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As the refugee crisis continues to take its toll on migrants’ lives, policies that would exclude them from national working conditions, such as paying less than minimum wage, may push them further into exclusion.

Education International (EI) has endorsed the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)’s call to international leaders to withhold from promoting excluding policies that would affect refugee workers’ basic rights, and to create opportunities that would instead enable them to find a faire place in the labour market.

Exclusion in the name of integration

International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde presented the recommendation ‘ The Refugee Surge in Europe, Economic Challenges’ at the this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The text calls for ‘temporary and limited derogations of the minimum wage for refugees’ – a proposal that has met strong rejection by ITUC and other global union federations such as EI.

The 50-page report, which “focuses on the economic dimension of the refugee challenge facing Europe”, indicates first that “the potential from refugees can be harnessed for the benefit of all”, but then goes on to suggest that this needs a swift integration of migrants into the economy, through the labour market and an adapted two-tiered system based on different labour conditions.

The ITUC warns the IMF in a communication that urging such a two-tiered wage structure “based solely on the basis of a worker’s migratory status is discriminatory, runs contrary to international law and is not economically sound”. Education International General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen has seconded the ITUC’s worries that any suggestion that refugees should be subjected to unequal treatment “risks endorsing the view of those who see refugee populations as unworthy of being full members of their communities, as well as increasing the anxiety of low wage workers (…) who fear that increased competition for scarce jobs will harm the prospects for them and their families.  Neither of these developments would support the constructive cause the IMF purports to advance.”

ILO warns of devastating social and political consequences

On its website dedicated to the Syrian refugee crisis, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) labels it as “one of the largest and most protracted and complex humanitarian emergencies of modern times”. It emphasises the pressures faced by host communities including

-       an increase in labour supply which results in increased employment competition as well as downward pressure on wages;

-       a decrease in access and quality of public services healthcare and education; and

-       an increase in child labour among refugees and host community residents, including the worst forms of child labour

As part of the wider UN response to the crisis, the ILO has adopted a development-focused and employment-driven strategy to support host communities and refugees in order to maintain and reinforce the social and economic stability of the affected neighbouring countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt), with projects of a total value of nearly $22 million USD. The strategy document can be found here.

In a video interview, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder explains the labour situation of Syrian refugees, stressing that it is possible to combine the interests of both local workers and refugees. He reminds that 90 percent of those who have fled to Jordan live in poverty and that is has become urgent to find legal pathways for refugees to access local labour markets.