exploitation of immigrant workers in romania

>> Filipina Textile Workers in Sibiu

"We have to work like horses!"

Mondostar in SibiuLike many other companies in the Romanian textile and construction sectors, textiles firm Mondostar has had to struggle with a persistent labour shortage for several years. Amongst the local workers hardly anyone is willing to work for the low wages paid in the textile industries. Since three months ago Mondostar has employed 95 women from the Philippines in order to counteract the shrinking supply of labour. Hoping for a good job in Europe, the workers from the Philippines borrowed money while still in their home country. They needed the money in order to be able to pay the high fees of the recruitment agency in Manila. The agency recruited them for Mondostar, signing a contract which entitled the workers to a basicwage of US-Dollar 400 and 100 per cent extra for overtime. In fact the women were never paid this wage. The following report is based on conversations with some of the Filipina workers.

The labour shortage worsens

Only three years ago the Romanian company still employed about 1,500 local workers – male and female – manufacturing suits for export to Germany and Switzerland. Now there are only 400 local workers left. Most of these are older women whose wage is a contribution to the family income. Apart from them hardly anyone is willing to do factory work for a monthly wage of US-Dollar 250 (1). Young people move abroad or look for jobs in different sectors. Many former Mondostar employees have shifted to the automobile parts manufacturer Takata, producing air-bags. The newly opened green-field plant in the west of town offers higher wages and better working conditions (2). According to a union representative at Mondostar, the textiles company recently tried to hire more people from the countryside, but failed. People from the countryside engaged in subsistence farming are less dependent on a factory job. The company would have difficulties with their unmotivated attitude to work, a high rate of people on sick-leave, absenteeism and an ongoing high rate of staff turnover.

Mondostar still has many open orders, the machinery is ready for use, but the people are missing. On their search for productive workers and a way out of crisis the company finally signed a contract with the EASTWIND International Agency in Manila, which recruited qualified women textile workers for them.

Namibia, Taiwan, Brunei ... Romania

At the end of May 2008 the Filipinas came to Sibiu. A precondition for their employment was work experience as seamstress. Each of them had to pay 120,000 Philippine Pesos (about US-Dollar 2,500) to the agency, for recruitment and the flight to eastern Europe. In order to be able to pay the money the women had to take out a bank loan or a mortgage secured on the property of relatives. The work contract signed in the Philippines entitled them to a basic wage of US-Dollar 400 and 100 per cent extra for overtime. Many of the women, aged 26 to 52, had already worked overseas as seamstresses in textile factories, e.g. in Namibia, Taiwan and Brunei. The women say it is common in the industry to work overtime and to be paid extra accordingly. According to their own calculation Mondostar would have to pay them US-Dollar 600 to 700 including overtime, after reductions for food and accommodation.

However after a short time the Filipina workers realised that the Romanian company would not stick to the contract. Quite the contrary, the company would try to extract the maximum work at lowest cost.

After arriving in Sibiu the women had to sign a second contract, which was written in Romanian and which apparently codified wage deductions and other details. During the first two months the women worked daily from 6:30 am till 6:00 pm, including Saturdays. At the end of the month the pay slip showed 570 RON (about US-Dollar 235). For the second month they were only paid the same amount. Each month US-Dollar 165 for food and accommodation was cut from the basic wage. Given a weekly working time of 60 hours, the pay for the overtime alone would have amounted to additional US-Dollar 400 - actually the overtime was not paid at all.

In the dormitory, which is situated right on the factory premises, eight women have to share a room. Breakfast and lunch are provided, but the women have to sort out dinner themselves. The canteen food is miserable. "Sometimes it's so bad that we'd rather not eat lunch at all". Inside the factory the women from the Philippines are seated separately from the local workers. Their forewomen are Romanian. "They are always on our backs and force us to work harder. We have to work like horses!"

Overtime boycott

Mondostar in SibiuThe women are disappointed by the management's behaviour and angry about earning so little. They are not even able to pay back the loans at home let alone to support their families. They decided to fight back and in the third month they refused to do overtime. They announced an ultimatum to the management: by mid-August the full wages and 100 per cent bonus should be paid. At the beginning of August they filed an official complaint at the Philippines Embassy in Bucharest. Consequently the embassy stopped any further recruitment of seamstresses for Mondostar. A setback for the company given that they wanted to hire 180 more workers. The Inspectorat Teritorial de Munca (ITM) was informed, as well. The ITM is a Romanian state institution which monitors compliance with legal labour standards. The results of the inspection and further measures are not known yet.

The Filipina workers find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Their permission to stay in Romania is bound to the one-year work contract with Mondostar. If they leave the contract early they would lack the money for the flight back home and in Manila they would face huge debts. It would take a long time to claim the money by suing the agency for false pretences. If they continue to work in Sibiu under the given conditions they will not be able to save money. After all they would earn less than back home in Manila.

Meanwhile the management demonstrates how they plan to treat rebellious workers. In response to the protest of the Filipina workers, their four spokeswomen, whom the women had chosen amongst themselves, were sacked along with two others. Consequently they lost their legal permission to stay in Romania and had to fly back to Manila. The Philippines embassy in Bucharest organised this 'deportation'. In the factory the remaining workers have already elected four new spokeswomen.

Mondostar in SibiuThe management now wants to pay according to performance, but the targets are absurdly high. About 50 workers are supposed to tailor 500 pairs of trousers in an eight-hour shift. They just about manage to tailor 280 to 300, even after seven Romanian workers have been allocated to work with them. In other factories where the women had worked before the corresponding target was about 250.

The women like to be in Sibiu and they would like to stay. People are friendly towards them. "It's only the situation at Mondostar which is unbearable for us." They have often seen local people wrinkle their nose when they hear that the women work at Mondostar. In the region the company is unpopular and well known for bad wages.

Experimental phase

So far there are not many companies in Romania employing a foreign workforce. The few existing attempts at exploiting foreign workers are often accompanied by conflicts and actions of resistance by the migrant workers (see contribution below: "Open letter - Indian Workers in Marsa/Sibiu").

Open Letter: Indian Workers in Marsa, near Sibiu

Half a year ago in a metal factory in Marsa, a town neighbouring Sibiu, there was a conflict similar to the current one at Mondostar. Since May 2007 the factory had employed 43 workers from India, paying them US-Dollar568 before tax. The boss of Grande Mecanica Marsa allocated numbers to the Indian workers, because he wasn't able or willing to pronounce their names. He just called the men Sorin 1, Sorin 2, ... Sorin 24.

At the beginning of January 2008 the contracts of 30 Indian workers were terminated. According to newspaper articles the men were dismissed because they had not turned up for work since December 20 2007. The same sources state that during that time the company was shut down for a company holiday. The workers had complained that they were forced to work overtime, which they did not get paid for. "According to our contract our working times are ten hours per day, six days per week. The

company did not adhere to the contract and made us work 115 to 130 hours per week." (3) As early as October 2007 the Indian workers had addressed the media through an open letter, declaring that the management treats them like slaves: "Day in day out we are tortured psychologically. It seems like the management wants to get back at us for complaining at the Indian embassy. For example before shift starts, when we want to put on our protective clothing, the supervisor eggs us on saying there is no time for putting on the clothing. All the time the management turns up at our work stations telling us: 'faster, faster! And bear in mind that you are constantly filmed by the surveillance cameras.'" (4)

For companies in Romania employing foreign workers means an additional bureaucratic effort and higher costs. In return they hope for a motivated work-force which is always available and more easily controlled than others would be. The fact that legal permission to stay is tied to the work contract provides the employer with a significant tool to put pressure on the workers. Employers increase the workload and try to extort overtime without paying for it. Moreover, actual expenditure for food and accommodation is reduced to lowest level, while a considerable part of the wages is deducted.

But it's not possible to make the 'industrious and docile' Asian workers drudge like horses just like that, to give them numbers and keep them under control. They won't put up with everything. The intimidation by employers has only a limited impact on them. Many of the Filipina workers have years of experience of working overseas, they are able to compare conditions, they know how to organise themselves and try to enforce their own interests.

Ana Cosel, 27th of August 2008

Contact: ana.cosel[at]web.de

Footnotes:

(1) Currently the legal minimum wage in Romania is 150 Euros or US-Dollar 220. In the textile industries the wages are only just above the minimum wage (US-Dollar 220 to 280).

(2) The car industry suppliers usually pay slightly higher wages in order to attract qualified workers in times of lack of work-force.

(3) Sources: Realitatea.net (January 23 2008), Sibiu Standard (January 15 2008), Ziarul de Sibiul (October 8 2007) and Ziarul de Sibiu (May 25 2007)

(4) Quoted from the Indian workers' open letter published in a newspaper article of October 8 2007 at www.ziaruldesibiu.ro

First published at:

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/rumae/index.html

>> Factory or Prison - Textile workers from Bangladesh in Bacau

In January 2007 the BBC reported on a strike involving 400 Chinese female textile workers of the Wear Company in Bacau in Eastern Romania. During the strike, Sorin Nicolescu, director of the firm, was physically attacked during the strike by about 100 angry women. “Instead of working, they threw themselves at me with forks and spoons. I called the police and security. It’s just not acceptable to be attacked in my own country, in my factory, by female workers, to whom I have made every concession!” said Nicolescu in a statement to the press at the time. After the strike, through which the workers aimed to impose higher wages and better working conditions, significant numbers of women handed in their notice and returned to China. (1)

Beset by the shortage of labour-power in Romania, Wear Company has again hired labour-power from Asia, this time 500 contract-workers from Bangladesh. The following report is based on personal conversations with some workers.

Locked in for two months

The first workers from Bangladesh that we meet in the town-centre of Bacau belong to the 74 construction-workers who have been employed for three months by the firm Rombet S.A. They are working with local construction-workers on the large construction-site for a new shopping mall. They can’t complain about the food and accommodation. “But the wages are much too low! We have a contract for 500 US Dollars on 8 hours a day. But we work 10 hours each day, including Saturday, and we only get 375 US Dollars!” They know some of their compatriots at Wear-Company. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, they were all signed up to the Al Abas International agency which arranged their employment in Romania. The fees that the agency charges, which the workers must raise themselves, are enormous: about 3,500 US Dollars per person. In order to raise this large sum, many have taken out a bank-loan or a mortgage on the family-house. The instalments plus the interest have to be paid off out of their wages.

It is Sunday, the only free day in the week, on which the textile-workers from Bangladesh usually take the bus into the town-centre and go for walks in groups in the park. In the last weeks none of them was allowed to leave the factory-premises. The gate was locked and security didn’t allow anyone out. “The workers of Wear Company have been locked in for two months. They can’t leave the factory. That’s like prison!” one of the construction-workers from Rombet tells us. But we are lucky: on this Sunday the textile-workers are allowed out again and we are able to talk with them about their situation.

They say that the company-management had told them that there were problems with Immigration Police, and for that reason they couldn’t leave the factory. The workers suspect that the company took these measures because 20 of their colleagues had disappeared. These had possibly crossed the border into other European countries in order to find better work there.

The overtime trick

The workers from Bangladesh (2) are seamsters and have a contract for 8-hour days, 40-hour weeks, for which they are supposed to receive 400 US Dollars. In fact they regularly work 60-hour weeks and are paid 640 RON (253 US Dollars). “That is much too little! Our families rely on our money. On top of that come the instalments and the interest on the loans that we have taken out.” In addition a part of the money that they transfer to Bangladesh is retained as processing fees by the money-transfer companies such as Western Union; on small sums these amount to approximately 10% of the total sum!

The employer deducts 147 US Dollars each month from the contractually agreed 400 US Dollars. This is for accommodation in a dormitory on the factory premises, where at any one time 9 men have to sleep in three-storey bunk-beds. On top of that comes the food which the company provides, but which isn’t enough. The workers are often still hungry after meals.

According to Romanian employment legislation workers can rack up 38 hours of overtime, which must be balanced out in the time-sheets of the following months. Each additional hour of overtime has to be paid at double the rate. To complete the sums: on 20 hours’ overtime a week, Wear Company steals from each single worker 400 US Dollars a month that he should be entitled to.

This trick with the overtime is well-known. In Sibiu, a couple of hundred kilometres to the West of Bacau in Romania, female textile workers from the Philippines started a overtime-boycott against the Mondostar company at the beginning of August, after they received no wages at all for overtime. (3)

It has to be worth it for the Asian workers to take on the high agency fees. They see the contractually determined basic wage and count on the corresponding increased rates for overtime. When the workers are then in Romania the companies attempt to undercut the contract by paying lower wages and squeezing more work out of them.

“If it doesn’t suit you, go back to Bangladesh”

The residence permit for workers from Bangladesh is tied to their year-long work contract. Their passports and all their important documents are retained by the company, which only hands out copies of these. The company-management can easily fire undesirable workers and then get them deported. 30 workers just got fired. “As soon as we complain, they say: ‘if it doesn’t suit you, then we’ll send you back to Bangladesh.’” In view of the large debts that await in Bangladesh, this is a threatening proposition.

Unlike the Filipina women at Mondostar, only a few of the workers from Bangladesh already have been able to acquire experience abroad. Many have left their country for the first time. For the workers of Wear Company the step from Bangladesh to Europe is bound up with the hope for better living conditions. (4)

Relying on the workers

The Wear Company in Bacau relies on foreign labour-power. According to a study by the temporary work agency Manpower, Romania is currently the country with the biggest shortage in labour-power in the world. 73% of companies questioned indicated that they couldn’t find enough labour-power. (5) The textile and construction industries and the service sector are particularly heavily affected.

According to estimates 10% of the Romanian population are working permanently or temporarily abroad, mainly in Spain and Italy, where they receive five to seven times the wages that they would get in Romania. The daily propaganda in the Romanian media about the worsening working conditions for Romanians abroad, the catastrophic social effects of ongoing emigration for family-members left behind – children who grow up without care, old people that no-one takes care of – and the threatened “flooding” of the national labour-market by Asian workers doesn’t alter the situation in the slightest.

Bacau is in the Romanian province of Moldova, a region in which the rate of emigration of the local workforce is well above the average. The city of 185,000 inhabitants offers six direct flights each week and ten bus departures each day to Italy.

Publicise the case

In our conversations with the workers from Bangladesh a pressing concern is soon expressed: “We want our situation here to be reported on. Something has to change.”

In early September a worker tells us by telephone that they are being locked in again. “Last Sunday 16 of our colleagues didn’t come back. Now the company is forbidding us to leave the factory premises. We don’t know yet if we will be let out next Sunday.

Report by Ana Cosel
9th September 2008

Contact:

ana.cosel@web.de

Sonoma and Wear Company

Wear Company and Sonoma – two large textile factories in Bacau which produce sports clothing for export – are both owned by the Italian Antonello Gamba. Gamba was the first entrepreneur in Romania who applied for a licence for the employment of over 1000 foreign workers from China. Since the strike at Wear Company in January 2007 the remaining Chinese workers from the Wear factory in the Southern industrial zone of Bacau were “transferred” to the Sonoma factory on the North-Western edge of town. They work in the Sonoma factory together with some hundred local workers. Since this year 500 workers exclusively from Bangladesh are employed in the Wear factory; even their foremen are Bangladeshi.

Less is known on the current situation of the total of 250 Chinese workers at Sonoma. A month ago a case was covered in the local press: a Chinese worker from Sonoma had gone into the centre of Bacau on the 5th August and drawn attention to his situation with a placard. His contract was about to run out, he would have to go back to China, but the company refused to pay him the wages he was due. He said repeatedly: “No money, no China, no tomorrow.” (6)

Endnotes:

(1) BBC report on the strike:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6286617.stm

(2) Unlike the Philippines, which “exports” female labour-power, in Bangladesh it is primarily men who go abroad to work.

(3) See the report on the 27th August 2008 by Ana Cosel:

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/rumae/sibiu.html (deutsch)

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/rumae/sibiu_engl.html

(4) Repeated strikes and violent protests are occurring in the new centres of production of the textile industry in Bangladesh against low wages and the constant price-rises for foodstuffs. The basic wage of a textile worker in Bangladesh – the large majority of the 2 million workers employed in the clothing industry are women – is around US$45 a month. The state is trying to repress these protests violently; police and paramilitaries are playing a decisive role in this.

(5) Manpower study published on the 22nd April 2008:

http://www.euractiv.com/en/socialeurope/romania-skilled-labour-shortage-highest-worldwide/article-171920

(6) In Romanian:

http://www.desteptarea.ro/articol_15067.shtml

First published at:

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/rumae/index.html