Asylum seekers labour rights' infringement
Although informal work creates its own difficulties and challenges for asylum seekers, it plays a significant role in generating employment for asylum seekers in poor countries overwhelmed with big numbers of refugees. Achieving full and productive employment and decent work for all is an important target under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), supporting asylum seeker workers in the informal economy in poor countries can contribute to increasing opportunities for people to earn their livelihoods and to eradicating poverty.
In poor countries overwhelmed with a huge inflow of asylum seekers, asylum seekers are obliged to work in the informal economy with poor nasty unhealthy infrastructures and poor remunerated jobs with no fixed wages and no tenure of employment. Termination of service is often abrupt and unilateral.
Advancing Racial Equity by confronting systemic racism and inequities in Asylum seekers workplaces
Many countries will now allow asylum seekers to work, but with limitation to a particular workplace in countries like Germany. In the US, the Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act (ASWAA) is a bi-partisan bill in the House that would remove the 180-day waiting period to be allowed into work. Asylum seekers can formally switch from asylum seeker status to skilled worker in Germany and if you were employed in Sweden during your time as an asylum seeker, you can apply for a work permit even if your asylum application was refused. It is now evident that asylum seekers are a labour source for many of the first world countries. However, worldwide, asylum seekers are struggling with low wages, unequal pay, discrimination, exploitation at work, inappropriate taxi returns that do not commensurate with tax statements and a lack of transparency in the workplace.
GASHDC promotes equal and economic inclusion, and ensures that asylum seekers have the information, rights, and power to drive change by building asylum seekers resilience at work to confront racial inequity and servitude as we confront a system that seeks to embrace a modern-day colonial servitude under the facade of asylum. If not monitored, asylum could turn into a trade for labor in first world countries experiencing ageing populations.
GASHDC closes the huge fallback gap that will be created in the realization of the Global Goals as a result of the huge number of people currently on the move due to heightened displacement because of war, climate change and failed economies.
Acknowledging, recognizing, and correcting past cruelties will always lead to dismantling racial inequities in health, labor and business sectors.
What We Do
GASHDC steers the Global Confederation of Asylum Seeker Workers Unions (GCASWU). At the global level, the Global Confederation of Asylum Seeker Workers Unions works towards building a strong global trade union movement representing asylum seeker workers voices in policy making spaces and discussions on informal and formal Labor rights worldwide. GCASWU engages with worldwide trade unions and giant Labor rights movements to build allyship to effectively mobilize change and to see that asylum seekers in professions that do not require certification, or professionalism can hastily access space and authorization to integrate and conduct their professions such as artists, writers, comedians, dancers, street workers, freelancers, sex workers, etc. GASHDC conducts digital campaigns to break the concrete barriers covering the silent exploitation behind the walls at asylum seekers’ workplaces.
The labour movement has an important role in fighting the social and economic inequities that impact the lives of people around the world. GCASWU is one of the Global Asylum Seeker Human Rights Defenders Committee ’s contributions to that struggle. Through the Global Confederation of Asylum Seeker Workers Unions, GASHDC supports and embraces the rights of asylum seeker workers by organizing front-line workers. Worker power depends on unity. If even one Union member is unsafe, we become weaker. There is power and protection in a Union. The more of us there are in a Union, the stronger we are and the more we can make our voices heard in the workplace and society. To this end, GCASWU supports the establishment of asylum seeker workers trade unions worldwide, triggers and strengthens collaboration between asylum seeker workers organizations with other categories of trade unions at local, regional and international levels, support, manage and back organizing of demonstrations and demands to address members’ concerns at local and higher levels. Taking up this fight now with the current heightened displacement of people worldwide, is crucial to creating an inclusive social development and peaceful society. Together, with a voice at the top, we can dismantle systemic oppression, and build an inclusive anti-racist society, our intention is to establish ways to respond better when complaints about violence, harassment, and discrimination are raised, to being proactive in developing policies, processes, and tools to transform asylum seekers work communities.