I’m writing this from my hotel room in Barcelona. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) brought me here to participate in a workshop on compensating trafficked and exploited workers. Without a doubt, it’s been the most fascinating conference I’ve attended.
The OSCE has something like 56 member states, including the U.S. and Canada, all of the EU, Turkey, and most (perhaps all) of the former Soviet republics, spanning Europe and central Asia. There are participants in the workshop from close to 20 of these countries, including judges from Azerbaijan and the Ukraine, a prosecutor from Romania and a former prosecutor and a former victim-witness coordinator from the U.S., a Somali union organizer based in the UK, and folk from NGOs throughout Europe… and me.
The OSCE brought me here (on OSCE’s dime… Euro, actually) in recognition of the work the WRLC has done on behalf of immigrant workers and survivors of human trafficking. As the OSCE member states develop a protocol for compensating trafficked and exploited workers, the organizers thought having the perspective of a US-based NGO would add an important element to the dialogue.
I gave a short presentation on the first day about the perspective of exploited workers in the U.S. with respect to the importance of compensation. Since then, I’ve been listening and periodically chiming in with comments. The sessions are in English and Russian, with simultaneous interpretation through funky wireless headphone contraptions.
What I’ve found particularly interesting – and surprising – is how much farther along the U.S. is in the development of compensation for exploited workers, as compared to every other OSCE state participating in the workshop. I really didn’t expect this. My world view has not been particularly worldly. Until now, I was under the assumption that western Europe in particular was a bastion of labor bliss and social harmony (okay, a bit of an exaggeration – I’ve been well aware of the immigrant riots in Paris suburbs and some of the anti-immigrant backlash in Germany, France, and elsewhere, but in my naivete this struck me more as an aberration than a reflection of Europe’s economic and social conditions).
The reality is that remedies for exploited workers – and particularly immigrant workers – throughout Europe are extremely limited. With only a few exceptions (most notably, Spain), most of the participant states simply do not provide undocumented immigrants with a mechanism to seek redress for labor abuses (the laws on the books are great, but the remedies — and particularly the remedies for undocumented immigrants — are poor or non-existent). Undocumented immigrants are unapologetically excluded from labor law protections. Generally – and I am making some broad generalizations – in the rare cases where workers seek compensation, it is through applications made as part of criminal prosecutions, and relief is often limited to restitution, if that. Seeking what folk here in Europe refer to as “moral damages” (pain and suffering, emotional distress, punitive damages, etc.) is considered cutting edge, and where moral damages are awarded they are a pittance compared to awards in severe labor exploitation cases in the U.S.
I am in no way suggesting that our frustration with the many faults of the U.S. legal system and the treatment of immigrant workers is misguided. I’m particularly concerned that the anti-immigrant backlash we’re seeing in the U.S. may ultimately result in a corrosion of rights that brings us down to the utter and appalling absence of meaningful remedies many of the NGOs’ constituencies represented here are confronting.
Comparatively, we have a decent and equitable justice system – severely flawed in many respects – but still better than most. May our system not sag any further.
Dan
