#Labour Issues

[southeastasianists]

President Joko Widodo said his administration is keen on passing into law a bill that would finally protect the rights of some of the most exploited and abused people in Indonesia.

During a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta yesterday, Jokowi noted that the country’s Manpower Law does not regulate the employment of domestic workers, opening them up to risks of being subjected to inhumane working conditions, hours, and pay.

“In practice, domestic workers are susceptible to being robbed of their rights. So I think it’s time we have UU PPRT (Law on the Protection of Domestic Workers),” the president said.

The bill, known as RUU PPRT for short, has been dormant in parliament for 19 years, Jokowi said, and that it has been flagged as a priority bill for deliberation and ratification by the House of Parliament (DPR) this year in order to provide legal clarity for the 4.2 million domestic workers in Indonesia.

“I have instructed the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights and the Ministry of Manpower to coordinate efforts with DPR,” he said.

Based on a copy of the draft for RUU PRPT that has been circulating online, if ratified, the law will regulate domestic workers’ working hours, pay, and entitle them to leave and social security, among other things.

DPR says RUU PPRT will be discussed at a plenary session next week ahead of its expected swift passage.

Domestic work, live-in or otherwise, is considered an informal form of employment as workers are often hired without a contract. Domestic workers who find work through agencies are still susceptible to exploitation, as the only existing set of regulations for domestic work passed by the Ministry of Manpower in 2015 carries little to no legal weight for enforcement.

In addition to abuse, many Indonesian domestic workers face dehumanizing treatment by their employers on a daily basis, such as only being fed leftovers, not being allowed to eat in the presence of their employers, and being deprived of any recreational activities — all things that normalize the discriminatory idea that they are second-class citizens.

[queerbauten]

also, like… people realize the high prices of DaPu merch mean that everyone involved with the merch’s creation was probably paid a fair wage, right? like, a $120 hoodie probably means everyone, from the designers to the fabricators to the warehouse staff, were paid fairly, right?

… right?

[veganpropaganda]

The Labor Department said Friday that investigators found Packers Sanitation Services Inc. had employed more than 100 minors at 13 meat processing facilities across eight states, and that the children were cleaning dangerous industrial equipment using hazardous chemicals.

Officials said they found at least three children had been injured while working for the company, known as PSSI. The equipment they were cleaning included “back saws, brisket saws and head splitters,” according to the Labor Department.

Packers Sanitation agreed to pay $1.5 million in civil penalties as a result of the investigation, the agency said.

The probe began last year following complaints made involving plants in Minnesota and Nebraska owned by meatpacking giant JBS and the poultry processor Turkey Valley Farms. PSSI serves as a contractor for meat processors.

Jessica Looman, head of the Labor Department’s wage and hour division, called the child labor findings part of a “corporate-wide failure” at the company.

“These children should never have been employed in meatpacking plants,” Looman said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

[kirjavas]

making my peace with how lyra was characterised in the show vs the books because so much of it relies on her age and even dafne keen being only one year older than lyra when filming set her up to portray a different character from the very beginning. it doesn't seem like a huge difference but lyra being a child and not a teenager is of fundamental importance to her path in the books so it's inevitable that she was written more like a teenager in the show (and you can't stop child actors from ageing, you can only adapt the writing and directing to match how they mature). the show wrote lyra's arc in accordance with her maturing to the age of around 16, so they chose to have her grow out of her habit of lying and instead wield the power of truth to further her on her journey. it was a different journey from the books, but it got her to the same place: saving her friend and countless others with the power of storytelling and a silvertongue

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

Hey hi hello to any fellow Brits reading this.

You probably know we have a general election coming up, which by the way, make sure you're registered to vote and have the qualifying photo ID.

And hey maybe you're a fence-sitter who doesn't want to vote for Labour for whatever reason.

Well, this post is giving you a reason to vote for Labour (or any party other than Tory if the candidate actually has a chance to win the seat).

You might have noticed that a lot of local and city councils have either gone bankrupt recently or are teetering on the edge, and that officially, it's the councils themselves that have been blamed, and uh yeah, that's horseshit.

The majority of a local council's funding comes from core grants given out by Westminster.

There's actually a limit on funding that local councils can raise via taxes, and like a whole lot of issues in the UK, that comes down to Margaret fucking Thatcher. It's also thanks to her that local councils don't have as much power over the local area as you'd ideally want them to.

(That's been eased a little since, but if a local council ain't got the money, they can't exercise that power.)

Suffice to say, local councils are very much dependent on funding from the central government.

And as you might imagine, 14 years of Tory government has just made it worse. From 2010 to 2020, that funding was cut by 40%.

Wanna know why hundreds of libraries have closed down? Or why public services like bin collections are almost entirely ran by corporations? Or why bin collections are now once a fortnight rather than once a week? Or why council houses haven't been built? Or why public toilets are being closed? Or why you have to Tokyo Drift on the drive to work because it's been 2 years and no one's done shit about that goddamn pothole? Or why parks seem to now be maintained by Big Foot and by the way Big Foot has also declared bankruptcy? Or why local arts have had their budget of 17 paperclips and a whistle reduced down to 10 paperclips and no whistle? Or why your local museum is effectively a mausoleum?

It is all down to this.

Your local council runs on a shoestring budget because Tory rule has deprived local councils of the funding that they need.

If the Tories win in July, this problem is just gonna get worse and worse and worse.

More councils are going to go bankrupt; more public services are going to be cut or underfunded; more vulnerable kids are going to fall through the cracks; more local services will be privatised; more pressing issues will be ignored because there's no money left over to fix it.

You might not like the current Labour party, but hi hello welcome to harm reduction politics. Maybe a Labour government won't fix this, but another 5 years of Tory rule is going to break this country.

So for god's sake, get over yourself and your leftist purity bullshit, and just fucking vote for Labour as a vote against the Tories.

[Information for this post comes from this video by Tom Nicholas]

[afro-elf]

What are your thoughts on Project 2025?

sounds like a shit time but also just, like, sounds like the logical conclusion of the overton window shifting as rightward as it has. to a certain extent project 2025 is an extension of black and brown reality in this country and i guess that's why i'm not totally panicked about it. like.... it is bad. but the united states is terrible to begin with, it is a tree with rotten roots and that can only bear rotten fruit, project 2025 is simply one of her stinky fruits birthed from her most rancid branch

also in my opinion, even if the project itself gets blocked via electorate the ideas will stick and spread and morph. republicans in office around the country are already trying to do that on a local scale (florida, for example). that is something i don't think most liberals in this country are prepared for. they won't even let you make silly haha joke about trump nearly getting a head transplant, how are they expecting to combat fascism?

[trans-cuchulainn]

obviously take into account tactical voting for your area and do whatever you need to do to kick out the tories, but if you're in a complicated area where there isn't a clear tactical option, this is a thorough way to compare parties' stances on various options and work out what you're most aligned with

i'm only partway through it but occasionally there's an option that seems so cartoonishly evil that i can't believe it's real so i'm guessing that's probably the tories...

[istoleherheart-3008]

Any app can be a dating app if you are Indian enough

[saltydogsmut]

Well I’d say it’s not really that Andrew is a bad boyfriend but rather he just doesn’t care about Julia at all. He doesn’t have a ‘treat your girlfriend bad’ condition he has a ‘don’t care about anyone that’s not your sister’ condition. A lot of Andrew’s frustrations come from hiding his feelings for Ashley, so if he embraces those he’ll be more chill

[Tw abuse]

?????

I think getting in, staying in, and perpetuating a relationship with someone you don't care about romantically is bad boyfriend behaviour.

Lying about how much you care about them, lying about knowing who is doing things to scare them, and lying that it's not a big deal are all bad boyfriend behaviours.

Even when Julia minimises it, he can't admit it's Ashley, and gets aggro when she points out his behaviour towards her borders on inappropriate.

I get that the world is a depressing place where people get into relationships solely so they aren't single and don't actually care about who they're with, but just because it's a thing doesn't negate the fact that it sucks to do that to someone.

I get you mean that he wouldn't be a bad boyfriend to Ashley, but obviously I disagree.

Andrew is a bad boyfriend.

Onto his red flags is his immediate and open affection as manipulation, which we can see he does with Julia to get her to drop and forget about topics he doesn't like or want to talk about. He starts being like that with Ashley too in her route. More specifically when she's being contemplative or speaking about their past.

Andrew also doesn't want to take responsibility for any part he played in enabling Ashley's behaviour or his own minimisation and lies about her behaviour to Julia's face. Andrew clearly doesn't mind lying to his girlfriend, using her solely to deflect from rumours about him and his sister, and apparently feels no shame in doing this to her even after knowing nina was julia's best friend who he murdered. And even knowing how serious Ashley could be about killing someone, didn't take any action to encourage her to stay safe and away from Ashley. He took no responsibility for the break up, just like he tries to never take responsibility for his own part in choosing to kill for Ashley, or go along with her plans.

Andrew seems to have a problem with control, specifically limiting or restrictions on his urges and behaviours. Slamming the phone when with Julia as she's suggesting chilling it with Ashley, getting frosty when julia says he doesn't have to go see ashley whenever she says the word, specifically giving himself an out so that Ashley wouldn't be the only girl Andrew could spend time with, his insistence on smoking, his behaviour about money and food- making himself the sole arbiter of both- and placing himself as the final say in any plan Ashley comes up with, giving himself automatic veto powers. The ones with Ashley can be excused as typical family stuff, at least at first, but the decay route shows just how much of a cold shoulder and bad mood he'll get into when he can't control Ashley's behaviour of calling him Andy or thinks he doesn't have the upper hand in their relationship. He starts slamming things in order to control Julia's behaviour as well.

Speaking of the decay route, he'll just straight up misrepresent what people say in order to win an emotional argument. Julia doesn't think Andrew has ever done anything inappropriate with Ashley, but he puts those words in her mouth so she'll back down from the topic. He does the same with Ashley and says he never gets a choice with her plans, but he literally drove them over to their parent's house? And suggests a dumb plan he doesn't even want (turning themselves in) so he can blow up at Ashley and make her back off the topic of plans, because he doesn't have one.

Every bad behaviour he's shown towards Julia he's also shown towards Ashley. In fact he may have chosen Julia as a partner specifically because it would set off Ashley more and cause her discomfort. Or because she's was the only person weak willed enough to tolerate his weird behaviour with his sister, which even his own mother found suspicious.

Julia gets the brunt of it with less stressing behaviour because she's his girlfriend. We never see him do the same to his mother, friends, or father. Only people he has a romantic interest in, Julia and Ashley. Sure we have limited perspectives, but in my opinion, Andrew wants a doormat as a partner, but also wants someone to superficially put all the responsibility onto for his own bad behaviour. Because Julia cries he never escalates with her, but if she didn't and stood up for herself I think he would have put his hands around her throat too like he did to Ashley.

Oh. And he blames his outbursts in them being frustrating, rather than his own ability to manage his temper.

I am firmly in the camp that Andrew is bad news romantically, and his behaviour would only escalate as he tried to gain more control using love as a weapon. And if Ashley is to be believed, the end for all Andrew's failed romantic interests is death.

Tldr: we don't see him act like this to random people or other family members, only people he's in a "relationship" with. Run Ashley. RUN.

[neproxrezi]

cunts are gone

[pumpumdemsugah]

It's actually so offensive people are bringing up random dark skin women who either can't act or don't have it in them to do theatre production

The way people are conceding ground to the right is crazy

Literally no fucking fight and suggesting random mixed race women who aren't stage actors

Remember when the right wing would say it should be based on talent but now that's not the case. Best person for the job, no thanks. Right wingers want to make existing in the public as anything but a white man as exhausting and frightening as possible and some people are saying " I don't want to fuck this person so they have a point"

Ask your mother why she didn't abort you. Please

[southeastasianists]

Malaysia intends to bring in 500,000 workers from 15 different Asian countries to solve its labour shortage issues in less-favourable sectors like plantations, agriculture, and construction.

The Covid-19 outbreak has caused over 700,000 foreign employees to return to their home countries, according to Human Resources Minister V. Sivakumar, therefore the labour crisis needs to be resolved right away in order to prevent any negative effects on the economy.

However, human rights activists have argued that the government must halt this process and instead focus on improving the working conditions of migrant workers who are already in the country, which does not seem to be getting better.

World Bank data indicates that there are around 2.9 to 3.3 million migrant workers in Malaysia, of which roughly 1.5 million have irregular employment.

The remaining millions are undocumented, without protection. But most of them are employed and continue to make a significant contribution to the economy and the nation’s future.

Many of these workers, be it documented or not, suffer injustices such as being underpaid, at risk of abuse and confined to poor living conditions despite calls for better migrant worker rights based on strong economic and humanitarian grounds. The abuses were further exacerbated during the pandemic.

In fact,  the US State Department downgraded Malaysia to Tier 3, which is the worst category, in its 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report. It also imposed punitive measures on firms allegedly involved in slave labour by banning imports from glovemakers Top Glove and Supermax, as well as two major palm oil conglomerates.

Malaysia remains in Tier 3 as of last year.

The secretary-general of Socialist Party Malaysia (PSM), Sivarajan Arumugam, told Coconuts the conditions for migrant workers have not improved despite many complaints from workers and civil society.

“Their grouses have not been rectified. Thus PSM would strongly call for a halt on all migrant labour intake until all reforms are executed,” he said.

PSM often works on labour rights issues affecting both local and foreign workers. It has also helped some of these individuals win court cases against their employers.

Sivarajan also highlighted that, during former minister M. Kulasegaran’s time as the Human Resources Minister (MOHR) under Pakatan Harapan, he had instructed an independent commission to study the situation of migrant workers and submit reports to the government.

However, he said the report has been kept under wraps.

“We reiterate that the government should focus on implementing the proposed reforms proposed by the government’s own reports and other CSO’s instead of continuing to bow down to the pressures of the employers that they are crying that they need migrant labour urgently,” he added.

Sivarajan shared with Coconuts a copy of the reform proposal.

Some of these proposed reforms include only allowing the MOHR to manage and monitor all matters relating to migrant workers, speedy initiatives and policies to eradicate the involvement of private agents and companies in the recruitment and supply of workers, and the abolishment of debt bondage by removing recruitment fees charged to workers.

Glorene Daas, executive director of Tenaganita, a human rights non-profit organisation, said the ministry needs to address the lack of personnel at the labour department in order for it to carry out labour inspections more efficiently.

“During high-level government meetings between the labour department and the ministry, the issue is always that they do not have enough personnel, so what are we doing about it is the next question. If we want to address this effectively and seriously, they need to think through how to increase the labour department’s personnel,” she said.

Meanwhile, Su Shern, executive director of Project Liber8, echoed Sivarajan’s concerns.

“I think first we need to acknowledge that the exploitation of migrant workers in Malaysia is still not being addressed. The fact is that migrant workers are still facing long working hours, exploitative conditions, withholding of wages, etc. and I think these are things that we hear and see all the time,” she told Coconuts.

Project Liber8 is a non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering youth to take action against human trafficking, forced labour, exploitation and discrimination among trafficked victims, migrant workers and refugees.

“So what is the government doing currently to ensure we are minimising this and holding the people responsible accountable?” Su said.

Su said she would really love to see the government speak to relevant parties that are working on migrant issues as well as be present on the ground to understand the lived realities.

“Over the years, we’ve seen the government really making an effort in forced labour and trafficking issues but what is equally as important is the priority of ensuring these laws and policies are executed properly too,” she added.

MOHR Minister V. Sivakumar has refused to comment on the matter when contacted by Coconuts.

[queerbauten]

I love how this website tries to make "you don't owe your coworkers anything" and "unionize! 🤗💖" coexist

[tweedfrog]

[xamaxenta]

I want to do a story of modern au dragon being a mangaka and babysitting ace and accidentally adopting sabo a long the way but I don’t know who I should pair him with..

Im always gonna say Crocodile bc im in too deep in the crocomommy fan theory that its rotted my brain bc i want it to be real so so bad

[somecunttookmyurl]

Now I'm honestly kind of curious what that "totes real gem stones" jewelry of 300 bucks looks like, lmao

I once saw someone selling mountain crystals, small pieces, for 100 bucks. So many scammers with stones. Wonder if that person is a scammer themselves, just bullshitting, or has the worst supplier ever.

it would have to be the worst supplier ever because in less than 5 min i tracked down a wholesale supplier who will give me twenty five 3mm lab-grown sapphires for £38

that's about £1.50 each. so £3 for a pair of earrings assuming you only used one in each

thing is i could make stirling-silver-and-sapphires earrings and sell them for the price of claire's costume jewellery and still be making a huge profit on it. it's just that nobody would believe it's real at that price.