Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING DECENT WORK COUNTRY PROGRAM (2019-2025) BETWEEN MALAYSIA WITH THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION (ILO)
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is poised to strengthen its support for workers in Malaysia after signing today, a MOU on the Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP) with the government, the Malaysian Trade Union Congress and the Malaysian Employers Federation.
The DWCPis the main cooperation framework through which the ILO provides support to its member countries. They allow the ILO’s own overriding strategic goal – the promotion of Decent Work for All – to be aligned with the national social and economic development priorities of different countries,.
The MOU was signed by Human Resources Minister S. Kula Segaran, MTUC Secretary-General, J Solomon, Vice-President of the Malaysian Employers Federation A. Ramadas and the Assistant Director General and Regional Director for Asia and Pacific ILO, Tamoko Nishimoto.
Also present was MTUC President, Dato Abdul Halim Mansor.
In his address, Bro Solomon said the MTUC welcomed the Decent Work Country Programme but urged the ILO and the Malaysian Government for urgent action on the following:
1. Commitment to Social Dialogue
MTUC as one of the tripartite constituents, must be consulted from the very beginning for any programme and on a regular basis including the drafting of this DWCP. A genuine consultation will have myriad benefits and avoid misunderstandings. We propose a by-monthly tripartite meeting to evaluate the progress of the DWCP with the presence of the ILO of course starting off with the review of this DWCP with immediate effect.
2. ILO Programmes and Funding
MTUC noted that the DWCP, in its present form, showed discrepancies in projects targeted for migrant and local workers. More funds and programmes have been earmarked for foreign labour compared programmes which can propogate a meaningful review of local labour laws, encourage collective bargaining, trade union capacity building and other initiatives which will benefit all workers – migrants and the 14 million local work force.
Whilst, we agree that certain programmes must be focused on the issues of labour trafficking and forced labour with the objective of addressing the core factors that give rise to these issues, we need to acknowledge the fact that there are also many Malaysian workers in precarious employment and facing forced labour elements through their contracts of employment.
Therefore, the resource allocation by breaking down workers by migrant and non-migrant under the ILO programmes is an outdated approach, is divisive, counter-productive and runs contrary to the fundamental principles of the ILO.
We need to make Union capacity building and Collective Bargaining an absolute priority.
We must enhance the ability and ease to organize unions, expand the scope of collective bargaining and the right to strike must be the bedrock of a progressive and worker-trade union friendly legal regime in place as well as tool to legally enforce these new laws.
They need to provide significantly increased legal routes to defend those rights and protect all workers, migrants and Malaysian. Nothing sustainable can be achieved without first getting these labor law reforms in place.
Therefore, this DWCP must be relooked at and discussed again.
3. Make Malaysian Labour Law Reform an absolute priority in the DWCP
The new Malaysian government is committed and has taken important early steps in addressing decade’s old and outdated labour and trade union laws, which fall short of international standards. While we give credit to the Government for the level of consultation thus far on the reform, the real proof will be what the laws look like in the final form and on how rigorously these new laws will be applied.
MTUC seeks to fully integrate all migrant workers in Malaysia into the trade union movement. This is the spirit of the proposed labour law reforms as well as policy initiatives like social security access and workplace accident compensation, namely that migrant workers are eligible to the same benefits as Malaysian nationals and should be treated equally with no distinction based on nationality. Therefore, the Labour Law Reform must the priority in the DWCP.
On this stage today, MTUC would also like to urge Malaysian Government to ratify Convention 87 and the ILO to openly employ all leverage to encourage the new Government in this ratification.
For the desperately needed labor law reforms, the ratification of C 87 will serve to bolster those reforms and emphasize the new Government’s commitment to real protection of worker and trade union rights.
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