Today I went to a lecture from a friend about refugees, immigrants and labour rights in Iceland. A description of the lecture is here. She had organised for immigrants to talk after her lecture, but shortly before the lecture they had backed out because of time issues or because they were afraid to speak publicly as some were lacking documentation. She asked me if I want to talk about my (much less dramatic) experiences and I said sure why not, but we had not decided which topic I should speak about. I did not hear from her again, so I figured that one of the original speakers were going to speak. I went to the lecture and found out that she had planned for me to speak, so scribbled some thoughts down during her part.

This is more or less what I said (with a lot of "ums" and "ehms" taken out) :
As an immigrant from a European country I cannot talk a lot about my rights being abused, I can however talk about the inconveniences of being an immigrant. A lot of the inconveniences come from difficulties of finding information or finding someone who actually has the correct information. Even employers who employ a lot of immigrants often do not know. I was working in the hospital in Blönduós and after I had seen a lot of workers from the local slaughterhouse who had come to me, but were not insured I called their boss. He was unaware of the fact that according to Icelandic law people (Icelandic and immigrants alike) have to be registered for six months before they have health insurance coverage.
But not only employers, a lot of times people working in relevant institutions cannot answer questions relevant to immigrants.
For example, when I was working on a self-employed basis I had to pay into a private pension fund. As I already pay into a German private pension fund, I thought I might not have to pay into an Icelandic one as well. So I called everyone, from the Icelandic tax office to private pension funds to find the answer. No one could help me until I finally got a foreigner on the phone.
I also worked and lived in Iceland illegally by mistake for almost a year. When I registered in the town hall in Iceland they did not give me the correct registration form (I got the one for Icelandic citizens, not the one for citizens from the EEA/EFTA). Thus I never applied for a residence/work permit. I found out when I did my tax report and after a few calls to the þjóðskrá and directorate for immigration the matter was resolved. And this is where my experience is different from someone outside the EU. For me the reaction was basically "ups, my bad" while someone from outside the EU probably would have been deported.
The distinction between groups immigrants is not only made by institutions, but also by society. A lot of time I am told that I am the "good kind of foreigner". There is a kind of hierarchy on how foreigners are seen in Iceland, with western European on top, followed by eastern European and people from outside the EU, especially people from developing countries on bottom.

Valparaiso, the city I lived in the last year was burning last month. News of this fire was overshadowed by the crisis in Crimea in any bigger news outlet, so i had to resort to trying to read Chilenean newspapers on the web and bugging my friends who still live there. Seeing pictures of the destruction makes my heart ache.

It is estimated that around 3000 houses were destroyed, leaving 10.000 people without a home, shortly before the Chilean winter. Most affected were (as usual) the poor of the city. Chile does not have an extensive social security system as it is a strong follower of neo-liberalism. Valparaiso especially is lacking affordable housing, leaving a lot of the poorer population to illegally built houses in the ravines between the hills.

These houses do not only lack access to clean water and electricity (though often electricity is intercepted from the power lines) but are mostly built out of wood. They are not only fire traps, but also in danger of landslides due to the steep terrain.

The cause of the fire is thought to be a bird flying into a power line in the wood area above the city, but the fire spread rapidly through the ravines aided by strong winds.

Immediately after the fire public discussions turned to the ravines and the danger the illegal dwellings pose. The tragedy is blamed on the authorities letting "anyone" people built "anywhere" they want to. The fact that many of these people, who are now living in shelters or tents while the ravines are being cleaned up had been waiting for housing or housing vouchers for years is ignored.

As a municipal senator of the city put it: "We cannot just evict people, we need to find alternatives for them to live in."

Whether the fire is going to lead to a social change in a city where the students took to the streets last year for month to try and stop privatisation of education is questionable.

#AyudaValpo

Fortunately people in Valpo do not wait for the government. As I have described before there is a strong sense of community in the city, best described by my friend who still was in Valpo at the time of the fire:

Thank you for checking in on us! We are all perfectly fine -- but the sad truth is that Valparaiso is not fine at all. This has been a devastating fire, and at times the city feels like a post-apocalyptic movie or something. It still goes as of today though it has reached the upper most part (mostly brushland).

It is a terribly SAD scene but at the same time, totally beautiful and inspiring the way the portenos have come together. I can't describe it. In the midst of so much heartbreaking sadness, there is such unity and selflessness. It's very heartwarming, and necessary in times like these to elevate the soul a bit by sights like this.

We went yesterday to donate a lot of things (some of your leftover stuff too, hehe) to the efforts. There are 'albergues' all over, for the thousands of displaced people to live as the disaster is contained, assessed, etc. We gave food, clothing, hygiene items, etc. Today Sam and I went to help out in another part of Valpo, by carrying things to shelters, donating cleaning products, etc. Most of the shelters have SO much stuff and are well installed for so little time having passed. Again, the organization and help available is just so impressive. There are even places receiving displaced pets and street animals. Equally as heartbreaking and lovely.

I know Valpo will recuperate. But it is so tremendously sad to think of the sheer quantity of people affected by this, that are now homeless....children, pregnant women, the poorest families, elderly people that have maybe never left the hills in years....

Shannons blog post about the fire and the aftermath

I got a reply from the Adidas Group concerning the situation in the Yue Yuen factory. It is a hilarious letter, some excerpts are below

We were closely monitoring the situation at the production site from the beginning. In order to minimise the impact on our operations, we reallocated some of the future orders originally allocated to Yue Yuen Dongguan to other suppliers. But we never intended to pull out of the Yue Yuen factory in Dongguan and we have no plans to do so.

And here is why we need an international labour movement, if companies can minimise the impact of a strike, what leverage do workers have to negotiate?

It is our understanding that the insurance contributions which YY had been providing, together with corresponding deductions from the workers, were in accordance with an agreement which they had reached with the Dongguan authorities and the local social insurance bureau.

Read corruption here. The letter fails to mention that the same local authorities used riot police against the protesting workers and incarcerated labour rights activists.

YY has now committed to achieve full compliance with the national requirements by May 1st 2014

Yay! The strike ended last week, additional to the contribution in the insurance funds, workers also got a pay raise and other benefits.

Some links:
https://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-482.html
https://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-484.html
https://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-486.html

Last week I became an official member of the IWW, red card and everything. Which is fitting because I really wanted to write about the workers' strike in China.

Since almost two weeks 50.000 workers of the shoe factory Yue-Yuen in Donguan, Guangdong have been on strike. They are fighting for the legally guaranteed employers contributions to social (health, retirement, housing funds) insurance funds.

The employer is required to contribute to these funds according to the Labor Contract Law, which was adopted by Standing Committee by the 10th National Congress in 2007. A copy of the law can be found here.

It is an astonishingly progressive piece of legislation, requiring every employer to provide a written contract, pay at least minimum wage, pay workers equally and regularly (wage default was very common), guarantee safety regulations, regulate work hours and pay into social insurance funds.

As a reaction to the law most of the biggest sport shoe companies announced that they are looking for alternative production sites, claiming production costs would rise too much, if they had to adhere to the law.

In reality the law has been mostly a paper tiger. The law is seldom enforced not only because of the widespread corruption.
The whole political/economic system is geared towards economic growth. GDP is the major outcome measure used for evaluation on local as well as national level. In the last two five year plans (11th: 2006-2011, 12th: 2011-2016) the main target was to grow the GDP by 7/8% .

These are also the criteria used by the CCP to evaluate the performance of local governments. These evaluations also concentrate on short time spans, half a year to a year, which means local governments main goals are rapid growth, rather than long term sustainable development and instead of cooperating they are pitched against one another.

Donguan is positioned right next the towns of Guangzhou and Shenzhen and is part of the Perl River Delta, one of the main hubs of China's industry based economic growth.It has experienced an immense population growth in the last ten years, due to the influx of migrant workers, in 2008 only every 5th resident did not have a migration background and population has grown from around 2 to 8 million in this time.

This demographic development requires an immense amount of infrastructure to be build, such as living space, which would not immediately show a big return as far as economic growth measured in GDP is concerned. Furthermore local governments become interested in production values of companies settling there.

Therefore, despite what the central committee decides in the five year plan (The 11th included the labour contract law, while the 12th had a whole section devoted to the issue of migrant workers.) local governments are more inclined to cater to the need of cooperations than the workers.

Workers are systematically misinformed about their rights. Independent workers rights organisations are... discouraged. Yet, in the last 7 years awareness among workers about their rights has increased and they have been fighting more and more for them, culminating in the strike of more then ten thousand workers.

A few days ago I read in "der Spiegel" that the Adidas Group (Adidas, Reebok, TaylorMade and Rockport) is pulling contracts from the shoe factory because of the strike. It does however keep the business relationship with the supplier company "Pou Chen Group" intact, showing a blatant disregard towards workers rights and local laws. I encourage people to write to them and ask them to adhere to local labour laws and regulations and to draw consequences if their suppliers don't.

Here is their contact page: http://news.adidas.com/Global/Contacts

More info about the strike: http://www.labornotes.org/2014/04/48000-chinese-strikers-say-adidas-nike-timberland-you-fix-it

Yesterday were elections in Chile. Results can be found here.
In the last weeks running up to the election the garbage collectors were on strike. Summer has arrived as well. The town has become dirty and smelly. In the afternoon it is usually windy. Which means there is a very real danger of being hit by garbage while wading through it. I tried to sell some of my clothes on the street and spent most of the time picking up the garbage which was blown on them. When I had filled a shopping bag I gave up. I keep telling myself I sympathize with their cause, I really do.

I do not sympathize with the riot cars and water cannons which had been standing on Anibal Pinto the last 3 days before the elections. They are anticipating a return of the student protests which had been going on on and off this winter. Four of the leaders of the student movement have been voted into parliament.

It is not completely over, though. Bachelet did only get 46% of the votes which means there will be a second round of elections in which Bachelet has to compete with her runner up Matthai. Interesting fact about the two candidates: Bachelets father was tortured to death during Pinochet, while Matthais was head of the Military academy. Matthais slogan is: Protecting Chile.

I just hope the garbage collectors will not wait until the 15th of December to stop their strike.