Hardship for Chinese Workers in Israel

By John Gee

When Chinese workers employed by an Israeli construction company went on strike in March to demand that they be paid money they said was owed to them, they found themselves facing intimidation from the authorities back home.

Some 170 Chinese contract workers employed by the A. Dori construction firm downed tools on March 28, saying that they had not been paid since they started working in Israel. Most had been there for about one and a half years. They were recruited by an official Chinese manpower agency, to which they paid a contract fulfillment guarantee of $2,500 and a further fee of $1,000 for travel expenses. The agency arranged for them to be employed in Israel. They were given a monthly allowance of 50 shekels (approximately $12), which was doubled in October 2000. They worked 11 hours a day, six days a week.

It seems clear that the Chinese agency wanted to ensure that as much of the workers’ pay as possible ended up back in China. When the workers demanded the money owed them, A. Dori said that it had paid their wages directly into bank accounts that had been set up for them. The workers were unaware that the accounts existed. In any case, they had been made to surrender their passports, so would have been unable to use them to identify themselves and make withdrawals even if they had known about the accounts. The Israelibank holding their accounts said that a representative of the Chinese employment agency had the authority to withdraw money from the accounts and had used it.

The Chinese workers turned for help to Kav La’Oved, known in English as Workers Hotline. This Israeli organization frequently has acted in defense of the rights of Palestinian workers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. An increasing proportion of its work in recent years, however, has been on behalf of migrant workers from outside the Middle East. Kav La’Oved helped the Chinese workers raise the issue with the Israeli Labor and Welfare ministries. The workers demanded that they be paid the legal minimum due to them under Israeli law (twice the amount paid into their bank accounts), with pay slips. They also stipulated that there should be no retaliation against themselves or their families for striking.

Within a few days the strike was settled. Money that had been withdrawn from the workers’ bank accounts in February without their knowledge or consent was paid back in. After having their passports returned, the workers were able to withdraw money from their accounts.

Workers have described their working conditions in Israel as “slavery-like.”

While they were on strike, however, a threatening letter, signed by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s branch in the principal city in their region of origin, as well as by the district prosecutor and local court, was sent to the workers. It said that they were employed under Chinese law—which means that they are not allowed to strike—and were obliged to fulfil the terms of their contracts or face criminal charges. Strike leaders could be liable for up to seven years’ imprisonment and participants to a maximum of three. The workers were called upon to inform on their leaders and to apologize for their conduct. The letter added that money would be deducted from the workers’ wages to make up for the losses they had caused to the Israeli contractor.

Despite this blatant intimidation, another group of Chinese workers, employed by the construction firm Solel Boneh, went on strike in April to secure access to wages similarly held in accounts to which they had no access. They also turned for help to Kav La’Oved, which already had crossed swords with this company in the past. The dispute was resolved at the end of April, when Solel Boneh paid 80 workers money owed them for nearly two years’ work—although the workers ended up abandoning their claims for overtime payment. The workers then consented to return to China.

Workers have described their working conditions in Israel as “slavery-like,” refering not only to the denial of access to pay and the long hours they have to work, but also to their confinement to the worksite for most of their “free time.” They must ask permission to go out, which usually is granted only three times a week.

On April 1, one Chinese worker employed by Bonei Hatikhon at a construction site in Beersheba died and 15 became ill after eating food that was, according to the company, supplied by a Chinese firm.

Some 160,000 foreign workers were employed in Israel before the Al-Aqsa intifada began late last September. Some estimates put the figure considerably higher. In May 14 remarks to the Ministerial Committee on Foreign Workers, Israeli Labor and Social Affairs Minister Shlomo Benizri referred to 150,000 foreign workers who did not possess valid work permits. He said that ridding Israel of these workers is his ministry’s top priority. The illegal workers have become something of an obsession with Benizri, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, whose “spiritual leader,” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has made a number of deeply racist anti-Arab statements (see the May/June 2001 Washington Report, p. 18).

The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry has become something of a Shas fiefdom: in Ehud Barak’s government, it was headed by Benizri’s colleague, Eli Yishai, who shared a similar perspective on illegal foreign workers. Warning of the danger that they would “flood” Israel, he called for the formation of a special police unit dedicated to capturing and expelling them. Apart from blaming foreign workers for rising crime in parts of Israel, the religious parties in general are fearful that they might settle in the country and so increase the non-Jewish presence.

A telling indication that such fears are not limited to the religious parties was the move last September by the Interior Ministry to ban manpower agencies from bringing in foreign workers to provide home nursing care if they already had a spouse in Israel. It also announced that the criteria for admitting male Filipino care workers would be tightened. Both measures clearly targeted people from the Philippines: the first by keeping couples apart so that the partner working in Israel would be under pressure to return to the Philippines eventually, and the second by keeping out potential boyfriends or husbands of unmarried Filipinas.

Approximatey10 percent of the migrant workers employed in Israel are from eastern Asia. Typically, they work in the lowest-paying economic sectors, with the longest working hours. Most Chinese labor in construction, while Thais are concentrated in agriculture. Workers from the Philippines are mainly women providing home care and domestic labor. Home governments, which see these workers as a useful source of income and foreign exchange, do little to defend their rights for fear of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Forgotten Rebels Resurface?

Bomb explosions that killed two people at a railway station in southern Thailand in April were blamed by the Thai government on Muslim rebels. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited neighboring Malaysia at the end of the month and handed over a list of the names of 15 leaders of the Patani United Liberation Organization (Pulo), asking for Malaysian cooperation in apprehending them. Thaksin blamed Pulo for the attacks, although Pulo denied responsibility and a Thai intelligence report prepared immediately after the bombings had blamed a new group called “Bersatu” (meaning “united” in Malay).

The area where the bombing took place is one where the Thai and Malay worlds meet. The great majority of the population (over 80 percent) in the region bordering Malaysia are Malay-speaking Muslims, while Thailand as a whole is 95 percent Buddhist by religion.

Thai states have had a strong influence in the Malay peninsula throughout most of modern history. In the 15th century, Ayudhya began to exert a strong influence in the Malay peninsula, and asserted its control over all the northern Malay kingdoms. Both Ayudhya and its successor state, Siam (renamed Thailand, or “Land of the Free,” in 1939) generally ruled with a light hand providing that the Malay kings acknowledged their overall authority. This came to be symbolized by the sending of a tribute in the form of flowers made of gold, which Patani and Kedah started to send at least by the 17th century and Kelantan and Terengganu began sending later. The attitude of the Thai rulers changed when any Malay monarch did not accept the status quo: reprisals could be very severe.

The most northerly of the Malay states was Patani. Its queen, Raja Ungu, repudiated Ayudhya’s rule in 1628 and, with help from Malayan kingdoms to the south, repelled a Thai punitive expedition. After the queen’s death in 1635, however, her successor decided that it would be prudent to accept the restoration of Thai authority.

Following decades of deepening British involvement in the northern Malay states, Britain and Siam signed a treaty in 1909 which established what became the border between Malaysia and Thailand. The states of Perlis, Kedah, Terengganu and Kelantan became part of British-controlled Malaya, while Patani remained part of Thailand. Siam signed the treaty under duress and resented what it regarded as the loss of its own territory to Britain. When, during the Second World War, the Thai government allied itself with Japan, it re-annexed the four states it had relinquished in 1909, but was forced to return them to British control in 1945.

Neither independent Malaysia nor Thailand have sought to change the border between them, which is why separatist groups in Patani have been unable to look to the Malaysian government for support. They complain that Muslims face discrimination and are treated as second-class citizens in Thailand and call for an independent state of Patani. As a rebel movement, Pulo reached the peak of its influence at the end of the 1970s, when it had 1,000 fighters in its ranks. Military campaigns and rising prosperity have since reduced the rebel movement to a shadow of its former self, but occasionally incidents such as the bombings in April occur, suggesting the insurgency is not quite over.

Developments in the Philippines

As the government of Gloria Arroyo and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) prepared to resume negotiations for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in the southern Philippines, a report surfaced that Nur Misuari had declared the independence of the “Bangsamoro Republic,” with himself as president.

Misuari had been leader of the Moro National Liberation Front, which negotiated a peace settlement with the government of the Philippines five years ago. He became governor of the Muslim autonomous region following the settlement, which was opposed by the MILF. There was puzzlement in Manila, the Philippines’ capital, about Misuari’s latest reported action. Speculation was that he feared being sidelined by the MILF-government negotiations, but it was not even clear how reliable the “independence declaration” reports were.

Meanwhile, following earlier reports from the Philippines that Saudi Arabia would contribute $100 million toward the development of the predominantly Muslim island of Mindanao, the Saudi government issued a statement on April 14 announcing that it had extended a loan of $20 million for the rehabilitation of the war-ravaged areas in the southern Philippines.

Singapore-Israel Joint Projects

Using a non-profit $6 million research and development fund established in 1997, Israel and Singapore have so far undertaken 14 joint projects. According to an article in Singapore’s Straits Times (“S’pore-Israel partnership in research,” by Chang Ai-Lien, May 2, 2001), “This effort known as the Singapore Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation is a collaboration between the Economic Development Board and Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist, under its Ministry of Industry and Trade. The foundation funds up to half of the R & D costs, with grants of up to US$750,000 per project.”

The joint projects already funded include anti-diabetes and cholesterol-lowering products, and a number of developments in computer technology.

When it comes to cooperation in high-tech projects, the relationship between Israel and Singapore is becoming more complicated than it once was. Both countries have highly skilled indigenous workforces, and some of the products in which they are investing may end up being used to compete for the same markets.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: Israel and the Palestinians, available from the AET Book Club.