INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE UNIONS (ICFTU)

ICFTU online...
211/171202/ND

December 18- International Day of Migrants
Trade unions call for equal rights for migrants

Brussels, December 17, 2002 (ICFTU Online): "Poverty and violence" are
today the tragic reasons pushing thousands of people to leave their home
countries in search of a better future. Economic globalisation and the
development disparities it has produced in the southern hemisphere and
in Eastern European transition countries are every day pushing thousands
of people to leave their home countries to find a form of subsistence in
wealthier lands.

In all there are 150 million migrants, who make up 2% of the world's
population. And 50 million of them live in Africa alone. According to
the ILO over 100 million of them are workers, including a very large
proportion of women (47.5%). To this estimate must be added a growing
number of clandestine migrants, i.e. those without official papers (30
to 40 million). And unless inequalities are tackled at their roots the
trend is likely to grow in the years ahead.

Whilst migrant workers are one of the main driving forces of economic
globalisation they are all too often subjected to all kinds of
discrimination and scandalous exploitation. And this is despite the
fact, as ICFTU General Secretary Guy Ryder emphasised, that "equal
rights and treatment at work are a fundamental right of all".

The trade unions, which view migrant workers as fully-fledged workers
with the same rights as others, are fighting at both national and
international levels to promote and ensure the proper application of the
legal instruments recognising these rights. The ICFTU, which has been
campaigning for several years with human and migrants' rights
associations to obtain the ratification of the international conventions
providing for equal treatment for migrant workers in terms of jobs,
wages, social security and union rights (ILO Conventions 97 and 143),
welcomed the signature by East Timor last week of the Convention on the
Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their
Families, that had originally been adopted by the United Nations in
1990. Thanks to that 20th signature this legal instrument will finally
come into force, thereby providing better prospects for migrant workers
around the world.

Information, training, legal advice and recruitment are the main focus
of the campaign by the ICFTU and its affiliates to combat the worldwide
discrimination against migrant workers.

The ICFTU was also closely involved in another event that helped push
matters forward on this issue- the UN World Conference against Racism,
Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban from 31 August to 7
September 2001. The unions are strictly opposed to racism on principle,
since racism and xenophobia undermine their struggle to obtain freedom
and social justice for all. Accordingly the international trade union
movement adopted a specific action plan, "No to Racism and Xenophobia",
geared to advancing the battle against racism and xenophobia in
workplaces, within its own ranks and also in the community as a whole.
(http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991213176&Language=EN)

In conjunction with International Migrants Day, the ICFTU will be
publishing a special dossier on female domestic workers, showing how the
unions are helping this particularly vulnerable group of migrant
workers. The ICFTU will also be providing its online subscribers with an
interview with a Filipino domestic worker who migrated to Belgium and
with an ICTU member involved in combating racism in Ireland.

The ICFTU represents 158 million workers in 231 affiliated organisations
in 150 countries and territories. ICFTU is also a member of Global
Unions: http://www.global-unions.org

For more information, please contact the ICFTU Press Department on +32 2
224 0232 or +32 475 67 08 33.