Home From Jordan, Vietnamese Strikers Face Off With Crooked Labor Export Firms

By Jon Pattee

The Vietnamese guest workers repatriated from Jordan this spring following a strike which gained the support of the international labor movement are following up with a petition for relief from debts they incurred to pay recruitment fees to crooked Vietnamese labor export firms.

The workers, from a group of over 170 mostly female garment workers who battled the Taiwanese-owned firm W&D Apparel in a Jordanian industrial zone, have gone from fighting extended working hours and unfair wage cuts to struggling with the labor export firms.

The workers had signed a contract with W&D Apparel that set their salary at US$220 per month, and had paid a Vietnamese labor export firm an advance of nearly US$1,600. However, once they were in Jordan, their employer confiscated their personal documents, worked them for up to 16 hours a day, and paid them only US$80-$150 per month. The workers struck for adherence to the original contract, and only after a long fight this spring, in which factory security guards assaulted the strikers, were they granted their wish to return to Vietnam. A pressure campaign on the company, coordinated mainly from the US by the national Vietnamese-American nonprofit Boat People SOS, to turn the tide. BPSOS assisted by bringing to bear the power of the US State Department, members of Congress, US clothing retailers and consumers, and the Jordanian government in order to help achieve a resolution. [For background see reports from Vietnamese Workers Abroad here , here, here, and here.--TU]

However, the battle continues, for upon their return to Vietnam, the workers have been confronted with debts claimed by the very labor export firms that got them into the mess in the first place. The new front in their struggle for justice is a petition to the Vietnamese government for relief from this crushing debt burden.

As an unofficial translation of the workers’ recently-filed petition reads, “When we left, we had to take out bank loans, so that upon returning to our country we have faced a great many problems. We have been back in our country for more than a month and have requested that the labor export supply firm revisit the contract … but they only take into account the unreasonable debts that they have calculated for each person. …Each of us is now facing hardship because of taking out bank loans in order to go. Now we’ve returned with empty hands, without money to pay the bank, and when the time comes to pay the money, we will certainly be homeless.”

The workers also maintain that the very signing of their contracts was under unfair circumstances, noting that: “It has to be said that the company that sent us there is a swindling labor export firm that took advantage of us … At the time we signed the contract, they only gave it to us to sign a few hours before we went to the airport. There were people who were only able sign when they were on the airport bus, and none were able to read it.”

The former strikers conclude with a plea that “the president of the government, along with all the concerned official branches … intervene and help by demanding justice for us.”

There is little reason to assume, however, that the government will act on the workers’ behalf. According to remarks May 10 by Ambassador Mark Lagon of the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, the labor export policy of Vietnam easily leads to human trafficking because the labor export firms have a direct relationship with the government.

The W&D Apparel workers’ struggle goes on, therefore, and their story is likely to be multiplied a thousandfold if Vietnam’s labor exports continue to explode. Newspapers in the Arab Gulf are reporting that Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani recently told his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Tan Dung, that Qatar will recruit more Vietnamese workers. This January, the two nations signed an agreement that aims to boost the number of Vietnamese workers in Qatar to 100,000 within three years.

The deal gives an idea of the lengths to which Vietnam’s leaders are willing to go to export their citizens, given that the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report for 2007 says that people trafficked to Qatar may face withholding of pay, confiscation of passports and travel documents, arbitrary detention, threats of legal action and deportation, false charges, and physical, mental, and sexual abuse.

As it keeps an eye on these labor exports to the Middle East, Boat People SOS is monitoring the ongoing battle of the W&D Apparel workers. For regular updates on these struggles, current and brewing, visit http://vietnameseworkersabroad.wordpress.com/.

Jon Pattee, is Manager, Public Relations and Communications for Boat People SOS

Boat People SOS (BPSOS) is a national community-based organization whose mission is to assist Vietnamese refugees and immigrants in their search for a life in liberty and dignity. Since 1980, one in 10 Vietnamese Americans has received assistance from BPSOS while still in Vietnam, on the high seas, in a refugee camp, or after arriving in the United States. BPSOS provides a web of services to support individuals, families, and communities. www.bpsos.org