Ireland: Exploitation of Migrant Workers is Global Issue.

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444 AFL-CIO retired

Workers here in the US will find this interesting. It is an interview with migrant workers by a representative of the Irish Union UNITE.  Keelings is an Irish fruit company that has been using workers from the poorer countries of Eastern and Southern Europe to pick fruit.

There has been some controversy as the company flew in Bulgarian workers and the issue of the pandemic has arisen and the safety of these workers and the Irish population as well. Shipping workers 2000 kilometers to do what is is considered non essential work in the middle of a pandemic threatens everyone.

The workers are recruited by an agent in Bulgaria, flown by the Irish airline Ryanair to Dublin and then housed and sent to work in the fields. Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s owner is a billionaire.

The workers pay about one month’s wages in Bulgaria for a contract that supposedly lasts 12 weeks but with an 8-week probationary period. They earn about $300 Euro’s a week and out of that but they have to pay 95 euro’s a week for their accommodation and they have other deductions. The union rep calculates they earn about 200 euro’s a week after deductions.  In the wake of the pandemic, a mandatory 300 euro a week wage has been introduced.

So the agent in Bulgaria earns money off them. Ryanair and its billionaire owner, gets a cut, Forbes as it does with parasitic characters in its billionaire club refers to them as “self made”. Keelings the fruit company gets a cut and whoever else is in on the deal. So these workers put a lot of money in the pockets of people who do no work.

While the living conditions described by these two workers do not appear to be as bad as the immigrant workers that are used here in California by agribusiness, though I am not sure of that, the nature of the arrangement is the same.  Capitalism seeks the cheapest labor power and also the most vulnerable and desperate. The euphemism for a desperate worker used by the mass media is “willing”. They are more “willing” to accept lower wages as well as poor and uncertain labor conditions.

Eastern and Southern Europe has more poverty and less opportunity than the north so capital, just like it does with our southern border, sucks out these desperate workers.

There are a couple of other aspects of this that are similar. There are always the xenophobic and racial or national arguments. Immigrants are blamed for taking jobs away from the local people and in the midst of an economic slump there are Irish people who would welcome work but are kept from it due to the social restrictions brought about by the pandemic. In my early life experience, it was the Irish workers, many of them rural people, who were attacked in the most vicious racist fashion and blamed for coming to the UK, taking English jobs and placing downward pressure on wages.

This strategy has its origins in the capitalist class that always needs to keep workers in a state of desperation and uncertainty and unhealthy competition with each other for jobs and life’s necessities and uses race, nationalism color, religion and whatever means at their disposal to make this divide and rule strategy work.  And it is to work in a way that hopefully avoids breaking in to the open which always opens up the possibility of class unity and threatens the interests of the ruling class. In other words, the same social force that uses them as cheap labor blames them for being cheap labor.

No matter what the color, religion or nationality of the people on California’s southern border are, (I live in California) as long as labor power is cheaper and opportunity for profit abundant, capital will flow there.  Capital does not respect and does not want borders.

It’s a good video and I encourage workers to watch it. International class solidarity and united action is what will change this situation. If this pandemic teaches us anything it is that workers of the world have the same interest so workers of the world should unite internationally to protect and advance our economic wellbeing. Wait, didn’t someone say that once?

Here is the statement from the UNITE Faceboook Page

The Keelings experience in workers’ own words.

This is a long but important video for anyone concerned with workers’ rights.

Unite first became aware of the situation facing migrant workers working for Keelings around three years ago, and even before that Unite’s Rhona McCord had been supporting migrant workers in her role as a parliamentary assistant.

While there was outrage at Bulgarian workers arriving recently in the middle of the Covid-19 emergency, migrant workers have been facing an emergency for years.

Watch former Keelings worker Milko and translator Georgi talk to Unite about poverty pay, precarious contracts, substandard accommodation, and a network of exploitation which stretches all the way back to recruitment agents in Bulgaria. “If you’re not together, you can’t help yourselves” is Georgi’s conclusion. Unite will continue supporting all workers organising together to fight exploitation. Workers’ rights will not be respected until all workers’ rights are respected.

Unite would like to thank the Larkin Unemployed Centre for their support in our work with migrant workers.