Looking for Sri Lankan labor law?

Answer 1

During the nineteenth century, labor legislation dealt with the large plantations, and more general labor laws were passed only in the closing years of colonial rule. In 1941 the government enacted the Wages Boards Ordinance, the first comprehensive piece of legislation regarding the payment of wages, the regulation of working hours, and sick and annual leave; the ordinance also empowered the government to establish wages boards for any trade. The boards are composed of an equal number of representatives of workers and employers and three appointees proposed by the commissioner of labor.

Ordinances of 1942 and 1946 required all factories to be registered and established minimum standards for health and safety. The laws also gave the commissioner the right to send inspectors to the factories and to judge whether a plant was meeting minimum standards. The Shops and Offices Employees Act of 1954 extended the provisions of the factories legislation to small shops.

The Maternity Benefits Ordinance, as amended in 1957, entitled a woman who worked in a factory, mine, or estate to full compensation for a period of two weeks before her confinement and for six weeks afterward. The employee must have worked for the employer 150 days before her confinement to be eligible to receive the benefits.

The Employees Provident Fund, established in 1958, provided a national retirement program for the private sector. The Provident Fund required an employer to contribute 6 percent of total earnings and an employee to contribute 4 percent of earnings exclusive of overtime pay. Participation in this plan grew quickly, and in the 1980s most salaried workers in the formal sectors of the economy were members. Government employees had their own pension plans.

Although legislation protecting the health and welfare of workers was extensive, enforcement was inconsistent. The government departments charged with enforcement were chronically underfunded in the late 1980s. Moreover, many labor regulations were suspended in the investment promotion zones. Most labor legislation also did not apply to rice farming and other economic activities carried out informally.

Answer 2

Public Services International

Migration Fact Sheet

It was estimated in 2002 that 175 million people (2.9 % of the world's population) were living outside their country of birth for more than one year, including 86 million economically active workers. Worldwide, one out of every thirty-five people is an international migrant.

The United Nations defines a migrant worker as a person who is to be engaged, is engaged, or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a state of which he or she is not a national.

Table 1: Main flows of Migration (New Internationalist)

Table 2. Worldwide Distribution of Migrants (ILO)

· In 1998 migrants still represented no more than 4.2% of the industrialised countries' total workforces.

· In absolute terms, the percentage of people living outside their country at any one time has more than doubled since 1965 but in terms of world population growth represents only a rise of 2.3% in 1965 to 2.9% in 2000.

· Asia is the largest source region of migrants.

· In the EU, migrants are heavily concentrated in four countries; France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Widening economic inequalities between countries, lack of gainful employment, decent work, human security and individual freedoms help explain much of international migration...Poverty and the inability to earn or produce enough to support oneself or a family are major reasons behind the movement of workers from one state to another as are war, civil strife and persecution.

Migrant worker remittances represent the second largest international monetary trade flow, exceeded only by petroleum... International migration has contributed to growth and prosperity in both host and source countries but also create negative effects. Remittances are not a substitute for sustained development and the social costs of migration, particularly for women, are largely ignored in calculations about their contribution to a developing country's economy.

· Migrant workers send home around $100 billion a year -- the largest source of foreign exchange for many of the poorest countries. Social costs are not included.

· After the US, the top sources of remittances are Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Germany and France.

Migrants are concentrated at the bottom and top of the ladder...Today's migrant workforce includes workers who are professional managers and professions within internal markets of transnational corporations. However, the majority of migrants do the dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs (known as 3Ds). Many workers in the industrialised countries would refuse jobs with low wages and dangerous/poor conditions, which explains why unemployment often coexists with an increasing demand for migrant labour.

Table 3. Reasons for Employing Undocumented

Workers in Netherlands 1994 (New Internationalist)

Some developing countries lose from 10% to 30% of qualified people-power through 'brain drain', damaging prospects for economic growth... ... Around 65% of economically active migrants moving from developing to developed countries are classified as 'highly skilled'. In some situations migrant workers' qualifications are not recognized in the host country, where they consequently may have to take jobs that are underpaid in relation to their skills. Migrant workers are often well-educated people who are ready to take up jobs that they would not accept at home, often jobs with little possibility for career path planning and low job security.

The most vulnerable migrant workers are those without authorisation for entry or employment... They live and work on the margins of society, lacking the protection given or meant to be given to officially authorised workers. There are anecdotes of employers' preferring foreign workers, as they have few family commitments/ personal interests and will work under conditions unacceptable to local workers. Trade unions are constantly hindered by not knowing the numbers and origins of undocumented migrant workers and by the inability to contact and engage with them.

Many authorised migrants face exploitation, abuse and poor working and living conditions... They face conditions far inferior to those available to nationals in host countries including low pay, bad working conditions, lack of social protection, denial of freedom of association and trade union rights, discrimination, xenophobia and social exclusion.

Studies in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain found net discrimination rates to be as high as 37%, that is to say more than one in three applicants by minorities of immigrant backgrounds were rejected or not given consideration while identically qualified nationals were considered.

United Nations and ILO CONVENTIONS

Fundamental rights at work apply to all workers universally. Measures are needed worldwide to improve the situation of all migrant workers and their families, and to safeguard their basic rights and dignity. International covenants and agreements can provide standards and benchmarks for treatment of all workers:

· ILO Migration for Employment Convention (Revised), 1949 (No. 97);

· ILO Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143); and

· UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, 1990.

These instruments stipulate that states actively facilitate fair recruitment practices and transparent consultation with their social partners, reaffirm non-discrimination and establish a principle of equality of treatment between nationals and regular migrant workers in access to social security, conditions of work, remuneration and trade union membership. Together these conventions provide a comprehensive rights-based definition and legal basis for national policy and practice regarding non-national migrant workers and their family members.

Following the International Labour Conference 2004 discussion on migration, the ILO is developing a non-binding multilateral framework for a rights-based approach to labour migration which takes account of labour market needs, proposing guidelines and principles for policies based on best practices and international standards.

Feminization of Migration:

Women outnumber men as migrants from the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and are a growing share of migrants elsewhere. Women working overseas tend to be concentrated in a few occupations, especially domestic help, labour-intensive factory production and entertainment in low-skilled jobs reflecting traditional female roles and sex stereotypes.

Table 4. Female Migrants as % of total in main receiving industrialised countries (ILO)

The 'maid-trade' is a distinct form of labour migration from poorer to richer countries. In 2002 up to 1.2 million women were working outside their own countries as foreign maids. Each year about 75,000 women leave South and South East Asia to work as domestic servants, nurses and service industry workers in Australia, Canada, the USA and Western Europe. Migrations policies of Western European countries are not openly biased by sex, however in some countries restrictions have been imposed on admissions of migrants for female types of occupations. The case of Switzerland is notorious since no immigration quotas exist for domestic workers yet many undocumented women from a number of developing countries work as domestics in middle and upper middle class households.

Health Workers Case Study:

Medical practioners and nurses represent a small proportion of the highly skilled workers who migrate, but the loss for developing countries of human resources may mean that the capacity of the health system to deliver quality health care is significantly compromised.

The driving force for an increase in international recruitment of nurses has been the growth of nursing shortages in the labour markets of developed countries leading to active and aggressive recruitment practices.

In the past decade Ghana has lost 50% of its professional nurses to Canada, Britain and the US. There are more Ghanaian doctors working outside Ghana than in the country itself. Compare:

Britain

Ghana

Saved $117 million in training costs by recruiting Ghanaian doctors since 1998.

Ghana has lost $63 million of its training investment in health professionals.

1 child in every 150 dies before age 5.

1 child in every 10 dies before age 5.

Average per capita spending on health is $1668.

Average per capita spending on health is $11.

· In New Zealand over 50% of registered nurses are foreign trained.

· In Britain 43% of nurses were foreign trained in 2003 compared to 10% a decade earlier.

· Almost 25% of doctors in Canada, Australia and the US are foreign trained, rising to over 30% in Britain.

· Ireland has moved from being a traditional exporter of nurses to an importer. In 1990, three-quarters of new nurses entering the Irish nursing community were 'home grown'. In 2000, Ireland is dependent on recruiting from other countries for more than two-thirds of its new 'nurses'. Many come from the UK, South Africa and the Philippines.

· Zambia's public sector retained only 50 out of 600 physicians trained in medical school from 1978 to 1999.

· The Philippines is the world's biggest exporter of labour. It sends 14,000 nurses abroad each year -- twice as many as it trains -- to work in the US, Saudi Arabia, Ireland and Britain causing a shortfall at home.

· Britain recruits about 15,000 nurses a year and loses around 8,000 to emigration.

· The pattern of reliance on foreign trained nurses varies significantly as the UK and USA recruit mainly from lower income and middle-income countries such as sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian Sub-Continent and the Philippines, while others like Australia and Norway are recruiting mainly from other developed countries.

PSI Migrant Health Worker Participatory Action Research Project

Main findings from phase one:

§ Health care workers prefer to work in their home countries if they could earn a living wage.

§ Poor condition of work: work overload due to understaffing; lack of medical supplies; and the absence of safety protections against violence and communicable diseases.

§ Increased activity of international private recruitment agencies threatens worker protections.

§ Ineffective health sector reforms carried out without worker participation.

§ Staffing shortages have reduced quality care.

§ Migrant health workers suffer racial and gender discrimination in host countries.

§ Differences between expectations and actual experiences of migrants.

§ Migration has high social costs for women health workers in particular.

§ The benefits of international recruitment for receiving countries are over-estimated.

Currently, PSI is implementing the Migration and Women Health Workers Project from 2005-06, which follows as the second phase of the participatory action research. The project will engage public sector unions in joint actions to:

§ Promote the rights of all health workers, particularly women health workers.

§ Organize women migrant health workers into unions to better promote and protect their rights and to strengthen the capacity of unions to meet their needs.

§ Eliminate exploitative and discriminatory recruitment and employment practices in the health care sector.

§ Strengthen bilateral cooperation between unions in sending and receiving countries.

§ Campaign for the application of Ethical Guidelines in the international recruitment of health care workers.

§ Advocate for increased spending for quality health services and human resources for health.

§ Establish measures to compensate sending countries for the investment made in training and educating health workers.

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Migration Fact sheet

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