international contacts

Joint letter from Kav Laoved and the Workers Advice Center - WAC (Ma'an) concerning migrant farm workers in Israel.

The letter was sent in June 2008 to several Trade Unions and NGOs in Britain and Holland

Israeli farm products that reach European supermarkets are being produced with bonded labour

We are writing to you jointly to ask for your advice in our effort to improve the wages and conditions of agricultural workers in Israel, who are producing food for British supermarkets. In particular, we would like to use the legal and voluntary commitments of British retail chains to ethical employment practices overseas as incentives for change here in Israel.

In the context of agricultural workers within Israel, Kav LaOved (Worker’s Hotline) works with migrant workers from Thailand. WAC -Ma’an (Workers Advice Centre) works with Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel.

Israel is a significant supplier of agricultural produce (fruit, vegetables and cut flowers) to the major British supermarkets. WAC-Ma'an and Kav LaOved have witnessed that British labour standards commitments to workers overseas are not being upheld in Israel. This includes legal commitments made in EU law and retail chains’ (e.g. supermarkets) own voluntary codes of conduct governing the treatment of workers abroad.

Specifically, Thai migrant workers and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel experience sub-minimum wages and illegal working conditions. Smaller farmers often hire these workers, and then sell their produce to Israeli agro-businesses. These agro-businesses export to British retail chains.

While Israeli labour law makes decent provision for workers, it is poorly implemented and poorly enforced. The majority of Thai migrant workers work extremely long hours for far less than the minimum wage. Often Thai workers live and work in dangerous and squalid conditions. They do so because as non-citizens they are vulnerable to dismissal and deportation if they request their rights in the workplace.

In addition Thai agricultural workers often owe large debts to domestic Thai loan sharks, often incurred in part as illegally charged brokerage fees paid to Israeli manpower agencies. Such agencies attempt to maintain a monopoly on the supply of Thai labour at the expense of workers’ market mobility and bargaining power.

Inspections conducted by the Israeli government and retail chains to ascertain whether employers are upholding the law and labour commitments are inadequate. Inspectors interrogate employers, not workers, in order to establish whether laws are being upheld. False pay slips are produced that do not represent true hours worked, and no interpreters escort inspectors onto sites.

Palestinian Arab workers in Israel are, as a result, disadvantaged by the cheap labour that Thai workers are compelled to provide. Arab workers in Israel cannot afford to work for the low level of wages or accept the extensive, family-unfriendly hours that Thais accept. Employers prefer to hire Thai workers who are perceived as cheap and compliant. In particular, women from Palestinian Arab families have experienced a severe diminution in employment opportunities in agriculture. This has serious economic consequences for Arab citizens of Israel, who suffer pronounced discrimination in the labour market as a whole. 19% of Arab women in Israel are employed outside the home, as compared to 56% of Jewish women.

We would be very grateful for your advice as to how we can start to convince British retailers that their ethical commitments to workers must be upheld to the letter. We are concerned to do this in a way that will not lead to dismissal or the reduction of employment opportunities for the workers involved. The TGWU’s knowledge of bringing pressure to bear upon retail chains to help inspection regimes work effectively would be invaluable. By using ethical commitments in UK markets, commitments that do not yet exist here in Israel, we hope to deliver the locally determined legal minimum wage and legal working conditions to both migrant and domestic workers in agriculture.

Thank you for your time, and we look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

Yours sincerely

Vivian Jackson, Thai Workers Project, Kav LaOved
Assaf Adiv, WAC-Ma'an National Coordinator