The practice has been going on for the past two years and has recently been reported in the media, after Swedish trade unions took action on behalf of the workers.
Sweden is known for its liberal migration policy. In 2010 there were about 200 nationalities represented among its 9,5 mln people, while 19.1 % of residents had their roots outside Sweden.
SCA and Holmen followed official procedures by sending documents to the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) indicating the workers will earn 18,500 SEK ($2,825) per month plus 6000 SEK in per diems, and specifying that the offer has been approved by Swedish trade unions. But the promised wages appeared only to exist on paper. Upon the arrival the deal changed and workers were made to sign a new contract forcing them to work for no longer a monthly salary but a wage paid at a very low piece rate, equal to 0.22 SEK a plant. To get close to the monthly pay they had been promised workers then had to work day and night. Each worker would have to plant 3500 new trees a day which is double the amount an experienced worker can manage a day. They were also forced to pay heavy fees to the agents before being allowed to start working in the first place.
After the end of the planting season, many of them remain in Sweden as undocumented immigrants, lacking housing, money, and work and afraid to return home because they lack money to pay off the debts incurred to make the journey to Sweden.
The Swedish forestry workers union GS, a BWI affiliate, has pushed the issue in local negotiations throughout the autumn 2012, innitially with moderate success. SCA and Holmen claimed that although they also feel deceived by recruiting agents, they have no obligation to help workers.
"We have a contract agreement with businesslike provisions with the agent. We don’t have any agreement which involves any responsibility for their staff," Jan Sandström, regional manager with Holmen AB, toldSvergies Television (SVT)
Thanks to the intervention of GS, the Swedish union representing forestry sector, the case was taken forward. Negotiations are ongoing with the Swedish Employers Federation (SLA) over the commitment to compensate Cameroonian workers according to their initial contracts. “We are hopeful this will be resolved within a few weeks,” said Per-Olof Sjöö, the President of the union GS who is representing the forestry workers in Sweden.
The case however indicates much broader problem of arrangements for migrants in Sweden.
In the statement issued by national trade union organization LO, trade unions point out to impunity of Swedish employers even if found in migrant forced labour scandals and to wrongful recruitment regulation. Currently, work permits are granted on a non-binding, not scrutinized offer of employment which often results in subsequent drastic change of conditions granted to the worker, as in the present case.
Information about abuses results in withdrawal of the work permit, but not in prosecution of the employer. While thousands of migrants losts their work permits in that way, there was never the case of the employer held accountable for the abuse or for misleading the Migration Board. According to the current regulation, all the risk is on the employee.Nearly 21 million people are victims of forced labour across the world, trapped in jobs which they were coerced or deceived into and which they cannot leave, according to the ILO’s global estimate. 90 % of them are exploited in the private economy, by individuals or enterprises. Of these, 68% are victims of forced labour exploitation in economic activities, such as agriculture, construction, domestic work or manufacturing. 1.5 million of the global number of the victims are in developed economies including the EU.
Read the ITUC news release.
Trafficking for labour exploitation in Europe needs to be better addressed. While actors in the field have only discovered a tip of an iceberg, any solution to the problem will require understanding of new trends, developing new responses and partnerships.
For that reason trade unions, NGOs and faith based organizations launched a partnership to contribute to anti-trafficking response in Europe. Through the new project ITUC, together with Anti-Slavery International and Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe as international partners, will improve responses to labour trafficking. The three organzations, as well as national partners in Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania and Spain will in particular focus on exploring new trends in trafficking – such as gender dimension of labour trafficking, more and more severe exploitation of increasingly large groups of exploited migrant workers in mainstream economic activities and new labour trafficking recruitment methods including the use of Internet and ICTs.
The FINE TUNE project is supported by the ISEC/EU DG Home grant and it forms a part of the ITUC global action for protection of rights of trafficked workers and strenghtening labour standards for decent work.
