Orville Taylor | Forced labour? No señor

In Spanish, his surname may mean ‘blonde’. However, be not confused, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio came here last week on a mission to carry forward the agenda of his president Donald Trump, which he believes is in the interest of the American people.

No doubt, there is a recognition of Jamaica’s strategic importance both physically and politically to the United States in this region, indeed hemisphere. A big part of the concern of the Americans is its overall influence in the region. This is not new. The Monroe Doctrine from the 1820s with the larger ideology of manifest destiny from the mid-1800s, declared the officially stated policy of the Americans to have complete hegemony over the Americas, ostensibly including the Caribbean.

Make no bones about it. Cuba is America’s prodigal son and after the declaration of socialism as the official doctrine by Fidel Castro in 1962 and decades of economic blockades and other recriminating measures, America does look at the island nation as a leper, and therefore is very circumspect when it comes to any kind of ‘contamination’ of his other ‘children’.

A bold statement was made by the Americans, that government officials and senior bureaucrats, who have engaged Cuban medical personnel to work, are at risk of losing their American visas, if the programme is not discontinued.

NOTHING AGAINST CUBA

Rubio declared while here that he has nothing against Cuba per se. Rather, he is against the exploitative conditions under which these employees are sent to Jamaica and other places to work. One imagines that the objections are not simply based on Americans’ feelings but are clearly guided by Conventions 29 and 105, which are fundamental human rights conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO). These conventions like six others, are binding on all member states of the ILO and do not require ratification to have mandatory effect on all, including the United States.

Defined by the ILO, forced labour is “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty for its nonperformance and for which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily”.

Jamaica ratified these conventions as far back as 1962, and we work hard via our various labour laws to give effect do these conventions, the other six and all the others, which we have ratified.

The Americans ratified convention 105 in 1991.

As far as ratifications go the US has one of the lowest ratification rates, and has not ratified Convention 94, Labour Clauses (Public Contracts) Convention. We have done so, and although not a fundamental convention, having been ratified by us, it is totally obligatory for the Jamaican government to bring its custom and practices in line with it.

Article 2 of the convention requires “wages including allowances, hours of work and other conditions of labour which are not less favourable than those established for work of the same character in the trade or industry concerned in the district where the work is carried on.”

Implied in every contract is strong adherence to the tenets of decent work and most certainly those guidelines which prohibit forced labour. Though apparently less timely than that of our CARICOM counterparts, Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ response has been clear that there is no evidence that Cuban workers sent here on labour programmes are engaged under forced labour conditions.

CANNOT GET UP AND MIGRATE

Now, while it might be true, that the average Cuban cannot get up and simply migrate, it is generally accepted that in a relatively centrally planned economy like Cuba, workers such as doctors, teachers and other professions work for the state. Working for the state, they certainly do not make the kind of money which their equivalents in America earn. Indeed, they likely earn in Cuba much less than their Jamaican counterparts.

Labour exchange programmes are not particularly new. It is not unusual for a country that might have more human resources in a particular area, to send its ‘troops’ of any sort based on a healthy bilateral relationship that exists between the two countries. Certainly on the surface of it, loaning professionals to another country under some ‘secondment’ type relationship, does not qualify as forced labour.

Interestingly, myriad reports have found multiple abuses of labour standards, including supply changes to major American brands as well. Long involved in an international division of labour, whereby primary goods are sent to metropolitan countries for secondary production, and thus greater value added, the problem of forced labour and other breaches of fundamental norms became more acute after the mid-1990s when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was formed. Without the same kind of teeth connected to the WTO, the ILO could merely make criticisms and chide governments, in a ‘Black Paragraph’ in the annual Reports of the Committee of Experts.

With no direct enforcement of labour standards, scores of American companies went outsourcing and thousands of items are now ‘Made in China’, ironically, with whom Trump has initiated a sort of trade war. American goods produced in China are a big deal and despite some disquiet, there might not be much that can be done, although there are murmurings about similar labour breaches

For example, in a major American seafood brand, a survey revealed, “Some 92 per cent of fishers reported they experienced abuse of vulnerability and debt bondage, trapping them in a vicious cycle of debt and exploitation. Further, in less percentages, the fishers also reported experiencing other forced labour indicators as defined by the International Labor Organization.”

Understanding that Americans will now be facing tariffs on imported goods from several nations, there is every reason to believe that there will be a shift to domestic production as the cost of imports increases. From the little economics I learned in Spanish class, the increase in the costs of imports might create more American jobs but could also lead to a labour surplus situation and thus, pressure on the labour standards.

We are trying here and doing okay.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.