Emerging issues: Migrant workers and sex workers

by Dr Cecilia Ng
Aliran Monthly 2004:5

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The potential of women workers to fight for their rights has been stifled

Two new challenges now demand the attention of those in the Malaysian labour and women�s movements. Until now, unionists have, been kept busy organising themselves to ensure that their traditional interests are upheld and that actions by employers and the state do not continue to erode their rights.

Migrant workers

Since the colonial period, migrant labour has played an important role in the expansion of the economy. Chinese and Indian immigrants, for example, were crucial in the tin-mining and rubber planting industries respectively. Chinese women in the mining industry were mostly relegated to being dulang washers (to pan for tin) while Indian women plantation workers were initially weeders before being allowed to perform rubber-tapping duties. Chinese migrant women also served as domestic workers in the homes of affluent Chinese members of society. Young women migrants also provided �sexual services� to Chinese men, working in brothels and later, in �entertainment� outlets such as dance halls and cabarets.

Malaysia continues to rely heavily on migrant labour. Within this foreign workforce, women are well represented � a result which parallels a global trend of increasingly feminised migration � although they are concentrated chiefly in the domestic service and �entertainment� industries.

Management goes to great lengths to cushion workers from the influence of trade unionism, by substituting their own version of worker�s associational interests, through the formation of in-house unions and social activities organised under company rubric.

By being confined to their employers� homes, however, female domestic workers are made vulnerable to additional layers of discrimination, and often have little or no recourse to justice. The law has also failed to protect them against unscrupulous agencies, and sometimes they are at the mercy of unsympathetic police and immigration officers as well. This situation is particularly true of Indonesian domestic workers who, unlike their Filipina counterparts, are not protected by a strong Memorandum of Understanding between the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia.

The workers have few avenues to organise in order to defend their rights. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that the local labour movement, instead of extending solidarity to migrant workers, views them either suspiciously or with contempt. This is because it sees migrant workers as a main obstacle to its efforts to boost wages, since the lower wages offered to migrant workers also serves to depress overall wage levels in the market. As such it has been left to church groups and/or local embassies to extend a helping hand to migrant workers.

Similarly, not many women�s groups, progressive or otherwise, have taken up the cause of female migrant labour. The two that have � Tenaganita and Women�s Aid Organisation (WAO) � usually come up against enormous hindrances ranging from an unsympathetic society that has imbibed all kinds of negative stereotypes about migrant workers to bureaucratic red-tape. Tenaganita�s efforts to highlight the alleged ill-treatment and death of migrant workers in immigration detention centres in Malaysia earned its director a jail term of 12 months for publishing �false news�. WAO has seen its shelter being raided by overzealous immigration officials determined to discover undocumented migrant workers, and it has been falsely accused as an NGO with Christian proselytising intentions.

The lack of support shown by women�s groups as a whole to female migrant domestic workers can perhaps be attributed to the fact that the predominantly middle-class women�s movement has not reconciled the role it also plays in denying these workers their rights. Put differently, since many in women�s groups are dependent on migrant domestic labour, there may be a conflict of interest in fighting for domestic workers to be better remunerated.

Sex workers

Possibly the category of workers that has been most neglected by the local labour and women�s movements are those involved in prostitution.

As it stands local women in the sex sector are already poorly protected, with police harassment and raids of brothels being a common occurrence. In the age of HIV/AIDS, they are unprotected from this pandemic unless they are aware of the repercussions and are, at the same time, able to convince their clients to practise safe sex.

While current laws do little to protect local sex workers, the plight of foreign women in prostitution is infinitely worse. Apart from suffering similar problems as their local counterparts, a number of women are victims of trafficking syndicates as news reports indicate. Many are duped into coming here; upon arrival, their chances of escape are slim because syndicate operators keep their passports and other personal documents and threaten them with police action. The public perception of foreign sex workers is, however, very different to this reality.

For example, in trying to account for the lack of regulation of the sex sector by the Selangor government, the Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) blamed these women for choosing to put themselves in this situation so that they could make quick money for a night�s work. Likewise, another national leader instructed Malaysian women to �put on more lipstick and try not to put on weight� to dissuade their husbands from frequenting sex workers (Malay Mail, July 30, 2003 �Women are not sex objects, say NGOs�).

Some women�s groups have started to take up the issue of sex workers� rights, which is a lot more than labour organisations have done. However, compared to organisations like Pink Triangle, an NGO that dealt with HIV/AIDS and sexuality issues and ran a successful programme for sex workers in the 1990s, they still have a long way to go. Certainly, as with many other issues around women�s sexuality, sex work remains a thorny concern for women activists, and one which most would prefer to avoid than openly confront and debate. Until such time that happens, the women in this sector will be forced to suffer the repercussions of entrenched prejudice and exploitation.

Conclusion

The potential of women workers to fight for their rights has been stifled by the combination of capital exploitation and labour �flexibilisation�, state repression, ethnic divisions, middle-class hegemony over the women�s movement, and a weakened labour movement. Several attempts to inject women workers� issues into the overall concern of the women�s movement were not successfully sustained.

In addition, management�s manipulation of human relations tactics has also become more sophisticated through the appropriation of concepts such as �empowerment� to inject a sense of pride, loyalty and belonging among workers. Management goes to great lengths to cushion workers from the influence of trade unionism, by substituting their own version of worker�s associational interests, through the formation of in-house unions and social activities organised under company rubric. While �traditional� labour issues remain unresolved, new challenges have emerged in the form of concerns that migrant workers and sex workers face. Sadly, neither of these has been adequately taken up by the government or by civil society groups.

Part 1: Gains and Pains

Dr Cecilia Ng is Director of the Women�s Development Collective (WDC) and a member of the All Women�s Action Society (AWAM). She would like to thank Maznah Mohamad and Tan Beng Hui for their contribution to this article.

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