of the law as I understood after a little googling and reading the web pages of the occupational safety and health administration of Finland.
1. The employer cannot suggest a bank account into which to pay the salary, and furthermore, one's salary must be available on pay day.
"Wages must be paid into a bank account designated by the employee. Wages must be available to the employee on the due date. The employer is liable for the costs incurred through payment of wages."
2. Paying salary in cash is possible."Wages may be paid in cash only for compelling reasons, for instance if the employee does not have a bank account or the employer does not have the employee’s bank details. The employer must obtain a receipt signed by the employee or some other means of verifying payment if wages are paid in cash."
Ahmed blames immigration because they want to make it as difficult for refugees as possible, and says he is also partially to blame, because he should have known they cannot pay him. DAFI, according to him, is absolutely not to blame at all.
Again, perhaps I do not fully understand the law here, but I would imagine that the duty of care in this case is with the employer. Any employer seeking to make a contract with any person surely has to ensure that they are also able to pay the employee? Surely, it is not the duty of the employee to take care of those considerations? Ahmed says they called immigration. Immigration said he has no passport, so he cannot open a bank account. The social worker says salary must be paid into a bank account. My question is, why did they call immigration? Why should immigration know anything about the practicalities of salary payments? Why are they consulting a social worker? Surely a worker's union or the occupational safety and health administration is the right body to contact?
What am I missing here? The aforementioned web page seems fairly clear cut.
And if my understanding of EU rights is correct, foreign workers cannot legally be treated differently. It is a human rights issue, above all else. Allowing those kinds of double standards would encourage forced labour. And this whole episode smacks of forced labour, if you ask me. First he is promised a salary, then he is told it is not possible to pay it after all. Then they suggest he continues to work for them as a volunteer.
Ahmed says they will furnish his apartment for him if/when he gets his residence permit, so that's a bonus. Well, he's been there for almost a year now volunteering, and furnishing one small apartment with second hand furniture would be worth what... a month, max two, of wages? And that's assuming the furniture has some monetary value to the charitable organization. Which it doesn't, since they are donations, and the labour that's carrying it around is all "voluntary".
Somebody with some knowledge of the law, please do advise!
Labels: asylum seekers, Finland, forced labour, human rights, justice, labour, labour law, law, refugees
fon @ 1:05 AM link to post * *
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
About racial profiling.
The first graders' first parents evening is hardly the place where I expected to feel my blood pressure rise. And especially not due to racial profiling, given that my child is going to an international school.
The homeroom teacher said to mention if anything is not quite right. I suppose she meant in the kids' lives, but I wrote her a note nonetheless. I wouldn't want the teacher to remain so silent in front of the children if something like this were to occur again on her watch (I suppose this was the afternoon club when this happened, so she's off the hook for that - although I do wish she'd said something to the angry dad.)
I didn't say anything in the meeting this evening. I am angry at myself for being too bewildered to open my mouth. If he speaks like that again, though, I certainly won't remain quiet. What I would have liked to have done is ask the father who brought up the matter of the 'Chinese gentleman' whether he would have found the ethnicity worth pointing out had the photographer looked white.
So what happened? Well, he reported that his child had reported a Chinese gentleman outside taking pictures of the blond ladies. And that there were drones. Fine, reporting what his daughter said is objective enough, although naturally, the kid hasn't learned all by herself to draw ethnic lines or call some vaguely Asian looking guy Chinese. He continued, however, to talk about 'the Chinese man', and that's where he crossed over to the realm of racial profiling and my blood pressure shot to the ceiling. He went on to say stuff like 'these kinds of visitors cannot be allowed at school.' 'There must be absolute control.' He also went on to suggest that all devices must be confiscated from all visitors. Adult visitors.
First of all, I wonder what trauma he's experienced to think that somehow outsiders cannot be trusted at all. For the sake of experimentation, I should send the most 'Chinese looking' friend of mine to get Monn from school one day and tell him to take a picture of Monn so that everyone sees it happening. My kid may not be a lady, but he is blond. And he is Thai. I am sure there are some adopted kids in the school who would 'look Chinese' (whatever that means in today's non-homogenous world!) but are Finnish, or American, or Italian, etc. from head to toe.
I might have totally agreed with him about control of privacy had he not pointed out the perceived ethnicity. After all, now we are specifically talking about Chinese visitors. Not just men with cameras in general. And only about photographing blond ladies, now.
I do respect his need for privacy, even though I don't understand why he needed to shout at all of us about it. I definitely don't think the school needs to operate like some high-security prison though. Surely, we can trust adult educators from around the world not to take photos and post them on social media if we tell them it's not allowed. My gut feeling is that had they been Finnish-looking visitors he would not have been so up in arms about it. But that's just my opinion.
I do hope to see some improvement from the school on this front. Racial profiling is hurtful and discriminatory, and it's something that many so-called 'kantasuomalaiset' ('ethnic Finns') fail to see, no matter how 'non-racist' they claim to be. Not only Finns, of course. I was once called into the principal's office at an international school in Kazakhstan. A kid who had been home-schooled til the age of ten and was exposed to the real world for the first time came up to me (age 12) and shouted 'Hahaaaa! You're CHINESE and I'm AMERICAN!' etc. Then he taunted my best friend, 'YOU'RE AN INDIAN!!'. ... Then I punched him. The principal told me 'What he said wasn't nice, but hitting is absolutely not allowed.' I agree, hitting isn't allowed. BUT NEITHER IS RACISM!!!! It's not just 'not nice'. It is simply wrong.
It's simply not enough just to say that you don't think less of someone because of their appearance. It's also important to revise one's own language to reflect that attitude. If you are constantly mentioning negative actions with an ethnicity attached to it, you are in fact re-enforcing negative stereotypes about ethnic groups, even without directly saying negative things about that particular group. So, seriously. If the dudes skin colour, appearance or gender for that matter, had ABSOLUTELY ZILCH to do with the actions that you disapprove of, don't keep bringing them up. You make yourself look like the ultimate stereotype of the 'privileged white man'.
Here is a good blog on the topic from a victim of ethnic profiling in Finland:
https://raster.fi/2016/06/21/the-reality-of-ethnic-and-racial-profiling-in-finland/
And here is the EU's report on the matter, in case you are saying 'Oh, there's that member of a minority who wants to whine about imagined racism': https://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/Country-by-country/Finland/FIN-CbC-IV-2013-019-ENG.pdf
'nuff said. I need a drink - Oh wait, Thai ladies don't drink. We totally just sit around and let our white hubbies beat us into submission.
Labels: bullying, discrimination, nationalism, racial profiling, racism, xenophobia
fon @ 1:48 AM link to post * *