Migrant Worker, Not a slave (Singapore)

-


Singapore’s Manpower Ministry recently announced that the country’s domestic workers – women who work as live-in nannies or housekeepers – will be granted one day of rest each week.

Singapore’s families employ about 206,000 domestic workers, primarily from Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and India. Before this change, employers were only required to grant their domestic workers one day off per month. This weekly day free from work is critical for domestic workers’ physical and mental well-being.

But we want Singapore’s laws protecting domestic workers to be even stronger. This reform, for example, only pertains to contracts that go into effect beginning in January, 2013 and does not address other key labor rights, such as limits to working hours. We’re calling for the government to apply this change to all domestic workers, no matter when they started their job, and to allow domestic workers to benefit from basic rights under the labor law, giving them the same protection other workers already have.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

General Wesley Clark cross cutting with Jonathan Schell

-
Image
while reading the Book of Jonathan Schell, the Seventh Decade, the New Shape of Nuclear Danger, numerous cross cutting observations, in relation to General Wesley Clark, were made. the below is a small sample of these observations: "This new ambition was crystallized in a document that won brief notoriety and then, when Bush Sr. lost his bid for a second term, was forgotten. Its importance for the present is that it outlined a scheme for global dominance a decade before September 11, 2011. its sponsor was Cheney and its draftsman was Zalmay Khalilzad, who would become ambassador to Afghanistan in 2003 and of Iraq in 2005. The draft stated, "the number one objective of U.S.'s post-cold war political and military strategy should be preventing the emergence of a rival superpower. Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival." even strong regional powers should be suppressed, especially in areas "whose resources would, under consolida...
Read more

Parable - a Lioness, a Cheetah & an Oryx (in Lebanon: Politicians, their client base and citizen)

-
Image
The following Parable is an actual simulation of the Lebanese society layers. Parable of a lioness, a cheetah and an Oryx, who had come together on a long journey, decided one day to confess their sins to each other. As queen of the forest, the lioness was the first.  "she told the others that, once, after she had finished off a big buck, a zebra came by. "it looked so sleek and tender," she said, "I had wantonly dispatched a fellow beast for no purpose," she said regretfully.   The remorseful cheetah reassured her. "why should you, queen of the forest, be remorseful about the skill that has made you the greatest hunter of us all? You are to be forgiven."   Then the cheetah told how, one day, he had spied a fat ewe and her two lambs. Hungrily he had pounced on the nearest lamb, but the mother had begged him to spare the remaining lamb and eat her instead. "I agreed", the cheetah said, "but I was so hungry I the...
Read more

Egypt must not try factory workers before a military court

-
Friday 27 August 2010 Amnesty International calls for the eight men, all detained after taking part in a protest against poor safety conditions, to be tried by a civilian court for recognizable criminal offences. Amnesty international has condemned the trial before an Egyptian military court of eight factory workers, all civilians, detained after taking part in a protest against poor safety conditions at the factory, following an explosion which killed one of their fellow workers. The trial of the eight workers from Helwan Factory for Engineering Industries (Military Factory No. 99) resumes at the military court in Nasr City, in the east of Cairo on Saturday. It is the first such trial since the authorities amended the Military Justice Code in June to allow workers in a military factory to be tried before a military court for “stopping work in utilities of public interest" and "assault on freedom to work”, preventing others from working. "Trials of civilians before milit...
Read more