With COVID-19 disrupting travel, shutting borders, and redefining what is essential work, Pandemic Borders explores what international migration will look like after the pandemic, in this series titled #MigrantFutures
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact upon the lives of millions of workers worldwide, with numerous sectors having ground to a halt or having been subject to insufficient safety mechanisms. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), during the second quarter of 2020, there was an estimated 17.3% decrease in global working hours, the equivalent of 495 million full-time jobs lost. As employment sectors became impacted by COVID-19, many migrant workers started to be let go while others were forced to accept poorer terms and conditions of employment, including reduced salaries, or face the termination of their work permit and possible deportation. According to a range of civil society actors, some employers are taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to unlawfully dismiss their migrant workforce and to withhold the wages and benefits that are owed to them.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), which tracks over 9000 companies in over 180 countries, notes a substantial increase in the number of allegations of labour abuse between April and August 2020 (an increase of 275% on the previous year), with COVID-19 cited as a factor in 95% of all cases. Wage theft is the most commonly reported labour abuse, cited in 81% of reported BHRRC cases during the pandemic, an overall percentage that has remained steady compared to 2019 when wage theft was cited in around 80% of all BHRRC cases. This was echoed by the ILO Regional Office for Arab States noting that the majority of labour complaints they receive concern non- or late payment of wages (stated in July 2020). Migrant workers, particularly those on temporary contracts and the undocumented, are thus disproportionately affected by the virus and the ensuing economic fallout, and a key challenge they are facing has clearly been wage theft, due to sudden repatriation as the result of retrenchment.
