Migrant Workers Worst Casualties of Economic Crisis

By YENI

Thailand’s Labor Ministry is currently delaying the issue of some 700,000 work permits to migrant workers. Labor Minister Paitoon Kaewthong said that foreign laborers would not be registered until the end of March, as the ministry takes measures to help the estimated one million Thai workers expected to lose their jobs amid the global economic slowdown find new employment.

Understandably, there are growing concerns that such moves signal the reemergence of economic nationalism and protectionism. In an effort to keep jobs and capital at home, many countries appear to be closing their labor markets to non-nationals, who in better times were indispensable to the development of many of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Thailand is not alone in making life more difficult for migrant workers. According to labor rights groups, there are an estimated 100 million migrant workers around the world, many of whom face bleak prospects as economic woes in the Gulf, Singapore and Taiwan lead to mass layoffs of laborers from countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

According to a 2006 survey by the International Labor Organization, Thailand is host to around 1.8 million workers, mainly from Burma, Cambodia and Laos. Most are employed in agriculture and fisheries, construction, manufacturing, and services such as domestic workers. They have made, in recent years, a net contribution of about US $53 million annually to the Thai economy.

Thailand has been registering migrant workers since 1992, but many stay unregistered to avoid the relatively expensive and time-consuming process.

In 2004, there were more than one million migrant workers seeking registration. Last year, the number of registered workers dropped to 500,000, or about one quarter of the total. Migrant workers, who overwhelmingly hail from Burma, now represent 5 percent of Thailand’s total labor force of 36 million.

The Thai Labor Ministry’s decision to postpone the registration of new migrant workers amid the slumping economy appears to be aimed at protecting Thai jobs. But newly unemployed Thais will probably show little interest in doing the difficult, dirty and dangerous jobs normally relegated to migrant workers.

Even registered Burmese migrants, on average, earn about half the minimum wage and are not eligible for state services such as medical care or education for their children. If they lack legal status, their fear of deportation forces them to put up with slave-like working conditions and mistreatment by criminal gangs and corrupt police.

Rising unemployment among Burmese migrant workers could also have a dire effect on Burma’s rural economy, in which millions of people rely on remittance money. Experts said that remittance payments are typically used for basic survival, consumption, housing, health and education.

“Remittance income does not benefit just individual recipients, it benefits the local and national economies in which they live,” according to the authors of a report published by Australia’s Macquarie University.

In the report, “Migrant Worker Remittances and Burma: An Economic Analysis of Survey Results,” economists Sean Turnell, Alison Vicary and Wylie Bradford show that remittances sent from Thailand to Burma in 2002-2003 would have been in the order of US $300 million. Such flows are more than twice the amount of foreign direct investment in Burma, and would represent about 5 percent of the country’s GDP, the researchers said.

Thailand has in the past attempted to cope with a domestic economic crisis by deporting Burmese migrant workers. When employment plunged following the 1997 economic meltdown, the Democrat-led government reacted by withdrawing work permits and repatriating migrant workers.

This policy was unsuccessful. Burmese workers continued to enter the country, both legally and illegally, drawn by demand for cheap labor. As a leading country in the region, Thailand should acknowledge that the Thai economy is likely to continue to employ migrants.

Sadly, however, as the global trend to economic nationalism gathers force, migrants are likely to be the last hired and the first fired, as politicians and policymakers struggle to come up with more effective ways to deal with their countries’ economic woes.