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Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation debate -
Tuesday, 10 Jun 2014

Employment Permits (Amendment) Bill 2014: Migrant Rights Centre Ireland

I welcome representatives from the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, MRCI, to discuss the forthcoming Employment Permits (Amendment) Bill 2014, which we are hoping to take later this month. I welcome Ms Gráinne O'Toole, workplace rights and forced labour co-ordinator, Mr. Enamur Chowdhury, a volunteer and activist, Mr. Waseem Yousaf, who will speak for Mr. Mohammed Younis, and Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari, policy officer.

By virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. Witnesses are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person or persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Ms Gráinne O'Toole

I thank the Chairman for inviting us here. I will speak briefly on the MRCI, setting up the context for our submission, and I will introduce my colleagues, who will speak on certain points that concern us.

MRCI is a national organisation and we have been in existence for more than 12 years. We provide a drop-in service to migrant workers and assist them in achieving their rights in the areas of employment, immigration and anti-discrimination. Our submission is based on the evidence of people with whom we work and research we have conducted over the years. We have been actively working on the work permit system for several years and we work closely with departmental officials on an ongoing basis to try to make the system better, more efficient and fairer.

We are concerned with the rights of the most vulnerable migrant workers in the State. We work with undocumented migrants, people who have suffered forced labour, au pairs, carers, restaurant workers and domestic workers, and our comments are confined to those groups. Nearly 59,000 people are eligible to apply for work permits in the State, a significant number. Migration plays a very important role in economic development and it will continue to play that role, given the global nature of our economy. We constantly examine population growth and EU trends, and the current level of immigration in Europe is insufficient to maintain the working age within OECD countries. We need to look ahead and the Employment Permits (Amendment) Bill provides an opportunity to make our system more fit for purpose.

The Department has always focused on the stated policy commitment of attracting high skills into Ireland. We also need to consider essential skills and we are keen to work with the Department and SOLAS on that because we see demands in the economy that are not officially recorded. We have been in touch with a number of the members about the issue of au pairs, who are de facto workers. The notion of au pairs no longer exists in real terms but provides a loophole for people to employ workers at lower employment standards than we would uphold through our employment legislation. We also see a growth in the need for care workers across the EU and we must tackle it here. We will need more workers in the future and we want a system that can accommodate this.

We want the conditions for exploitation in the work permit system wiped out and loopholes closed off. Our submission speaks to those issues. My colleague, Mr. Chowdhury, will talk about the right to change employer and the undocumented worker scheme, or what will be known in the Bill as the reactivation scheme.

Mr. Enamur Chowdhury

I am originally from Bangladesh and am now an Irish citizen. I came to Ireland in 2002 as a work permit holder. I have worked as a worker leader with MRCI for many years and have been involved in many campaigns to improve our work permit system and promote decent work conditions. We welcome the undocumented workers' scheme - the reactivation scheme - in section 6 of the Bill. This scheme will help people who have lost their permits through no fault of their own due to exploitation, as they can apply for the new permit without the normal conditions.

Since 2006 we have been working with the Department to improve the work permit system. In 2014 we are very pleased that, finally, it will be enacted in law. There will still be some risks in the work permit system, as workers will be very much tied to their employers. A worker may work only for the employer named on the work permit and his or her immigration status is fully dependent on his or her staying in the job. It means the employee seems to be a prisoner for one year. A worker may change employer when he or she has worked for at least one year with the same employer and has secured a new work permit. If I lose my job as a chef, I also lose my legal status in the country. That means the employer controls my legal status. It is very bad for work permit holders. Their immigration status should be out of the hands of their employers.

If I want to get a better paid job and change employer, I can do so if I apply and pay again after one year. I can get the new work permit but in one year it is hard to save €1,000 for the work permit fee. To make our system better, we should allow workers to work for different employers within the job sector they have been approved for. Workers would be obliged to notify the Department of the change in their place of work. This is a critical issue, which we have consistently raised with the Department and it needs to be addressed in the Bill. We have proposed some small changes in our submission that would make this happen.

I thank members for listening and we will take questions.

Ms Gráinne O'Toole

I will hand over to Mr. Mohammed Younis and Mr. Waseem Yousaf to talk about the provision on workers being able to access the civil courts to vindicate their employment rights.

Mr. Waseem Yousaf

I will read Mr. Younis's statement:

My name is Mohammed Younis. I came to Ireland in 2003 on a work permit to work as a tandoori chef for Poppadom restaurant. For the first few years, I was paid 55 cent an hour. I worked 77 hours a week and got no day off except Christmas Day. I did not know many people as I stayed with my employer for most of the time. My employer failed to renew my work permit and I was left undocumented in the country. I got help from a fellow restaurant worker who brought me to MRCI and the centre brought my case with me to the Labour Court and I won an award of €92,000. I have never received a penny from this money owed to me for my work. My employer took the Labour Court to the High Court and said he did not have to pay me because the contract of employment could not be recognised as I was undocumented. The High Court upheld this but asked the Government to look at the loophole in the law. I am appealing this decision to the Supreme Court now.

I met with Minister Bruton and he promised me that he would address this problem so no other workers would have to suffer like I did. I thank him for his stated commitment. I am glad that at least my case exposed this gap and that this Bill will allow some undocumented workers to seek compensation orders for unpaid wages from the court. My fear is this does not go far enough. The Bill must ensure that all exploited undocumented workers can access the court. This is the only way we will make sure no one else is treated like I was. I urge you to consider strengthening the proposal in the Bill to include all workers subjected to exploitation. Thank you.

I have worked with Mr. Younis as a translator and the MRCI. I have felt his feeling and the trauma he went through is unexplainable. There are spaces that can be filled to make our society better because at the end of the day this is my home and my country.

Ms Gráinne O'Toole

I will finally hand over to my colleague, Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari, who will talk a little more about ineligible categories.

Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari

In the current format our employment permit system has a list of categories which are not eligible for employment permits. Many of those categories represent essential skills, particularly around restaurant work, care work, work in private homes, certain positions in the retail and agriculture sectors, etc. There are generally the sectors in which workers are more vulnerable. They are not regulated and migrant workers are more concentrated in them.

In the current format of the Bill, there is a provision for the job categories to be looked at and reviewed in respect of labour growth outcomes and prospects for the market. Unfortunately, current projections we have on how the work permit system will recruit foreign workers is solely focused on highly skilled work. The reality is that there is an increased shortage of labour in essential skills sectors. The lack of supply of workers for those sectors ends up with systems of exploitation such as the au pair system we described earlier. We have been researching a little more how the international student system is being used as a source of cheap labour. Members will be very much aware of the crisis in international language schools. Essential skills vacancies are being filled by people who do not have legal status as workers, as they are students or come under other immigration categories. To afford workers the greatest rights, we need to re-examine the ineligible job categories and allow people to come to work in Ireland through a pathway that allows permanency and rights.

I welcome the delegation. MRCI is an excellent organisation, with which we have worked closely in the past. I particularly welcome Mr. Younis who has given a great deal of hope to many people. I look forward to working with Ms O'Toole and her team to try to support most of the proposed amendments, in particular those that seeks to prevent exploitation in the workplace.

Cuirim fáilte romhaibh go léir. I commend the MRCI's work and I extend a special welcome to Mr. Younis. It is shocking to think that the law colludes in the exploitation he detailed and I am sure his case is not the only one. Many others are experiencing exploitation. Does the MRCI have an estimate of the level of migrant exploitation in the State? How many au pairs are being exploited? I read the centre's proposals regarding au pairs. A large proportion of that workforce has little or no support, protection or guarantee in employment. I commend the centre on the work it has done but I would like to get a handle on the size of the problem.

Ms Gráinne O'Toole

I thank Deputy Tóibín for his comments and Deputy Calleary for his support as well. When the Younis case happened and exposed the loophole, we had a number of cases of exploitation. We are dealing with 30 at the moment where workers cannot go forward to the Labour Court to reclaim their wages but we have been in contact with solicitors around the country and we estimate at least 60 cases are problematic. With regard to the overall extent of exploitation, we know, for example, that there are difficulties in the au pair sector. We estimate 25,000 au pairs are placed every year in Ireland. We looked at this over the past year and analysed it because there is no such thing as an au pair in the way we understood it in the past. Society has changed and migration is a reality. Everybody should come under the protection of our employment law and people need to be aware that if they employ someone in their private home, they have to uphold employment rights and standards. There is no cheap option. We recognise the situation that has occurred is linked to a lack of affordable child care and pressure on families.

We are calling on NERA and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to develop a proactive programme to inform employers and the public that they need to address these issues. Work also needs to be done with au pairs to inform them of their rights. We want the National Employment Rights Authority to take a lead on this and to do more. We would like an explicit statement from the Department to dispel any myths about au pairs being some kind of sub-category of worker. The reality is that if one has someone employed in one's home they are an employee, and there is no way around that.

We map the extent of exploitation. Au pairs are a big issue. We are taking in cases all the time. We have a relationship with the National Employment Rights Authority, which takes referrals from us. We have seen about 20 cases this year, but we know from contact with NERA and the number of inquiries we are getting that the level of exploitation is high. We also have social media contacts with more than 600 au pairs, who report problems to us. However, we have very few resources to do this kind of work. As everyone can appreciate, our resources have been cut to a minimum, so our capacity to outreach is limited. That is why we hope that NERA and the Department will take up the mantle, inform the public and help au pairs secure their rights.

As we know, the restaurant work sector is usually problematic. That is ongoing; we are seeing cases coming through our centre all the time. There is no evidence yet to suggest that the problems have decreased in any way. Car washes, too, are becoming problematic in certain areas. Care is also a big issue because it is growth area. We anticipate that it will be a problematic area unless we review the categories and look at how people can recruit legally where there is a demand in the economy. We believe that domestic work will be an ongoing issue because of the unaffordable child care system. Rather than running away from it and saying that we should make domestic work ineligible because there are areas of exploitation of vulnerable workers, we need to face it, because more people are looking for care in their homes, both older and adult care and child care. It is a reality that we will have to face in a strategic and planned-out way.

I welcome the witnesses. I come across a number of people who are looking for work permits for people in the categories that have been mentioned. Can the witnesses identify categories for which we might make a case to the Minister to have them included in the legislation? Rather than speaking generally, can the witnesses identify specific categories? I know that the linen trade is starting to develop again, and this involves skills that have been lost. Perhaps people could be used as trainers rather than as specific workers.

Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari

We know from our resource centre and from people who approach us that the two main areas of employment where people are looking for work permits and are unable to secure them are restaurant work and domestic care work, including childminding. There are other areas such as horse riding and agriculture, but if one was to focus on the two main sectors of employment, it would be those two.

I welcome Ms O'Toole and the other witnesses. Like others, I express support for Mr. Younis's plight. That sort of discrimination should not happen to anybody; it is disgraceful. Did the witnesses meet the Department prior to publication of the Bill, or even after it, and sound out the Minister or his officials in relation to it?

Ms Gráinne O'Toole

Yes, we met the Department. We met the Minister and he gave a commitment to address the case involving Mohammed Younis. We know that the intention of the Bill is to address such cases, but we would like to see it strengthened to tackle exploitation, which we believe is at the root of the problem. We have met the Department on a number of occasions and commend the civil servants on using a different approach. They asked us to make a submission early on, and then we went for meetings with them to discuss it. They used a problem-solving approach. We did not achieve a lot of things. Initially, we would have wanted to uphold the integrity of the Labour Court system so that it could take cases from all workers, but it seemed unable to deal with the contract issue. That is why they have taken the Younis case outside the Labour Court system and put it into the civil courts. We welcome that as long as workers can access it. We do not want a provision whereby people would find it difficult to prove their circumstances. We want exploitation to be a criterion for accessing one's rights. The officials were not interested in looking in a more long-term way at the categories that we have discussed - I suppose that their priority was the Bill - but we urged them to look at the ineligible categories in the lead-up to the Bill, given the type of information that we were feeding to them. We believe that a review should be conducted with the appropriate bodies, allowing us to present our information and statistics and say what we are seeing.

I welcome the delegation. I have been here for only a few minutes but what I have heard is very disturbing. Are there other countries in Europe that might be worth studying in terms of dealing with some of the issues that we have heard about? Is there a way we can find out?

We can ask the Department before the Committee Stage to look into that for us. Does the MRCI work with other organisations across Europe?

Ms Gráinne O'Toole

Yes, we do. We have looked at other systems and work closely with other community organisations as well as trade unions. We have looked at international research. I shall hand over to my colleague Pablo Rojas Coppari to update the committee on that, because he is our policy officer.

Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari

It depends on what issue one is talking about. Issues around illegality of contracts arise across Europe. The proposed legislation has the power to be far-reaching, particularly if an amendment is made to it to include every worker who has been a victim of labour exploitation.

On how the work permit system could allow for more flexibility, there are other models inside and outside Europe. Within Europe, we would generally look at the Swedish work permit system and how it has recently opened up as opposed to closing down. There are other types of labour migration system, such as that in New Zealand, which is a points-based, and that in Canada, which used to be very good but has slowly been closing down. It depends on the issue that one wants to address. In terms of labour exploitation, there is not one particular country that one can look at as a model, but there are lessons to be learnt from other bodies. When a state does not have a solution, there are international organisations, international trade unions and other community organisations that have proposed models that might not have been implemented but could be taken into consideration.

Does anyone have questions or concluding comments? On behalf of the committee, I thank the witnesses for coming before us and telling us their stories and about their work. They have been fighting the system over the years and I thank them for it. The select committee will consider Committee Stage of the Bill on 26 June after which the Dáil will deal with Report Stage. No doubt committee members will contact the witnesses directly to discuss specific amendments. I thank the witnesses for their time today. They have been watching the Bill for a long time and have been waiting to come before the committee. I apologise again for the late start of the meeting.

The joint committee went into private session at 3.40 p.m. and adjourned at 3.50 p.m. until 1 p.m. on Wednesday, 11 June 2014.
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