Financial constraints inflict damage on migrant domestic workers, the backbone of several Lebanese sectors

Analysis by Dina Richani, Staff Writer

June 2nd, 2020

Months into the current and ongoing crisis, and as liquidity becomes difficult to attain, employers are not paying migrant domestic workers their deserved salaries. As the absence of remuneration rises, many workers want to return home. 

 “Employers who can no longer afford wages have stopped paying workers, leading to pay dispute tensions” says Dima Haddad at the International Organization of Migration (IOM) in Lebanon.

The issues surrounding the payment of salaries retrace originally to the dollar catastrophe in the country. Migrant domestic workers leave their homes to make a living in Lebanon and send remittances to their families, yet as the situation dollar catastrophe perseveres the transferring of money in USD presents a unique challenge.

While households in Lebanon face capital control and no access to their bank notes, employers are left with having to purchase dollars at double or triple the rate in Lebanese Liras to pay the domestic workers in their households. 

With an estimated 250,000 registered migrant domestic workers, the majority of those being women, they and their families in their home countries rely heavily on salaries earned locally to survive and sustain everyday lives. Yet, with salary cuts and losses, of which many are a direct violation of their original contracts, many migrant workers are no longer able to support their families. Many feel they have been left stranded in conditions they did not agree to and want to return home desperately. 

Many have even retreated to their local embassies here in Beirut for help and shelter amidst uncertainly in employment. Domestic migrant workers from the Philippines have been staying at the embassy ever since the Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport officially closed at the end of March as part of the general lockdown and general mobilization restrictions nationally. Despite the ongoing dollar crisis and its effects on the domestic worker-employer relationship, the repatriation flights to return home continue to be priced in USD. “There’s more need than ever before for shelters...for those who lost jobs and have no place else to go” said Zeina Mezher of the International Labour Organization.

Lebanon initiated a series of repatriation flights from the national airport this past Wednesday, in order for Ethiopians and Egyptians to return to their home countries. Travelers remain obliged to take the Covid-19 test. Further than this, the Ethiopian Embassy requested that the employers of domestic workers returning, paid around $1,300 for the returning ticket as well as the quarantine hotel stay. All these factors in line with the economic state are leaving domestic workers stranded with a few employers being able to sustain payments. 

 To make matters further difficult, discrimination is rampant and plays a large role in the distribution of salaries. Migrant domestic workers face striking internationality disparities with earnings. Based on the ILO’s report for Working and Living Conditions of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon, around 80% of Bangladeshi workers earn a salary of $200, sometimes less. Ethiopians earn around $150 while Filipinas earn more than double, receiving $400. The disparities within this informal industry are impossible to regulate and are striking. They also illustrate the added layer of discrimination that migrant workers face every day, particularly during uncertain times.

The Lebanese labor law segregates migrant domestic workers and does not offer labour security or rights. They are deprived of social security, minimum wage, overtime pay, and parental leave, violating Article 7 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The right to be elected as a union delegate is also refused. In 2014, a group of workers attempted to form a union however, their appeal was dismissed by the Ministry of Labour.

Exploitation is apparent all over. Migrant employees work on average for more than 10 hours daily in Lebanon and often are not allowed days off, a right entitled by the Information Guide for MDGs in Lebanon, which clearly states that workers must be allowed a day off per week for a duration of twenty-four and six days of holidays every year.

The circumstances in Lebanon are stern and impeding as migrant domestic workers are continuously faced with various types of violations ranging from freedom of movement rights to residency abuses. The Kafala system allows the employer to even hold onto the worker’s passport, violating the fundamental freedom of movement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Within the past month, 400 Bangladeshi and Indian foreign workers protested against RAMCO, the Lebanese waste management company.  As the Lebanese government is the company’s biggest customer and has recently started paying in Lebanese Liras rather than in USD, RAMCO is struggling to pay their workforce. Payment to employees has been given at the 1,500 LL rate, devaluating the initial salary priced in dollars. According to one of RAMCO’s staff, the usual salary of $120 is now worth around $42, being insufficient to aid their families back home.

"The workers are insisting on their rights to be paid in US dollars as stated in their contracts but would accept receiving their payments in Lebanese pounds based on the black market dollar value," said the president of the General National Federation of Trade Union of Workers and Employees in Lebanon (FENASOL), Castro Abdallah.