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human trafficking
Amazon 'Failed to Protect' Third-Party Workers in Saudi Arabia
Investigations from several newsrooms and Amnesty International report exploitative contracts and unsafe living conditions for foreign workers at the company's warehouses.
Oct 10, 2023
Amazon failed to protect contract workers in Saudi Arabia from human rights abuses that may have amounted to human trafficking.
That's one of the findings from an Amnesty International exposé and combined reporting from NBC News, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and The Guardian, all published Tuesday. The investigations focused on men recruited from Nepal to work at Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia, where they found themselves faced with low pay, unhealthy living conditions, and no job security. When they complained directly to Amazon managers, nothing changed.
"You are in this position because of our work," one of the workers addressed Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, as The Guardian reported. "You would not have been in that position without the efforts of laborers and helpers from Nepal, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and others. But you are ignoring workers' concerns."
"It's time for Amazon to finally put things right for workers who have suffered so much."
The Amnesty International report, "Don't Worry, It's a Branch of Amazon": Exploitation of Migrant Workers Contracted to Amazon in Saudi Arabia, focused on 22 Nepali men recruited between 2021 and 2023 to work at Amazon warehouses in Riyadh or Jeddah. They were employed by third-party contractors Abdullah Fahad Al-Mutairi Support Services Co. (Al-Mutairi) and Basmah Al-Musanada Co. for Technical Support Services (Basmah).
The journalistic investigation, published through the network Trafficking Inc., spoke to 54 Nepalese men, 49 of whom were hired through Al-Mutairi. According to both investigations, workers said they were recruited under false pretenses, with 48 telling journalists that they were promised they would be working directly for Amazon.
"I realized it was a different company on the day of the flight," a worker named Bibek told Amnesty International. "I saw on my passport it said, 'Al Basmah Co.' but the agent said, 'Don't worry, it's a branch of Amazon.'"
Once in Saudi Arabia, the workers found themselves making less than direct Amazon employees, even though they had had to pay fees ranging from $830 to $2,040 to secure the jobs in the first place, many taking out high-interest loans.
Their living conditions were cramped and unhealthy, with workers reporting bed bugs, salty water, and faulty air conditioners. When there wasn't work, contractees would be let go and moved to even shoddier housing, which “was extremely dirty," a worker named Kiran told Amazon. "No air conditioning, no fans. The temperature was 50°C… There are so many workers… no beds, cooking gas, or drinking water. There was no internet so we couldn't contact our family."
When workers were let go, they stopped receiving a salary, but were also not allowed to return home unless they paid a steep fee to exit their contracts, which was as high as $1,300 for worker Momtaj Mansur, as NBC reported.
"I told them: Either kill us or send us home, but don't give us so much pain," Mansur told journalists.
His family ultimately took out a loan with a 36% interest rate to bring him home.
"Amazon knows each and every problem we have with the supply company."
"The workers thought they were seizing a golden opportunity with Amazon but instead ended up suffering abuses which left many traumatized," Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International head of economic and social justice, said in a statement. "We suspect hundreds more endured similar appalling treatment. Many of those we interviewed suffered abuses so severe that they are likely to amount to human trafficking for the purposes of labor exploitation."
What's more, several workers said that they complained to Amazon about working conditions to no effect. Complaints raised in 2021 went unanswered as of 2023, according to Amnesty International. Sometimes, the workers were threatened with retaliation by the third-party employers.
When a group brought up the brackish water in their living quarters, "Al-Mutairi threatened us," one worker told NBC, saying: '"Who complained about this? We will make him jobless!'"
Another worker told Amnesty that an Al-Mutairi supervisor pulled him into an office and pushed and slapped him after he raised concerns about the water to Amazon. When the worker then told an Amazon manager, they responded that it wasn't their business.
"Amazon knows each and every problem we have with the supply company," a worker named Kiran told Amnesty. "Amazon asks workers about the problems and issues they face during daily meetings."
Cockburn said that Amazon "could have prevented and ended this appalling suffering long ago but its processes failed to protect these contracted workers in Saudi Arabia from shocking abuses."
"Amazon should urgently compensate all those who have been harmed, and ensure this can never happen again," Cockburn added.
In response to the journalistic investigation, senior vice president of worldwide operations at Amazon John Felton said that an internal investigation by Amazon had turned up violations by a third-party vendor in Saudi Arabia, and the company had made a plan with that vendor to change its operations so that workers would be paid back for missed wages and recruitment fees and housed in safe and healthy accommodations, among other reforms.
"While we considered immediately suspending this vendor when these allegations came to light, we determined that it was in the best interests of their employees, many of whom traveled from other countries to Saudi Arabia for work, to instead work diligently with the vendor to make significant changes to their operations," Felton said in a statement.
Amnesty recommends that Amazon move to hire more workers directly and monitor third-party contractors more closely. It welcomed Amazon's move to compensate workers, but said none had received their owed payment to date.
"It's time for Amazon to finally put things right for workers who have suffered so much, and for Saudi Arabia to fundamentally reform its exploitative labor system," Cockburn said.
The kingdom could do more to protect foreign workers by carrying out its own investigations and ensuring workers' "fundamental rights, including being able to freely change employers and leave the country without conditions," Cockburn said.
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Obama Administration Accused of Giving Human Trafficking Status Upgrade to 'Further Corporate Trade Agenda'
Progressive organization, members of Congress demand explanation for Malaysia's new ranking
Aug 07, 2015
Controversy over the State Department's upgrading of Malaysia in its annual human trafficking report continues to swirl, with one organization charging that it shows the administration watering down human rights abuses to "further its corporate trade agenda."
The latest Trafficking in Persons Report, released last month, has Malaysia downgraded from a Tier 3 ranking to a Tier 2 ranking. And, as the New York Timesreported, that downgrade has impacts on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact:
Congress recently granted President Obama fast-track powers to complete negotiations on the deal, but it included a caveat that prohibited him from doing so with countries listed in Tier 3 of the State Department report -- that is, countries that are not making a significant effort to combat human trafficking.
[...] Its upgrade this year to what is known as the Tier 2 watch list, an intermediate step that indicates a country is trying to tackle human smuggling, immediately drew the anger of critics, who sought to link the improved standing of Malaysia to the trade deal.
A Reuters investigation published this week found that moving Malaysia to Tier 2 was done despite the opinions of human rights experts who were tasked with giving the State Department their assessments.
Now, House Democrats and senators from both parties are demanding answers about the decision and its possible trade-related motives.
Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) sent a letter (pdf) Thursday to President Obama and Secretary Kerry, writing that they are "concerned" about Malaysia's status change, as there is evidence that the country is not "making significant efforts to" tackle trafficking, as the upgrade would warrant.
Also on Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the TIP report, where Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee, threatened to subpoena the internal communications that led to the status change.
"So the government convicted three traffickers for forced labor and one for passport retention, and our State Department, for that record, which is less than what they [Malaysia] did the year before,...raised their status," Corker told Undersecretary of State Sarah Sewall. "I don't see how anybody could believe there was integrity in this process."
Also speaking at the hearing was Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who said that the State Department's "conclusions [on Malaysia's human rights] are not shared by any other concerned observers."
Jeff Conant, Senior International Forests Campaigner with Friends of the Earth, says the motivation is clear. He writes at Foreign Policy in Focus Thursday: "There's only one reason why the State Department would change Malaysia's status: to ease the country's inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP—a massive 12-country trade and investment pact currently being negotiated by the Obama administration.
"If President Obama is willing to overlook the brutal fate of Asian workers tossed into the sea, beaten lifeless, or worked to death on Malaysian palm oil plantations, how can we believe him when he says the TPP will have strong safeguards for people and the environment?" Conant writes.
Friends of the Earth was at a rally outside the Senate hearing Thursday to raise flags about the change its says may just be "downplaying modern-day slavery just to pass a trade deal."
Luisa Abbott Galvao, Climate and Energy Campaigner with the organization, said the move highlighted further problems with the pending trade deal.
"The sinister manipulation of what should have been an independently conducted assessment of human rights efforts demonstrates the extremes to which President Obama is willing to go to further his corporate trade agenda," she stated Thursday.
"If President Obama is willing to deliberately downplay modern-day slavery to facilitate trade negotiations, we cannot believe his assurances that his trade deals will elevate environmental and social protections around the world," her statement continues. "This cynical episode further delegitimizes the TPP negotiating process, which has gone from undemocratic to outright dehumanizing."
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TPP Reduces Human Trafficking and Child Labor to Misdemeanors
Last week, President Obama's credibility on trade policy took another punch in the neck.
Jun 02, 2015
Last week, President Obama's credibility on trade policy took another punch in the neck.
For months, arguments in favor of the huge new trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership have fallen flat with the public. His "hit parade of failed arguments" gives the deal an air of desperation. The overwhelming public impression is that TPP is written by and for corporate interests, and has little for workers, communities, or the environment.
The President's best remaining pitch was his promise of strong enforceable standards for labor and the environment. Last week, that collapsed in a breath-taking display of cynicism.
On May 8, President Obama went to Nike in Oregon, to insist that TPP would fix the broken promises of past trade deals going back to NAFTA.
"It's the highest-standard, most progressive trade deal in history. It's got strong, enforceable provisions for workers, preventing things like child labor. It's got strong, enforceable provisions on the environment, ... And these are enforceable in the agreement."
President Obama continued,
"And if Vietnam, or any of the other countries in this trade agreement don't meet these requirements, they'll face meaningful consequences. If you're a country that wants in to this agreement, you have to meet higher standards. If you don't, you're out. If you break the rules, there are actual repercussions."
A great speech, by all accounts.
Just days earlier, the Senate Finance Committee had voted to exclude from TPP any country on the State Department's "Tier 3" list of worst countries for human trafficking, as defined in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Malaysia and Vietnam are TPP countries. Vietnam is in Tier 2 - bad for human trafficking, but not worst. Malaysia is on the Tier 3 list of worst countries.
The Senate language would exclude Malaysia from TPP, although Vietnam could stay in.
So, what put Malaysia on the Tier 3 list?
In its 2014 report, the State Department downgraded Malaysia from Tier 2 to Tier 3 because of its long history of human trafficking, forced labor, sex trafficking and child labor.
The most recent US Department of Labor report shows that Malaysia uses forced labor in its electronics and garment industry, and child labor to produce palm oil. Mass graves were recently discovered with 139 bodies of men women and children showing signs of torture. Many of the victims in Malaysia are Rohingya Muslims who are exploited by human traffickers, held for ransom, and traded among other smugglers.
In Malaysia, investigations, prosecutions and convictions are down. This deterioration in enforcement occurred while Malaysia was helping negotiate the labor provisions in TPP.
On May 19, in an abrupt about-face, Senator Menendez tried to soften the languagethat he had originally proposed to the Finance Committee, excluding Tier 3 countries from the TPP.
For his new standard, he said,
"... any Tier-Three-rated nation hoping to benefit from the Trans Pacific Partnership will have to ... make concrete efforts to meet the standards stipulated in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act or they will not have the benefit of privileged, fast-track access to our markets - Period!"
For procedural reasons, the Senate version advanced to the House with the stronger language that would keep Malaysia out of TPP.
Last week, in the House Ways and Means Committee, TPP supporters and the White House were scrambling to reverse the Senate's strong conditions on human trafficking. The weaker House provisions will probably go into the Customs Enforcement bill, which will be taken up near the end of a package of trade bills.
This raises the obvious question. "Why, in the year 2015, is the White House teaming up with Republican leaders to defend the practice of slavery?"
Economist Dean Baker looks toward the real values held by our negotiators. "The slavery story just speaks volumes about what is important and what isn't," he said. "We are prepared to go to the mat for stronger patent and copyright protections, but we don't want prohibitions on slavery to impede the advancement of a trade deal."
By chance, last week I attended a meeting in Seattle with a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He was asked what purpose was served by relaxing the labor standards in the Customs Enforcement bill, and waiving the sanctions against Malaysia? He said we're not perfect. We have human trafficking in America, too. Before serving in Congress, he had life experience with victims of human trafficking. He has seen children who were trafficked when they were invisible to everyone else.
He said it was better to have a relationship with Malaysia, based on friendship, trust, and communication, so that they can benefit from trade, create new jobs, and then victims of forced labor can have those good jobs.
Of course, Malaysia already has plenty of jobs in its electronics, garment and palm oil industries. That work is done by forced labor and child labor.
I have a friend who worked in Thailand and is very familiar with suffering among Rohingya refugees. She and I are both astonished that TPP supporters could abandon Malaysian victims of 21st Century slavery.
Human trafficking is indeed a problem in our communities.
Forced labor is a problem in America, and around the world.
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