‘The 2009 Blueberry Fiasco’ in

SWEDEN

NAT Bulletin No.1, 2009

January 2010

1

02.01.2010

This is a

working document that takes a hard look at

LABOUR TRAFFICKING in connection with

industry demand for berry-pickers in Northern Europe and

the circumstances of small farmers and workers in Thailand.

The document is being prepared by the NETWORK AGAINST TRAFFICKING and

EXPLOITATION of MIGRANT WORKERS (NAT) in co-operation with the

THAI LABOUR CAMPAIGN (TLC) and the

MIGRANT WORKERS UNION (Thailand)

After further research, amendment and up-dating this document will be published as a FINAL REPORT or NAT BULLETIN

dealing with the situation at the start of the 2010 berry-picking season in Northern Europe.

IMPORTANT NOTE A report on the 19 Thai migrant workers

trapped in Spain in 2009 is under preparation and will be available shortly.

2

Where is my father?

3

CONTENTS About TLC, NAT and MWUT 4

Labour trafficking - General Introduction 6 The ‘2009 Blueberry Fiasco’ in Sweden 10 Background Sweden 11 Failure 12 The struggle in Thailand 13 How to solve the problem? 14 Notes on berry-picking in Finland 16 Field-survey report from northeast Thailand, August 2009 21 UP-DATE January 2010 28 Summary 30 Recommendations 31 CONCLUSIONS and issues for further discussion 32 Appendices: 1. Testimonies from Northeast Thailand, 2009 34 2. TLC proposals presented to Swedish Embassy, Bangkok, 09.10.2009 36 3. DECLARATON, Migrant Workers Union Thailand, 14 December 2009 38 4. The blueberry or bilberry. 39

4

About TLC, NAT and the MWUT The Thai Labour Campaign (TLC) was formed by Junya Yimprasert in February 2000 to help workers and small farmers stand-up for their rights and to focus on building triangular solidarity between national, regional and global labour and human rights campaigns and organisations, especially trade unions. For ten years TLC has worked ceaselessly for political reform, for the principle of Living Wage and improved Social Security, for Labour Rights, Freedom of Association and the ratification by Thailand of ILO Conventions ’87 and ’98, for Migrant Worker’s Rights, for Women’s Rights and the Empowerment of Working Women, and to raise awareness of the meaning of Care Economy and Organic Economy. Junya functions also as the President of the Network against Trafficking and Exploitation of Migrant Workers (NAT) which was formed in February 2007 by the coming together in ISAN of poor Thai people who had been affected, directly and indirectly, by the government’s policy of encouraging outward labour migration - people who had become the victims of lax labour regulations and the blood-sucking agencies and brokers who profit from selling false dreams and from human trafficking - people who had been lured and tricked into selling their agricultural land, their houses and their belongings in order to pay huge brokerage fees to go and earn money abroad. According to Ministry of Labour statistics, since 1975, 3.8 million people have sought work abroad - through the Ministry. 70% of them came from the North-East, 60% with only primary school education. The population of the 18 provinces of the North-East comprises about 5.4 million families giving a population of about 20 million. 2.5 million families have had members working abroad - 45 % of the population of the region. This figure does not include those who have travelled abroad outside government schemes or those who have been tricked into paying large brokerage fees and then abandoned. This second group of people is thought to be as large as the official migrant group. Figures from the Thai Government and various banks indicate that, in the past 20 years, Thai migrant workers abroad have been earning 10 - 60 billion Baht / annum for the Thai economy. Where has this money gone? If it was all in the hands of migrant worker’s families from the North-East, the territory known as ‘ISAN’, would be the richest in Thailand (not the poorest). 3.8 million workers have travelled to labour abroad by mortgaging their land, houses and belongings to pay for labour trafficking brokerage and recruitment fees. The Ministry of Labour has agreements on migrant labour with the governments of Israel, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, but in these instances the process is painfully slow and unclear, and trafficking agencies to exploit the situation by claiming that they can find work for people much more quickly.

5

NAT will be concentrating on building direct exchange and barter links between agriculturalists, workers and the urban poor, and be doing whatever possible to eliminate the profiteering of middle men. NAT will . . • Help with legal claims and prosecutions against brokerage firms and traffickers. • Work with media and publicity to prevent people falling prey to the lies and tricks of the traffickers by: - Producing educational media for members and communities subjected to the advertising of trafficking firms, so that people have information to help them come to informed decisions. - Formulating proposals to the Ministry of Labour to increase protection, facilitate problem-solving and help organise publicity for migrant workers in difficulty. - Demanding the establishment of an independent committee to investigate politicians, officials and labour brokerage firms, and to set standards for labour migration which will benefit workers.

• Develop a working model for sustainable development, for presentation the Government and all relevant bodies at all levels, for solving the debt problems of small-scale agriculturalists and for eliminating their dependence on outward labour migration.

• Demand that the Thai state take, because that is the primary task of government, full responsibility for developing and promoting economic models which allow people and their families to live in peace and happiness within their own communities, within their own society. On 14 December 2009 a meeting was held to establish the Migrant Workers Union (Thailand) based upon the already existing membership of NAT - to build and strengthen solidarity for, between and around migrant workers and migrant worker issues.

The materials for this document have been / are being prepared by

Junya Yimprasert with assistance from

Richard Thompson Coon, TLC, NAT and the MWUT.

For further information please contact:

Thai Labour Campaign P.O. Box 219, Ladprao Post Office, Bangkok 10310

Tel: +66 2 933-9492 Fax: +66 2 933-9493

tlc@thailabour.org www.thailabour.org

6

LABOUR TRAFFICKING

In the 1970ies, when Thailand first started exporting rural workers in response to the construction boom in the Middle East, the host country paid all costs. Thousands of Thai workers went to work in the oil-rich countries, especially from the arid region of the northeast known as ‘Isan’, to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. Remittances from this ‘first wave’ of migrant workers did have a significant, positive impact on the well-being of their families, farms and villages.

The number of migrant workers grew rapidly in tandem with export-oriented industrialisation, the emergence of new mega-cities and decreasing investment in traditional forms of agriculture.

The increasing demand for cheap labour alongside the unlimited supply of cheap labour was quickly recognised as a new way to make money, and possibilities for trade-offs began attracting all kinds of opportunists at the global, national, provincial and district level. Labour supply and demand were turned into a human trafficking business, into a vicious cycle of under-the-table dealings directed primarily at milking the poor, especially poor farming communities.

Opportunists in the prospering receiving countries recognised that demand for cheap labour would only increase as willingness to do menial work declined. In the sending countries of the Global South, corrupt politicians, civil servants and high-interest money-lenders worked together, networking with recruiting agencies and local slicksters, to build-up trans-boundary trafficking cartels.

For the majority of workers seeking overseas employment as a means to supplement their income and provide for their families, the labour trafficking cartels have made this objective ‘mission impossible’. The money most workers can earn by going abroad to work is no longer enough to cover even the recruiting agency fees, let alone improve the living conditions of their families. On the contrary, with the connivance of corrupt politicians and government agencies, the global labour market has been turned into an ugly business that specialises in duping and exploiting the poor, in particular in stripping small farmers of their means of survival by pressing them into greater and greater debt.

The current labour trafficking ‘business’ is causing bitter family conflict, social unrest and the commercialisation of social values.

In Thailand 40 years have passed since the first generation of migrant workers left their villages to work overseas - with the honest intention of lifting their families, farming practice and villages out of poverty. One can say that only this first wave of migrant workers was able to achieve any success. They did their work well and the hosting nation, grateful for good work, commonly paid their travel and lodging costs.

In Thailand’s neglected, down-trodden farming villages, many people, increasingly exposed to the outside world, began to feel themselves unpleasantly backward. New, young, village blood wanted more than their parents and their limited schooling could provide, and all kinds of entrepreneurs began to identify new opportunity in the growing, global labour market.

Multi-stakeholder trafficking chains

Since the first wave of Thai workers went to the Middle East, millions of rural Thai have been lured and tricked into the global labour market by the propaganda of the trafficking cartels. The story is closely similar throughout the Global South.

In Thailand there has for years been a constantly changing pool of 200 – 300 recruiting agencies registered with the Ministry of Labour that send out, every year, 90% of the 150 000 Thai that are ‘legally’ contracted to replenish the 350 000 strong global work-force of Thai nationals. This pool of agencies can be likened to a pit of snakes in which all are constantly changing skin to avoid detection.

For 40-years, through the endless rotation of mainly military Thai governments, a continuous stream of reports on the exploitation and suffering of migrant workers has been submitted to Thai authorities with little real impact on official policy or attitude. Directly under the nose of Government - in fact with

7

Government patronage - the exploitation of the rural poor by labour trafficking agencies has been permitted to continue unabated.

In the more prosperous Asian countries, like Korea, Japan and Malaysia, the number of undocumented migrant workers exceeds the number of documented workers.

The recruiting agencies are permitted to operate without concern for the legal rights or well-being of the workers they recruit. To become a licensed operator an agencies must deposit 5 million Baht with the Ministry’s of Labour’s Department of Overseas Employment (DOE). The sum is far too small. In the recent case of the 19 Thai who were trapped in Spain, the agent’s deposit covered little more than half the compensation owed. The primary aim of the labour trafficking cartels is to create the impression that there is, whether true or not, a vast overseas demand for migrant workers. This approach to migrant labour is made possible by the irresponsible, laissez-fair attitude of most southern governments towards migrant labour issues.

As the Thai labour-trafficking business expanded to feed the new construction industries in Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia in the 1980ies, it came increasingly under the control of mafia-style organisation: a cash business with minimal book-keeping, dependent on corrupt connections to high-level government.

The labour-trafficking business is not based on how much a migrant worker can earn and is not tied to whether or not a worker can or cannot complete their ‘contract’. The objective is simply to recruit as many people as possible by developing means to trick as many people as possible into signing-up to an ‘overseas work package’ for as much money as possible.

The system recruits any person as a broker - local officials, village Heads, successful migrant workers, monks, etc. A broker, with little or zero intention of taking responsibility for damage caused, and with zero capacity to take responsibility, is employed by the recruiting agency to distribute the propaganda of a trafficking cartel, in other words to sell whatever is the latest ‘false dream work package’ on offer.

These days the recruiting fee to Israel, for example, is around 7,500 Euro and to Canada and the USA between 8 - 15,000 Euro. For a 2 month work contract in Sweden or Finland the fee is 1,700 - 2,500 Euro.

The annual income of a rural worker from North-East Thailand is between 1,200 and 1,800 Euro.

The recruiting fee covers items such as work contract, airfare, visa, health insurance - and maybe a few hours of orientation before the flight.

8

Obtaining the money required to pay the recruiting fee usually means that a poor farming family must either mortgage 2 hectares of land - in most cases all the land they own, or, frequently, persuade some wealthier relative or neighbour to mortgage theirs, and so on. In short, in deciding to pay a recruiting fee, a poor farming family is gambling with their very existence.

At this moment the exotic-sounding names of far-off countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Portugal, Spain, France, Sweden and Finland can be found floating around in hundreds of villages in Thailand. The more distant the country the more money the cartels can charge, and countries which have absolutely no need of Thai labourers can be found in the propaganda: China, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Turkey, the Solomon Islands!

The labour trafficking ‘business’ has been developed from a simple, legally acceptable contract between employer and migrant worker, to a system completely outside the law, and thence, to a well-entrenched, sophisticated, mafia-like set-up within the ‘establishment’ with establishment tricksters at both ends of the business.

Most countries set quotas on migrant labour e.g. Taiwan has given itself a migrant labour quota of 350,000 (all nationalities). Israel is accepting 200 000 of which 27,000 can be Thai workers in the agricultural sector. For the 2010 berry-picking season Sweden has decided to accept 4,000 pickers from Thailand.

Overseas work applicants are usually not aware of the migrant worker quotas of different countries. With millions of workers from the South looking for work overseas, migrant workers can easily fall victim to unscrupulous agencies - in both sending and receiving countries.

A single overseas work licence is often sold several times to workers in different countries. Within just a few weeks of starting a contract a Thai worker could be dismissed for some reason and replaced by a waiting Vietnamese worker. The Vietnamese could be dismissed within a few months and replaced by a waiting Indonesian, who is recruited to complete the contract - made between the recruiting agency and the employer.

In this way a recruiter in Taiwan or Korea or Israel can triple their takings, sometimes from both the workers and the employer. Through this type of manipulation, from a system that began as a mutually beneficial arrangement, migrant labour has been turned into an ugly business of exploiting the poor and most gullible.

Entrepreneurs in the host countries set themselves up in the trafficking chains as agents selling jobs to countries in the South. This is profitable because the trafficking agencies in the South have

9

become competitive amongst themselves. In Southeast Asia there has long been strong competition between Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino and Indonesian recruiting agencies, and Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepalese and Chinese agencies have now joined the competition.

According to the official statistics, since 1975 Thailand has exported nearly 4 million workers, 90% of whom paid huge fees to be processed. 90% are men. 70% are rural farmers and labourers from the poor villages of Isan, most with not more than 9 years of compulsory education and no English language skills.

During the dry season (January-May) the villages of Isan, especially in the great provinces of Udon Thani, Khon Kaen and Nakon Ratchasima, are flooded with leaflets, delivered to the door, inviting villagers to go to work overseas. Radio programmes are often run throughout the day with propaganda about how people can earn huge sums of money by working overseas - in Taiwan, Israel, Korea, Japan, USA, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Poland, New Zealand.

Many government and private banks run policies to grant loans of 60,000 - 190,000 Baht to those who apply for work overseas, even though the banks know full-well that these loans greatly exceed the legal limit for recruiting fees - as determined by the Ministry of Labour.

The recent case of the 19 Thai workers who were stranded in Spain provides a good illustration of how recruiting agencies in Thailand (and all around the world) have become expert at exploiting government policies that promoting overseas employment.

There are four different ways through which a Thai can go to work overseas (quoting from Thai government instructions):

1. Through the Department of Employment: the employers who wish to employ the Thai workers to work overseas can directly request the Department of Employment to recruit the Thai workers for them with free of charge.

2. Through a licensed private recruitment agencies: these recruitment agencies can charge for recruitment fees and expenses from the job -seekers but not exceeding the amount stipulated in the law.

3. Through arrangements made by a local employer in collaboration with the Department of Employment either for work or for training and ‘acquiring new technology’ - in collaboration with the Department of Employment before sending their employees for overseas training.

4. By self-arrangement when the applicant has direct contact with the overseas employers and informs the Department of Employment not less than 15 days in advance.

The Thai Overseas Employment Administration (TOEA) sets limits on the costs that can be charged to a person going abroad e.g. passport 1,090 Baht, health check not more than 1,500, skills test 500 - 1000, and the so-called ‘Processing Fee’ not more than 56 000 Baht (e.g. for Taiwan) or not more than one month of salary plus administrative expenses of not more than 15 000 Baht. In other words, a person going to work in Singapore to earn a stated salary of 8,000 Baht / month is supposed not to be charged a Recruiting Fee of more than 23 000 Baht (8000 + 15 000).

In reality no Thai farmer or worker seeking employment overseas has ever paid a Recruiting Fee within the limits of the law. All recruiting agencies take far more than the law allows, and all authorities involved know this very well, but have done nothing to curtail the illegalities of their legalised business.

In the case of the 19 Thai workers who were trapped in Spain in 2009 their stated salary was to be 70 000 Baht / month (1,450 Euro). This gives a maximum legal Recruiting Fee of 85 000 Baht (70 000 + 15 000), but the agency collected 580 000 Baht / person. In the case of Thai workers who went to Israel, their salary was stated as 30 000 Baht / month, giving a maximum legal Recruiting Fee of 45 000 Baht (30 000 + 15 000), but the workers were made to pay 380 000 Baht.

Just after the 19 September Military Coup in 2006 (2549), the Ministry of Labour secretly issued a regulation allowing recruiting agencies to take up to four months of salary (four times higher than in, for instance, the Philippines). The current Recruiting Fee for Portugal is now around 350 000 Baht, for Canada 400 000, for Korea 380 000, for Taiwan 130 000 and for Libya 120 000.

10

The ‘2009 Blueberry Fiasco’ in

SWEDEN October 2009

Background For the last fifteen years several hundred small farmers from the depressed, rural villages of North-East and North Thailand have been travelling to Sweden and Finland with tourist visas to pick wild blueberries. Their earnings from 2- 3 months of berry-picking have helped their families to survive between harvest seasons in Thailand.

The ‘first generation’ of Thai berries pickers to go to Sweden were mainly the families and relatives of Thai women who had married Swedish men. The second generation were people from the same or nearby villages who were assisted in their arrangements by first generation, who in some instances began to charge the new-comers small sums (e.g. 5 -10 000 Baht) for their assistance.

In 2007 the Swedish Forest Berry Association (SBIF) and the Swedish Immigration Board took steps to formalise this activity and, unwittingly or otherwise, turned the activity into a money-making opportunity for, especially, Thai and Swedish recruiting agencies.

The SBIF set quotas on the number of berry-pickers. Swedish agencies then teamed-up with Thai agencies to recruit the berry-pickers and facilitate . . - employment contracts - logistic arrangements for potential pickers - negotiations with the Thai Ministry of Labour’s Department of Overseas Employment, and with the - Swedish Embassy in Bangkok (visa applications), and the - booking and purchase of flight tickets.

For the past three years Sweden has been flooded with Thai berry-pickers, from just a few hundred pickers in the late 90ies to 1,129 workers in 2007 and 3,582 in 2008. In 2009 four Thai agencies recruited 5,911 workers: Siam Royal Services Group 2,372, Sin Sunshine 1,668, TS Law and Business 1,133 and Thai Blueberry 738.

Under current contract procedure those who want to go berry-picking must raise around 90,000 Baht (2,000 Euro). Few small farmer families in Thailand have that amount of spare cash. To raise the money they must loan money from a bank e.g. up to 60 000 Baht from the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) with an interest rate of 7- 12% / annum, or from private money-lenders at 3 - 10% interest / month.

To raise 90 000 Baht most rural families loan money from both the BAAC and the money-lenders. In many instances (about 70% of the berry-pickers) raising this money means mortgaging land. The BAAC loan package for berry-picking in Sweden usually requires that the Thai labour recruiting agency acts as a guarantor.

To avoid Swedish tax regulations there had to be a formal contract between the recruiting agency and the berry-pickers. Thus the agencies in Sweden paid four Thai agencies to recruit and send workers to Sweden. All farmers (berry-pickers) were made to sign an employment contract with one or other of the four Thai agencies.

The workers were sent to Sweden under a category described as ‘Employers in Thailand are taking them to work in Sweden’! According to the contract workers went to Sweden employed in Thailand, at the level of the Thai minimum wage (8 000 Baht / month) with a daily allowance of 500 Baht (10 Euro) for expenses in Sweden, and with the level of protection accorded to workers in Thailand on minimum wage.

In reality the recruiting agencies paid nothing - the berry-pickers paid everything.

11

Sweden In 2009 nearly 6 000 Thai workers arrived in Sweden in mid-July, and were placed in camps of from 60 - 200 pickers in North, Central and Southern Sweden. Many of the camps were from twenty to hundreds of kilometres apart. Most camps were assigned a Thai cook recruited in Thailand. The pickers were told to form groups of 5 to 8 people. Each group was provided with an old car or mini-van and told to include an experienced picker. Most of the pickers (farmers) had never been out of Thailand and very few spoke more than a few words of Swedish or English. Each group was given a map and told to get on with the job - without further ceremony. The Swedish agencies were in-charge of the camps. There was no real welcoming and little or no attempt to provide any cultural or environmental orientation.

The distance to areas where berries were sufficiently abundant to warrant picking often turned into hundred kilometres each day. (In earlier years it had been just a few kilometres.)

The pickers walked the woods, forests and hills, often covering 10 - 20 kilometres during the day. They kept contact with mobile phones and left their buckets of berries beside the road for their Thai driver to collect. Except the drivers, all contributed to the cost of the petrol, about 100 Krona / day, with the drivers themselves doing as much berry-picking in the in-between as possible.

To be able to find good berry grounds and pick enough berries to cover just their living and transport costs, many groups would rise at 02.00 or 04.00 hrs and take their breakfast and lunch with them out into the field - the same every day: boiled eggs, fried chicken pieces and 2-3 bottles of water.

Most would not stop searching for berries before 18.00 hrs, and not arrive back in camp before 20.00 hrs and not get to bed until 24.00 hrs. On arrival at camp they would often have to queue for the weigh-in. In 2009 this usually amounted to only 30 - 40 kg / person / day. On average the pickers would manage around 4 hours sleep. Sometimes, in areas where berries were scarce, they would decide to sleep-out the night on the forest floor - whatever the weather.

The Swedish agencies deducted 150 Krona / day from their earnings for food, lodging and car, whether or not they were sick and unable to go out berry-picking.

After several weeks of earning less than bare living costs (250 Krona / day), several hundred pickers decided to complain to Thailand’s Minister of Labour when he visited Sweden on August 23.

With a Thai government loan of 9,000 Baht (via the Thai Embassy in Sweden) to assist purchase of a ticket, about 400 workers returned to Thailand well before the end of their contract.

Before the pickers decided to protest, very few people in Sweden seemed to know or care about the well-being of the 6 000 Thai in their camps. The Thai took with them their own medicines (mosquito cream, penicillin, amoxicillin) and administered their own healthcare. Few had adequate clothing, especially not foot-ware. Most took with them from Thailand the thin, high rubber boots that are used in the rice paddies. All had severe problems with their feet, but many said they were too cold to feel any pain. Most returned with seriously damaged feet and many lost, completely, all their toe-nails.

The conditions experienced by the great majority of Thai berry-pickers in Sweden in 2009 were far from what they were promised and led to believe.

‘Sontayon Chridpol, Sayam Mepit and Vipagon Juntason are three of all the berry-pickers that have fallen into debt’, reported Sweden’s newspaper Aftonbladet, 24.08.2009. http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article5683819.ab Photo: Filipe Morales.

12

Failure Around 80% of the 6 000 Thai who went to Sweden in 2009 failed to cover their costs. Why?

According to the SIBF there were fewer berries than in 2008 and, according to the Minister of Labour, too many Thai went to pick berries, but the real problem is that there are now too many players attempting to profit from this berry-picking activity. Whereas in the past the pickers, on tourist visas, paid their airfare, travel insurance and all expenses themselves, there are now 6 - 7 different actors attempting to profit:

1. Thai recruiting agencies over-charging potential berry-pickers.

2. Local brokers charging their own fees (3,000 - 30,000 Baht) on top of the fees of the actual recruiting agency.

3. MoL officials / politicians Recruiting agencies are charging pickers a ‘facilitation fee’. This refers to under-the-table cash payment to officials and politicians.

4. Bank agents Many prospective pickers who loan money from the BAAC are told they must pay some 2,000 Baht to some person (who they don’t know) for facilitating / guaranteeing their loan.

5. Swedish Embassy The berry-pickers are not protected by Swedish labour laws but are charged 8,800 Baht for a visa.

6. Swedish agencies Swedish agencies making arrangements for the camps have pushed up the cost of food and lodging.

7. SIBF In 2009 the SIBF dropped the kilo price of berries paid to the pickers by half, despite the fact that the 2009 season was extremely poor.

8. The berry pickers Each picker must pay daily expenses of about 250 Krona / day / person, for food, lodging and transport - more than double what pickers had to pay before the SIBF and agencies entered the picture.

In most camps the pickers are also paying, indirectly, the cost of the Thai cooks who are recruited in Thailand and receive a guaranteed salary of 45,000 Baht / month as well as their airfare. (Note: The quality of food in the camps was poor and many of the cooks went off berry-picking like everyone else.)

How under such circumstances can 6000 berry-pickers from Thailand make any profit in Sweden?

If this is not a labour trafficking business then what is it?

The process of t he Berries Picking Business

Before 2007

Workers (cash on hand)

10-30,000 baht

Brokers 5000-10,000 baht

Air fare28-43,000

baht

Visa3,000 bahtInsurance 5,000 baht

Expenses in SwedenCar/ lodging/ food/ petrol = 80 -100 kroner/day/pr

Money left after

deduction 100,000 –320,000

baht

Workers (cash on hand)

1,000-10,000 baht

Brokers3,000 -

30,000 baht

Company in Thailand

75-77,000 baht

(include visa/ insurance)

Money lenders/

bank3-10% interest & 2,000 baht for brokers/ authorities

MOL officers

Facilitating money, every

companies pay to the

MOL officers

Visa8,800 bahtInsurance 5,600 baht

Expenses in SwedenCar/ lodging/ food

250 kroner/ day/pr

Money left after

deductionfew

thousands to -100,000

baht

2009

A EDCB F

A B C D

13

Solidarity meeting in ISAN for berry-pickers newly returned from Sweden and facing heavy debts, 2009.

The struggle in Thailand In just over two months 5,911 Thai berry-pickers succeeded in acquiring a total debt of over 600 million Baht. Thousands of pickers and their families (altogether around 20 000 citizens) now face serious social and psychological problems, including loss of trust in their communities, loss of means of production on their small farms, divorce etc.

Since the end of August 2009, several hundred pickers, 428 according to the Ministry of Labour, couldn’t continue paying their living costs in Sweden and decided to leave their camps and meet with the Thai Minister of Labour when he visited Sweden on 23 August, and submitted their complaint to the Minister and to the Thai Embassy in Sweden.

Their situation was reported in both the Swedish and Thai mass media and also discussed by the respective governments, but as yet (November 30) there are still no solution for many of these berry-pickers, many of whom are being chased by the money-lenders and the BAAC. The four Thai agencies responsible for causing so much bankruptcy have not been charged.

After returning to Thailand, the above workers filed their complaint to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Labour, to their members of Parliament and Senate, and with the Department of Special Investigations. In Bangkok they set-up camp outside Government House from 6 - 9 October and organised a rally to the Swedish Embassy. Some farm workers are suing the agencies through the Labour Court.

On 9 October, during a negotiation at Parliament House chaired by Mr. Paitoon Kaewtong, Minister of Labour, the four recruiting agencies agreed to pay 23,000 Baht to the workers who submitted the complaint. However, on payment day, all four agencies talked-down the payment, and ended-up of paying most workers from just a few thousand to 21,000. Only a few farmers received 23,000 according to the agreement. The pickers who agreed to accept the money offered had to sign strong statements saying that they will not take any further action against the agencies - and that if they did the agency will have the right to take action against them etc! Two of the recruiting agencies pressured workers to allow them to deduct money to give to the money-lenders. The money-lenders themselves also arrived at the Ministry of Labour on ‘payment day’ and began taking cash from the farmers in full view of officials and police.

At a meeting on 9 October 2009 with the Swedish Ambassador and officials from the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok, despite all friendliness and apparent sincerity, the Ambassador seemed to not fully understand the deep political dilemma in the whole labour trafficking business, and even stated at one point that: “If Thai workers are too expensive, the Swedish industry can turn to another nation’s workforce”.

14

NAT’s reply to this was “That may be a good idea, since there is no point in flying Thai workers 5,000 miles to be cheated.”

The Thai workers have stated that - to the Swedish Ambassador, to the Thai Minister of Labour, senior officials and politicians - they don’t want their blueberry-picking activity exploited and turned into a business by third-party profiteers. They want the governments of Thailand and Sweden to be the facilitators of the contract process so they don’t have to pay huge fees to brokers and recruiting agencies.

To date the Thai government has done extremely little to protect the (bargaining) rights of Thai workers working overseas. It only loans them money to bring them home.

For ‘failed’ trafficked workers or farmers MoL officials will only act as a go-between with the recruiting agencies. And if they do act it is to pressure workers / farmers to take whatever the agencies (when caught) might offer as compensation - usually about 20% of what the workers / farmers have paid them. In the case of the 2009 berry-picking fiasco Thai government officials seem to be attempting to tell farmers to not make such a big noise since that could lead to their not being allowed to go berry-picking in Sweden in the future.

The Swedish Embassy officials expressed their appreciation for Thailand’s support for the Swedish Tsunami victims, and said that their Embassy is attempting to develop dialogue with Thailand’s Ministry of Labour to prevent incidents like the 2009 berry-picking fiasco in the future.

.

How to solve the problem? The debts incurred by the thousands of Thai berry-pickers that went to Sweden in 2009 should be a case to wake-up Thai government authorities, politicians and small farmer communities to understanding that they are being targeted and trapped by the human-trafficking business.

It is necessary to understand that, for the past 30 years, Thai government policy for promoting work overseas has caused more bankruptcy, more net suffering in the community, than it has well-being. It is necessary to understand that Thai government policy has been helping to build-up and institutionalise a labour trafficking business that only benefits a few well-connected people.

15

Village meeting in ISAN for berry-pickers newly returned from Sweden and facing heavy debts, 2009

The case of the 2009 berry-pickers has revealed some ugly realities. How is it possible that the Ministry of Labour’s Department of Overseas Employment, which has had adequate experience and time to know exactly what’s going on, does not itself establish a system to facilitate overseas labour recruitment. In 2009 the DOE seemed ready and happy to allow 6 000 Thai people to be victimised by private recruiting agencies. But this has happened time and time again in the past.

Who is going to take responsibility for the 600 million Baht debt incurred by Thai farmers in the 2009 berry-picking fiasco in Sweden?

Now is the time to investigate why, for the past 30 years, Thai authorities have failed to prevent private recruiting agencies from over-charging their customers.

The MoL must investigate the widespread evidence of corruption and pay-offs between the recruiting agencies and the DOE - pay-offs that pass up and down a chain of corruption that stretches from high officials through government departments to the recruiting agencies, local brokers, and back up again.

How come that, in 2009, some farmers found themselves paying a 100 - 120 000 Baht recruiting fee for a contract to pick berries in Sweden for 2 months?

Why is the DOE so slow to respond? Why is it not promoting a ‘government to government’ arrangement? Why is it not conducting inter-governmental MOUs with other countries to protect Thai workers going overseas? Could it be because of a cash-in-hand, under-the-table cash-flow with the private recruiting companies?

There are constant reports of job-seekers looking for work overseas being told by officials by the MoL Head Office in Bangkok, or at any provincial office, that they must refer themselves to this or that private recruiting agency - frequently found just around the corner if not in the same building.

*** The Thai government authorities, the Swedish authorities, the SIBF and the recruiting agencies have all tried to say that this incident comes as a lesson, but there is not much that can be done about it and that there is nobody to compensate for the loss and pain of thousands of berry-pickers. In short they attempt to brush off the whole affair as bad luck!

Manipulation of the overseas labour recruiting processes is pushing up costs at both ends, in both the sending and the receiving countries. If the recruiting process does not move to cut-out the growing number of middle-men - the private agencies and their brokers - the positive aspects of labour

16

migration will be annulled and the millions of poor people in the South who could benefit will be excluded or burnt like flies in a frying-pan.

With everybody attempting to make profit, berry-picking in Sweden has been turned into a heartless business. While talking about a system to protect workers, the Swedish government has produced a system that is too expensive to provide any further benefit. The lack of official responsibility and any real consideration for the interests of the berry-pickers has been an eye-opener for many people.

Notes on

BERRY-PICKING in

FINLAND Based on newspaper reports and web articles

GENERAL With the demand for blue berries growing in Europe and all around the world, and since, these days, Finns only pick for their own consumption, the Finnish berry industry has become dependent on foreign pickers, and has been recruiting foreign pickers for some years - from Russia, Estonia, the Ukraine and, since 2005, from Thailand as well.

A tourist visa is all that has so far been required for a foreigner to pick and sell wild berries in Finland. Thai berry-pickers have been able to come to Finland without any official labour contract. They can stay for up to three months on a tourist visa selling what they pick to local berry-processing companies. The price paid to foreign pickers is the same as that paid to Finns.

Local employment offices believe that Finns are not interested to go to the forest to earn income by picking berries because of the impact of the social security network, because many long-term unemployed people are elderly and because Finns consider the kilo price of berries too low in relation to the cost of living, price of gasoline etc. Others say they have just become too lazy.

The Thai berry-pickers do not have contracts with the berry-picking companies and are free to sell the berries they pick to any buyer. Making a profit with berry-picking is hard work and 90% of the Thai berry-pickers are young men. Most of Finland’s indirect berry-picker employers offer accommodation, but some pickers prefer to avoid the expense and sleep in a tent.

The berry-picking business creates some employment for local people, with companies like ‘Korvatunturin Marja’ hiring a few dozen local people to work at their freezing plant and run the garages and vehicle inspection stations for the cars provided for the pickers.

According to one of the larger Finnish berry-picker employers, Thai berry-pickers are preferred and are in a league of their own: “They are diligent pickers and easy team members, which cannot always be said of those foreign workers who come from the neighbouring areas”.

Despite the increasing number of foreign pickers, and competition between the companies to harvest wild berries, and Finland’s traditional ‘Everyman's Right’ that allows any person to pick wild berries and mushrooms - Finland’s ‘food for free’, the vast majority of wild berries and mushrooms in the Finnish forests remain un-picked and rot where they grow. There is actual danger that Finland will be "picked clean" by foreign berry-pickers, never-the-less exploitation of Finland’s ‘Everyman’s Right’ by the growth ambitions of Finnish berry companies and their new hordes of commercialised foreign pickers is, naturally, causing some debate.

2005 At the beginning of August 2005 about 100 Thai, mostly rice farmers, began arriving in the north of Finland (e.g to Savukoski) for two months of berry-picking. Most did not speak English, but did arrive

17

with a few of their own interpreters. At least the group that stayed in Savukoski was provided with a guide by their local ‘employer’ to help them get acquainted with maps and berry grounds, so they could move and work in independent groups.

Most of the Thai pickers who came to Finland in 2005 had been berry-picking in Sweden in previous years. They paid their own travel, accommodation and rent for the cars they used. Many had borrowed money in Thailand to make the trip to Finland, where they hoped to earn more than in Sweden because in Finland there are not so many pickers.

In June 2005, local unemployment in Savukoski was 20%, but local officials were insisting that there was plenty of room in the community for both local and foreign berry-pickers.

The Thai pickers said that in Thailand their normal monthly salary was about 7,000 Baht (140 Euro) and that they were expecting to clear about 100,000 Baht to take home after two months berry-picking.

In 2005 the pickers were paid about 4.50 euro / kilo for cloudberries, 1.00 euro / kilo for blue-berries and 0.80 euro / kilo for lingon berries.

In 2005 the Finnish company Korvatunturin Marja bought about 1.500 tons of berries, including 400 tons of blueberries and 650 tons of lingon berry. The Finnish company Riitan Herkku Oy bought about 3 000 tons of lingon berry. The 92 Thai pickers based in Savukoski picked a total of 317,000 kilos of wild berries. By comparison, in 2004, buying wild berries only from local pickers, the local buyers managed to get only 17,000 kilos. http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Thai+berry+pickers+earn+money+in+Finnish+Lapland/1101980482645 http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?artid=369&catid=11 http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?artid=521&catid=11 http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?artid=1613&catid=11 2006 In 2006 about 3 000 foreign berry-pickers worked in Finland, of which, in Northern Finland, about 450 were Thai (95% young men), who were sent to pick berries in Savukoski, Kuusamo, Kemijärvi, Posio and Salla. About one hundred of them were billeted, as in 2005, in an old school in Savukoski.

Finnish berry companies also invited pickers from Russia, the Ukraine and Mongolia. One company had assembled 100 cars for the berry-pickers, others seem to have provided none.

For the Russian and Ukrainian pickers high hopes of a profitable berry-picking season seem, in many cases, to have been dashed by dry weather and a poor harvest. With little money for food, many started wanting to go home early, but had no money for the return journey. In some locations local people took food to the pickers to stop them starving. In Rovaniemi (on the Artic Circle) some 100 Ukrainian students, who had been tricked about their accommodation arrangements, contacted the local Police to help them make arrangements to get home.

For the Thai pickers, working mainly in the east of the country, the 2006 season seems to have been much better, with local buyers reporting harvests 2.5 times higher than in 2005, and it appears that many Thai did manage to return to Thailand with around 2000 euro in their pockets. Very hard work seems to have been the only road to profit in 2006.

In 2006 some buyers were paying 2 euro / kg for blueberries. http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Foreign+berry-pickers+put+on+spot+by+empty+promises+and+poor+crop+in+Lapland/1135220928616 http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Thai+berry-pickers+are+welcome+in+Finnish+Lapland/1135220886957

2007 2007 saw thousands of people from across Europe and Asia applying for visas to go berry-picking in Finland.

The largest indirect employer of foreign berry pickers was the Finnish west coast company Riitan Herkku, buying fruit from more than 1,000 pickers, of whom about 700 came from Thailand, 280 from the Ukraine and 50 from Mongolia.

In 2007 effort was given to attempting to cut-out some of the recruiting agents and middle-men, to avoid the troubles experienced, especially by Ukrainians, in 2006. "The goal is to be able to organise berry-picking directly with the pickers themselves in the future" said Kristo Jari Huttunen from

18

Korvatunturin Marja, a company affiliated with Riitan Herkku. In 2007 Riitan Herkku was also apparently in contact with the Thai Ministry of Labour in Bangkok providing information about accommodation, transport and working conditions in Finland.

In 2007 the kilo price for blue berries was around 1.20 euro / kg. Finnish News Agency (STT) 01.07.07 http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?artid=3285&catid=11 http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?artid=3513&catid=11 http://www.thairy.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17330&view=next Note on strawberry pickers: Since Finns have also become unable to pick effectively all the strawberries grown in Finland (11 - 13 000 tons), mostly from Suonenjoki, the number of strawberry pickers recruited from abroad has been growing over the last ten years. In 2007 Finland recruited 4 000 Russian pickers from across the border in Russian Karelia, as well as Ukrainians. They paid 3 euro / night for accommodation, not including meals.

"Today, the Embassy of Ukraine is very strict about the arrangements, and we are under contract to provide certain facilities", said Yrjö Rossi, a strawberry-grower from Espoo. Until fairly recently, Rossi had also used Estonian pickers doing piece-work, but the improved job market in Estonia had deflated their interest.

In 2007 the Ukrainians at the Rossi farm seemed satisfied with the work, wages, and circumstances. The pickers lived in double rooms in Espoo’s Kauklahti district and bought their food at Lidl. They were paid a contract rate according to the ‘collective labour agreement for rural areas’. In Suonenjoki the average wage worked out at around 7.00 Euro / hour. At the Rossi farm in Espoo, a swift picker could gather more than 200 kilos of strawberries a day. Over the short hectic season, a berry picker could earn between 1,500 to 3,000 Euro.

Apparently the City of Suonenjoki would like the berry pickers to take a serious interest in the town - and in Finland, since many of the pickers are university students or graduates and would be welcome to stay in Finland permanently. http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finnish+strawberry+growers+prefer+foreign+berry+pickers++/1135227962469

2008 In 2008 about 4 500 people arrived in Finland from e.g. Russia, Ukraine, BeloRussia, Thailand and Estonia - to pick wild berries. There was an apparent decrease in the number of Russian and Estonian pickers, and 2008 saw the Finnish berry industry reaching-out to attract berry-pickers from as far away as Vietnam!

2008 saw increasing debate in the Finnish Parliament on issues raised by the constant increasing influx of foreign berry-pickers. Expert opinion from the University of Lapland (Lapin Yliopisto) expressed concern about misuse / abuse of the Finnish ‘Everyman’s Right’ in connection with foreign pickers operating without sufficient understanding of local customs and traditions e.g. approaching too close to private property and clearing berry grounds that some poor, local families / women may in fact depend upon for essential food. Concerns were also raised about littering, driving conduct and so on.

These matters are being addressed by the relevant Finnish authorities, who seem never-the-less to remain positively inclined to both the foreign berry-pickers and the berry-picking business / industry.

2008 produced a poor berry harvest and many foreign berry-pickers suffered heavy losses, however, according to the Export Manager for Riitan Herkku, in 2008 most of the 400 Thai pickers that worked for the company managed to cover their costs and return home with ‘a nice amount of money’. http://www.eduskunta.fi/faktatmp/utatmp/akxtmp/kk_866_2008_p.shtml

2009 At the start of 2009, newspapers were reporting that Finland was once again welcoming thousands of berry-pickers. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by March 2009, the Unit for Passports and Visas, through the ‘Finnish representation’ in Bangkok, had received around 3 500 visa applications. The First Secretary for the Unit of Passports and Visas was predicting that only about 1 900 visas

19

would be granted - the same as in 2008, mainly because the Unit had no extra staff or premises to handle more: “In practice, they do just what they can in addition to their normal workload”. First Secretary Vesa Häkkinen expressed his opinion that there was no sense in granting unlimited numbers of visas: “Last year we were informed that depending on the enterprise in question some 12 to 61 per cent of berry-pickers returned home indebted. In other words they could not earn enough to break even, let alone turn a profit on their trip”.

The Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that some 2 500 Thai had been berry-picking in Finland in 2009, most of them coming from North-East Thailand, from the province of Chaiyaphum and adjacent provinces, where most villagers have a cash income of around 1 500 Euro / annum.

The local recruiting agents in Thailand work in direct contact with the berry-picker’s indirect employers, the Finnish berry-processing companies like Korvatunturin Marja, an affiliate of Riitan Herkku. Korvatunturin Marja was one of 8 Finnish firms that invited Thai pickers to Finland in 2009.

Finnish authorities are obviously aware of the fact that the longer the distance a berry-picker must travel the greater the related expenses, and that a flight ticket can cost more than a berry-picker’s annual income in Thailand, and that a picker has to pay for their visa, fees to the recruiting agent in Thailand, as well as accommodation, transport, petrol and food in Finland.

According to newspaper reports, the first step is for the Finnish company to send an invitation for the granting of visas. The Thai agent then applies for tourist visas for the group, arranges the plane tickets and organises bus transport at each end. The Thai agents were reported as charging each picker a fee of 63,000 Baht (1,300 Euro).

According to newspaper reports Korvatunturin Marja, for example, supplied their Thai pickers with accommodation, rice, meat and vegetables and cars for 20 Euro / day. The Thai had with them their own cooks.

The Finnish authorities are aware that: “The process (of recruitment in Thailand) involves unscrupulous collection of money at nearly every stage.” Häkkinen stated (to Helsingin Sanomat) that: “I regard it as a kind of extortion. It is not trafficking in human beings but it is something similar. Juridically, everybody comes here at their own risk, like self-financing entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, it is a major ethical issue”. “By no means do I wish to label those [companies] who invite these people here. Surely they mean well, but when the outcome is what it is, it sounds absurd that they want to invite even more pickers than before”.

Of the approximately 12,000 foreign berry-pickers that arrive in Finland every year. Most of them come from the neighbouring areas of Russia and the Baltic States.

In 2009, First Secretary Häkkinen pointed-out that: “Last year the season was poor, but it is never possible to know the situation in advance. When berry-pickers come to Finland from far-off countries with high hopes of earning money, and the berry-picking season turns out to be worse than expected, they have no money for a return trip”.

Apparently the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs is recommending that the berry industry should hire pickers from the neighbouring countries, so it is easier to react to the situation if the prospects for the berry crop appear to be poor.

In 2009, the Ombudsman for Minorities, Johanna Suurpää, also paid attention to the situation of Thai berry-pickers: “The aim is to think profoundly whether the Finnish visa policy should be reconsidered. For example, those companies who invite berry-pickers could be made responsible for reasonable conditions and some kind of compensation for the picker’s expenses”.

Helsingin Sanomat quoted the Headman of the village of Bankaeng (Soei Jomkhamsing) in Chaiyaphum Province as saying: "I am very happy that people have had the chance to go off as berry-pickers and to support their families in this way". "The stories of successful pickers have prompted others to follow them."

According to reports, in 2009 an ‘average Thai picker’ managed to collect just under 2 500 kilos of berries in two months of extremely hard work. For those who managed to do this, it meant going home with, after deduction of all expenses, about 200 Euro. Those who came out below average went home in debt, some with very heavy debt.

20

As an additional comment it must be mentioned that there have been too many stories to ignore from the berry-pickers themselves of being cheating at the ‘weigh-in’ at the end of the day’s work - of being given less credit than what was agreed for what they picked.

In 2009 the Thai berry-pickers picked nearly 1 000 tons of berries, of which 90% was exported to Europe and to Japan.

The reporting in the Finnish press of the domestic reality of the Thai pickers in Thailand is tending to skip-over the negative aspects of this berry-picking business.

In April 2009 the Finnish authorities were preparing ‘potential recommendations’. Helsingin Sanomat 11.10.2009 Helsingin Sanomat 1.3.2009. www.hs.fi/kotimaa/artikkeli/Suomeen+haluttaisiin+taas+tuhansia+thaimaalaisia+marjanpoimijoita/1135243916726 http://www.eduskunta.fi/faktatmp/utatmp/akxtmp/kk_866_2008_p.shtml

UP-DATE on Finland

21

ISAN North-East Thailand NAT field-survey report 02 - 12 November 2009

Objectives 1. To visit and study the problems of the farmers who went to Sweden for the 2009 blueberry-picking season and returned empty-handed to face heavy debt. 2. To learn more about the problems facing small village communities in North-East Thailand; 3. To prepare NAT members to follow-up on their requests to the Thai Government to pursue legal action against labour trafficking agencies.

MAP of ISAN encircled by the Mekong. The route of the field survey went through 9 provinces -> Phetchabun -> Chaiyaphum -> Khon Kaen -> Udon Thani ->Nakorn Phanom -> Ubon Ratchatani -> Sisaket -> Ruriram -> Nakhon Ratchasima.

22

Methodology and logistics Between 2 - 12 November 2009 (10 days) a NAT team of 7 people travelled over 2000 kms in a car and pick-up through 9 provinces in North-East Thailand, visiting 20 villages, meeting with farmers and their families and studying their situation, in particular the problems of those who had increased their (household and farming) debt by going to Sweden to pick wild berries at the end of July 2009. The team over-nighted at 8 different farm houses, brought together meetings of farm workers in farm houses, in the fields and in public spaces in the villages, listened to stories and problems, conducted in-depth interviews, distributed information and recorded all on camera. Meetings and discussions were attended by between 5 - 60 workers. In total the team met with over 400 villagers. The NAT ‘caravan’ began in Phetchabun Province where it met villagers from two villages, beginning in the village of Non Sa-ard, meeting with 7 farmers just returned from Sweden with heavy debts. On the following day the caravan moved to meet with about 30 people who had also just returned with heavy debt in the village of Yang Sao. This meeting had been arranged and agreed before-hand, but nobody showed-up. The team was informed that this was because - after local recruiting agency brokers had got wind of the meeting - villagers feared that attending the meeting would cause them to be black-listed by the brokers / agents - as ‘hard-headed villagers’ - and that they would not be granted loans / visas by the money-lenders and recruiting agencies to work in Sweden in 2010. This was a village where many women had married Swedish men and where villagers had been going to Sweden to pick-berries for many years. Through Thai women married to Swedish men berry-picking in Sweden grew into a popular means for small farmer families in North-East Thailand to supplement their basic income. The activity began over ten years ago in the provinces of Phetchabun, Chaiyaphum and Udon Thani with, initially, just the relatives of women married to Swedish men. The activity spread to involving neighbours and then to families from other villages until, in 2009, the whole activity (in North-East and North Thailand) had fallen under the umbrella of partnerships between private labour recruiting agencies in both Thailand and Sweden. Many of the Thai agencies involved are long-established exploiters of poor farming communities. Note: In 2009 there were about 218 Thai agencies (registered with the Ministry of Labour) recruiting labour to work overseas. According to Ministry of Labour statistics in 2005 there were 320 000 Thai working abroad sending ‘home’ (back into Thailand) about 40 billion Baht. By 2009 the attractive tales of ‘first generation’ berry-pickers (10 years ago) bringing home 300 000 Baht after paying all expenses (40 - 60,000) were all but history. If in 2010 recruiting agency fees remain as high or higher than in 2009 and the harvest in Thailand is poor and the berry season in Sweden is as poor as in 2009, 2010 will see another several thousand small farmers going bankrupt in North-East Thailand. It should be clear enough to all responsible persons that the Thai Government and Ministry of Labour must take action to bring the marketing and selling of ‘false dreams’ by the plethora of Thailand’s private recruiting agencies (and their brokers) under proper inter-governmental control.

23

The economic cycle of small farmers

in Northeast Thailand

Some basic data According to the 2003 National Statistic Survey, Thailand has 67,941 villages with 9,388,780 households, in which 5.3 million households are farmers, mostly small-scale farmers. The poverty-line in 2003 was at 992 Baht / month / person (about 20 Euro / month). Whatever the official poverty-line, according to information gathered during our 2009 field-survey a village household / farming family needs at least 13,000 Baht / month (260 Euro / month) to be able to meet basic needs, pay debts and educate children.

Thailand’s farming families represent 35% of Thailand workforce. In November 2009, the Matichon Newspaper gave figures stating that 86.7% of Thai farmers are indebted: 42.8% from agricultural investments and 22.8% from household needs, with an average debt / family of 243 000 Baht, of which 44% of the debt is with private money-lenders.

Thailand has 146 million acres of land, of which 60 million is farmland. The average holding per family is 10 acres, but most small-scale farmers attempt to manage with 5 or less - or with none!

24

The 2009 berry-picking season in Sweden 5,911 farmers from North-East, North and Central Thailand went to pick berries in Sweden in 2009, many as husband and wife or father and son teams. Most families failed to earn enough to pay the costs.

In the village of Ban Lan, Udon Thani province, the NAT team met some of the first generation blueberry-pickers, staying with the family of a middle-size farm that had been going to Sweden every year for ten years (father, mother and 1 - 3 sons).

Farmers from Ban Lan (and most other villages) stated that money earned in Sweden had been important supplementary income - in terms of improving their living standard, namely renovating / building their houses, buying new farming equipment, or paying the deposit on a costly but increasingly necessary pick-up truck. Thai villagers in the early years of berry-picking in Sweden would often travel on a group visa of 5 -10 people. 2009 was the first time the Ban Lan family travelled through the recruiting agency system. 5 members of the family paid nearly 500,000 Baht to travel (father, mother, son and two in-laws). In Chaiyaphum, a province from which around one thousand farmers went berry-picking in 2009, the team met only two people (in the District of Kang Kor) that had cleared their costs and returned with some 60,000 Baht profit.

In 2009 the optimistic thoughts, plans and dreams that had been cultivated in farming villages - that the ‘before harvest time’ could be made profitable by going berry-picking in Sweden - went badly awry.

In all areas all farm workers interviewed estimated that, in 2009, 80% of those that went to Sweden returned in debt. All said their expenses in Thailand from going to Sweden (not including their expenses in Sweden) exceeded 90 000 Baht. Most said 100,000 - resulting from of to Bangkok for processing, broker, agency fees and ‘facilitation’ fees, health checks, visas, passports and basic equipment like luggage, sweaters and boots.

The 2009 berry-picking season in Sweden pushed thousands of small farmers deeper in the cycle of debt that plagues most of Thailand’s farming villages. Figures collected from farmers, agencies and authorities indicate that total loss to Thailand’s small farmer communities from the 2009 berry-picking ‘business’ in Sweden amounted to around 600 million Baht. (See table below.)

Expenses and income of 5911 Thai berry-pickers in 2009 (in Baht)

Number of workers

Contract process in Thailand

Expenses in Sweden

Income from berry-picking

Average / person 90,000 Baht 250 Skr / day 40 kg / day @ 46.17 Baht / kg

Complained to MOL ( 25 working days)

428

38,520,000 Baht

2,140,000 Skr 428,000 kg

Completed contract (60 working days) 5,483 493,470,000 Baht 82,245,000 Skr 13,159,200 kg

13,587,200 kg Totals in Baht

531,990,000

740,205,000 626,369,920

Total expenses 1,272,195,000 Total income 626,369,920

TOTAL FINANCIAL DEFICIT of 5911 Thai berry-pickers in 2009 - 645,825,080 • 428 workers returned to Thailand within a month and lodged a complaint to the Thai Ministry of Labour. • Each picker was able to collect, on average, about 40 kgs of berries / day. • Payment for blueberries was around 10 Kroner / kg. (1 Skr = 4.5 Baht)

NAT has records of 432 farm workers that came back from Sweden in 2009 with an average berry-picking debt of 78,000 Baht: a collective debt of 34 million Baht - 28 million from private money-lenders and 6 million from the bank (BAAC).

25

Especially in the provinces of Chaiyaphum, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani and Nakorn Rachasima the character of the berry-picking business is largely village-based. From some villages as many as 100 people may go berry-picking in Sweden. In Ban Lan village, Udon Thani, a village of around 300 households that pioneered the berry-picking activity 10 years ago, almost every family has members going overseas to earn money to pay debts, to Sweden and other destinations - with no end in sight.

In Buriram, a village that prides itself on ‘self-sufficiency’, 18 farmers went to Sweden in 2009 and, in just 2 months, created a within-village-debt of about 1.5 million Baht - a greater sum than the unique, one-time gift called the ‘One Million Baht Village Fund’ given to village administrations by the Thai Government in 2001 - to help small farmers clear their debts!

Note: Provision of this Fund was an act of rare magnificence by central government towards Thailand’s habitually ignored and neglected small farmer communities.

In the deeply-embedded debt-cycle in which millions of small farmers in Thailand are permanently trapped, most farmers have no means or ability to pay any extra debt. Debt accrued by many small farmer families and communities from the 2009 berry-picking in Sweden is causing extremes of stress.

‘Hundreds of Thai berry-pickers are tired of the poor blueberry harvest in Norrbotten.

They want to go home.’

http://www.scandasia.com/viewNews.php?coun_code=se&news_id=5666 Original news source: http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article5683819.ab

Foto: Felipe Morales.

. . AND AT HOME they start to face the impossible task of attempting to come to grips with having double or triple the debt that drove them to go to Sweden in the first place. . . .

26

Small farmers from Northeast Thailand meet with a high official of the Ministry of Labour in Bangkok,

and listen to senior representatives of the BAAC defend BAAC policy. The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) The BAAC was established as a state enterprise in 1966, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, with a mission to extend credit more widely to individual farmers as well as through farmer institutions. (For information on the BAAC see: www.baac.or.th)

For several years the BAAC has had a policy to provide farmers seeking work overseas with loans to pay the recruiting process. Many of the farmers who went to Sweden with loans from the BAAC have informed NAT that their loans were only made available on the condition that they buy ‘fertilizer and pesticide’ - from this or that company. In some areas the condition of buying fertilizer and pesticide appears to be more-or-less a compulsory condition.

Many of the small farmers who are exhausted by decades of living within the (cash crop / fertilizer / pesticide) cycle of debt would like to move back to organic farming, but trapped as they are, together with their families, by huge debt, and chained to the policies of the BAAC, they cannot. All small farmers say that, in practical terms, BAAC policy on organic farming (without chemicals and pesticides) is of no assistance.

In other words, with the average farm debt in Thailand running at around 200 000 Baht, for the majority of small farmers, Thailand’s well-publicised idea of a ‘Sufficiency Economy’ is simply beyond reach.

Note: The current amount of money owed by Thailand’s farmers to the BAAC is close to 500 billion Baht.

In a negotiation at Government House on 14 November 2009 (attended by 30 members of NAT, two BAAC officers and an Advisor to the Labour Minister) the BAAC officers mentioned that in 2009 many private banks cancelled their policy of giving loans to small farmers going to work overseas, because so many couldn’t pay their loans in 2008.

At that negotiation the BAAC also said that in 2008 the BAAC itself lost 40 million Baht on just their (unpaid) berry-picking loans. They said that they did not want to provide farmers with loans to go to Sweden in 2009, but were lobbied by the Ministry of Labour to provide these loans. This happened because the Ministry of Labour had already given (public) money to the BAAC specifically for such loans, because the Department of Overseas Employment Administration (DOEA) of Thailand’s Ministry of Labour operates a policy to actively promote recruitment of labour for work overseas. For this, the

27

TOEA relies entirely on private sector recruiting agencies, all of which attempt to charge workers with recruiting fees that are 3 - 4 times greater than that which is stated in the law.

Furthermore, in 2009, those farmers who had taken BAAC loans to pay the recruiting agencies (two companies especially) stated that just before flying, representatives of their agencies appeared with a demand that they pay 2 000 Baht in cash, without receipts, or they would not be allowed to board the aeroplane. The farmers also said they had been told that this money was for politicians who had helped to facilitate their loans with the BAAC!

Before summarising it is also worth mentioning that, during the NAT field-survey in November - in the middle of the rice harvest - the team listened to many telephone calls and heard many reports connected to arrangements for farmers to return to Sweden in 2010, or to go to Portugal, Israel, Spain, Canada and other such destinations. Already, many berry-picking farmers from 2009 have had their passports collected by agencies to process for the 2010 berry-picking season, even though their crises from 2009 have not been solved. Many heavily indebted people have already paid-up sums of money as high as 300 000 Baht to brokers and recruiting agencies (in cash and without receipts). Despite the team’s attempts to make those concerned re-think their actions, many were stubbornly determined to raise such sums.

In November 2009 the NAT team identified four groups of berry-pickers.

1. Those who had paid brokers but couldn’t go and didn’t get their money back.

A quick survey in Pawai Nang village, revealed 40 cases of villages who had paid money to a broker (2 000 – 23 000 Baht), not gone to Sweden and not had their money returned.

2. Those who had paid a too high recruiting fee.

Case example: a Thai woman, living in Sweden and married to a Swede who runs a business for servicing recruited labour in collaboration with a Thai recruiting agency, travels back and forth between Sweden and Thailand to recruit farm workers. For her activity in 2009 she charged each person recruited 18 700 Baht over-and-above the 75 000 Baht charged by the Thai recruiting agency (from who she also received a bonus of 5 000 Baht per person recruited). This woman is reported to have recruited at least 150 people, giving her a ‘total take’ of 3.6 million Baht.

There are many examples of this kind of exploitative brokering.

3. Those who returned to Thailand before the end of their contract.

On returning from Sweden after 4 weeks, 428 berry-pickers lodged an official complaint against their recruiting agencies with the Thai Ministry of Labour.

4. Those who completed their contracts but didn’t earn enough to repay their loans, and / or have as yet not received full payment for their work in Sweden.

BAAC officials attempt to square-off with Isan farmers with a Ministry of Labour representative in the Chair.

28

UP-DATE 12.01.2010 Hundreds of farmers are under huge pressure to pay bank loans from the 2009 berry-picking season. The Thai Government, Swedish Government and the SBIF must recognise the plight of these farmers e.g. by launching a coordinated plan of action to relieve this pressure by e.g. facilitating the 2010 berry-picking process and by providing immediate financial relief and subsidies for those who submitted their complaint in 2009.

In Bangkok, on January 6, two Members of the Swedish Parliament, Maria Stenberg and Kristina Zakrisson, visited the TLC office in Bangkok and met with 20 Thai farmers from the North-East and with Junya Yimprasert, TLC Chief Co-ordinator, who showed video-clips of interviews with trafficked berry-pickers. The meeting was arranged by Chittawan Stanbourg, Chairwoman of Thai-Swedish Association Norrbotten, Luleå, Sweden.

In January 2010 two Swedish MPs visited the TLC Office in Bangkok to learn more about the facts.

Participants discussed what to do to ensure that the 2009 fiasco did not repeat itself in 2010. No clear direction was established, but it seems that reducing the visa quota may be a necessary course of action. MWUT proposed that the farmers who protested their situation in 2009 should be supported if they want to return to Sweden in 2010, so they do not have to pay the recruiting agents - who are now charging 90 000 Baht for processing pickers for 2010!

MWUT has stated that it is prepared to challenge the recruiting business by running a non-profit processing system - as an MWUT process run by . .

‘small farmers for small farmers’.

With a conference of Scandinavian unions coming up in Sweden in February, Maria Stenberg said she would propose to the organisers that Junya Yimprasert should be invited to present her studies about the labour trafficking business, especially with regard to lessons learnt from the ‘2009 Blueberry Fiasco’.

MWUT members have submitted applications to the BAAC and the Government Savings Bank to transfer loans with private money lenders to these two banks. MWUT will submit this list of farmers to the Prime Minister’s Office to demand faster processing of these applications, since the private loans from the 2009 berry-picking season have now caused farmers nearly one year of harassment from private money-lenders, and the situation has remained unchanged since August 2009.

29

Since October 2009 MWUT has been working with a team of lawyers to assist the 100 farmers who have sued the recruiting agencies for their losses in 2009. The plan for implementing legal action against the recruiting companies will be launched within January.

Great thanks to the Thai-Swedish Association Norrbotten, Luleå, Sweden

for collecting 270 000 Baht to support the MWUT legal action against the recruiting agencies in Thailand.

________________________________________________________________

At the 3000-strong Rasi Sali Protest Village small farmers and fisher-folk are engaged in a determined, long-standing struggle against loss of livelihood to some 20 000 people caused by misconceived hydro- and irrigation schemes in Isan’s Mun River Basin.

30

Summary

The whole overseas recruiting process reflects much more than the petty crimes of brokers and agents, or the desperation, naivety, stubborn nature or fanciful ambitions of Thailand’s small farmers.

The growing debt of Thailand’s millions of small farmers, the massive-scale of this financial and cultural tragedy, reflects only the ingrained corruption in Thailand’s top-down systems of governance, which have for decades been undermining all ideas for a ‘Sufficiency Economy’ - and continue to do so.

Most of the cash-flow is taking place under-the-table and now, even the naïve dream that small farmers have of being able to climb-out of their small-farmer cage by going abroad to earn money is been crushed by the greed of the private recruiting agencies, who are at the same time the agents of the Ministry of Labour’s Department of Overseas Employment.

The under-the-table cash-flow is referred to officially as ‘facilitating money’. The flow, as seen and stated and witnessed by all, goes all the way up to ministerial level.

During this field-survey to North-East Thailand, the NAT team came together with farming families that face a never-ending struggle to uphold their way of life and self-respect in the face of constantly increasing debt. They are being constantly driven to make decisions and take action that places them deeper and deeper in debt. Many have come to see ‘going overseas’ as their only answer to all their problems, but going overseas has become their problem.

The degenerate, top-down, systematic process that is dominating Thailand’s small farmer communities has become so familiar and institutionalised that many small farmers can no longer imagine that there are other roads to take.

Many indebted farmers and workers attempt to convince themselves that if they are honest and ‘willing to work hard’ they will not fail as others fail. In reality they end-up throwing all to luck and fate - gambling with their own lives and the life of their families.

Indirectly thousands of people are dying under this system, driven by shame to depression, sickness and prostitution.

Small farmers do it best!

31

Specific recommendations (To be elaborated) With regard to berry-picking in Sweden, the Government of Thailand must take concrete action to . . 1. solve the debt crisis of the 2009 berry-pickers by cancelling farmers debt to the recruiting agencies and by arranging for the advancement of money to enable small farmers to step- out from the trap set by high interest money-lenders. 2. revise the overseas labour recruiting process in collaboration with the Swedish Government to ensure that the huge losses from berry-picking in Sweden (and Finland) in 2009 cannot re-occur in the future.

General recommendations (To be elaborated)

1. The Government of Thailand must stop supporting and licensing private recruiting agencies and bring the whole overseas labour recruiting process under strict, inter- governmental control according to international standards and agreements. 2. The Government of Thailand must give much greater attention to promoting organic farming and investment in SMEs that promote organic farming and support the agricultural integrity of Thailand’s 60 000 villages and 9 000 000 rural households.

The NAT team held many meetings in ISAN for berry-pickers newly returned from Sweden and facing heavy debts.

32

CONCLUSIONS and issues for further discussion

The 2009 ‘berry-picking fiasco’ may not have awoken a great interest in a media-world thick with more spectacular news, but this fiasco is touching on the full range of issues that describes the nasty under-belly of globalisation. It is also no surprise to many that such a fiasco has arisen from the glitter of the kingdoms of Sweden and Thailand. The issues that it has brought to the surface can and must be discussed (and will be looked at more carefully in the Final Report).

How come such inter-governmental negligence between nations that make a big noise about being civilized is possible in the first place? Where and in what does the corruption that drives the fiasco originate? Why are we continuously faced with the ogre of slavery in the 21st century? What are the real reasons why Finns and Swedes can’t pick their own berries, especially in areas of high unemployment? Why must tens of millions of small-holders in Thailand endlessly suffer the screwed agricultural policies of central government? What is the real ecological footprint of the blueberry industry - of flying some 10 000 workers from South-East Asia 16 000 kilometres to pick wild berries on the Artic Circle in Europe to sell to Japanese companies to turn into pills (‘Blue Eye’) to sell on the global market (to people going blind from staring at monitors)? What should words like hospitality, development and civilization mean in 2010?

With little hope of a decent future for his children, let alone for himself and his wife, the man in the photo above, heavily in debt, decided to take the risk of joining the 2009 wave of berry-pickers. Returning to camp in a minivan full of berries and pickers at the end of a long day, the driver of the van felt a compulsion to remove his boots from his painful, frozen Thai feet. The boots got stuck in the pedals. The van rolled-over into a ditch. The spine of the man in the photo was broken. For sure, he was hospitalised in Sweden for 2 - 3 weeks, and mended with metal parts. Back in Thailand he is slowly learning to walk again, but he will never be able to work as before. So what will he do now, with double or triple the debt he had before he went to Sweden?

Let not the false glitter of neo-liberal ‘civilisation’ hide reality. There are many people who are paid handsomely to take responsibility - to prevent such fiasco and the pain caused. Where are they?

We have the knowledge, wit, decency, strength and sister-brotherhood to steer away and break-away from embedded corruption. Solidarity with all small holders who still hold to concepts of human dignity.

In the words of kommunalråden Karl Petersen, who formed part of the crisis group in the town of Luleå in the north of Sweden that attempted to assist hundreds of increasingly miserable and desperate Thai blueberry pickers:

“Det är ovärdigt och djupt tragiskt. Det går inte att ha det så här”.

33

TLC, NAT and the MWUT wish to acknowledge and thank . . Maria Stenberg Member of Parliament, Chairwomen Norrbotten LO, Sweden

Kristina Zakrisson (s) Member of Parliament, Norrbotten County

Chittawan Stanbourg Chairwoman, Thai-Swedish Association Norrbotten, Sweden

Annika Torstensson FairTradeCentre, Sweden

Eva Kreisler SETEM, Spain

Assaf Adiv & Roni Ben Efrat Workers Advice Centre (WAC-MAAN), Israel

Andrew Casey Australian Workers Union

Jesica Nevo KavLaOved, Israel

Margot Sastre Agroalimentaria, CCOO, Spain

Tessel Pauli Clean Clothes Campaign, Netherlands

Kusumal Rachawong ILO, Thailand

Dr Ratchada Jayagupta UNIAP, Thailand

Bo Jonson European Institute of Asian Studies, Belgium

Kwanravee Wangudom Graduate Student, Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Netherlands

Pongsak Pleng Saeng Advisor to the Minister for Labour, Thailand

Apolinar Tolentino Jr. Regional Education Officer, BWI Asia Pacific

Women Foundation Thailand

LO Sweden

SETEM Spain

SASK Finland

Thai-Swedish Association Norrbotten, Luleå, Sweden

United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP)

Thai Labour Campaign and staff

NAT membership.

The NAT team that conducted the field-survey in ISAN

From left to right:

Somboon Ruengron, Khake Ruengron,

Richard Thompson Coon, Thanakorn Sammaseko, Junya ‘Lek’ Yimprasert,

Chutima Chaihong and Rt Chaihong.

34

APPENDICES APPENDIX ONE

Testimonies from Northeast Thailand - from people who went berry-picking in Sweden in 2009 Prani 32 year old, Kok Krug, Kaeng Khor, Chaiyaphum

In 2009 Prani went to Sweden for the berry-picking season with her husband. All of her family have histories of working overseas - in Taiwan and Sweden. The family has too little land to live from farming alone and most of their income comes from hiring themselves out as farmhands or to construction companies. Her brother and brother-in- law went to Sweden in earlier years but without much profit, and they decided not to go again in 2009.

A few days after Prani and her husband returned from Sweden, with nearly 200,000 Baht of debt, her brother-in-law was killed by an electric shock. He left behind a sick wife, Prani’s elder sister, who has been diagnosed with liver cancer and has two children. Prani’s husband went immediately to Bangkok to look for work in construction, leaving Prani to attempt to comfort her despairing sister and look after three children, those of her sister and one of her own.

Ruang 38 years old, Chaloemprakiet, Burirum, Just after Ruang had paid a 15,000 Baht deposit to a recruiting agency to go berry-picking in Sweden, her husband was killed in a car crash - on June 28 (2009). In deep sorrow, Ruang wanted to cancel the trip to Sweden and informed the recruiting agency. The agency informed her that not only could she not get her money back but that if she cancels she will have to pay another 10 000 Baht as a ‘cancellation cost’! Poor Ruang decided to go to Sweden.

In Sweden she worked very hard and picked a lot of berries, which she collected in 50 kg fertiliser sacks that she had taken with her from Thailand, but she said that, even when these sacks were completely full of berries, at the weigh-in at the end of the day, she was never credited with more than 30 kgs. She complained to the Swedish agents. In fact all the workers in her camp (most of them from her own province in Thailand) were constantly attempting to complain about the cheating with the kilos at their camp.

Ruang returned to Thailand with double the debt she had before she went. She returned a widow, to a house she had been building with her husband for 10 years that was still not fully functional.

Her eldest daughter, 19 years old, has had to quit college and take work in an electronics factory on the Eastern Seaboard. Ruang worries a lot about the education of her youngest son who is still in high-school. She has no land of her own to farm and works a neighbour’s land at her own cost, from which she can take 2/3 of the rice she grows.

Ruang faces a debt of 168 000 Baht with three creditors - the BAAC, the Agricultural Cooperative and the Village Fund. She says that, without her husband, it will take her ten years to clear this debt.

35

Narong 38 years old, Nakorn Phanom (Portrait missing) Narong and his three brothers have all been out working in different countries since the mid-nineties. In 1993 Narong’s eldest brother left home to work in Singapore. He was ten years working in Singapore, Brunei and Taiwan before he decided to give up.

The second brother followed his elder brother, working first in Singapore and then in Malaysia and Taiwan. He is now working in Libya.

The youngest brother is working in Korea, illegally. He went to Korea over a year ago on a tourist visa, paying 180 000 Baht for the recruitment process.

Narong began work by taking any kind of job in Bangkok - in factories and in construction. Before going abroard he was working as a motorcycle taxi driver.

He went to Taiwan under a recruitment programme with two contracts. After completing the two years of the first contract he was left with about 50,000 Baht, just enough to go back to Taiwan to start the second contract, but the work didn’t pay. After paying all kinds of deductions he was left with just 5,000 Baht per month (100 Euro). After two months he decided to quit. During this second trip to Taiwan his wife deserted him.

Back from Taiwan, Narong and three friends decided to try and earn money berry-picking in Sweden. Each of them borrowed 86 000 Baht from money-lenders to pay the recruiting agency. In Sweden Narong was only able to cover his living expenses (around 250 SKr / day). He returned empty-handed to face the 86 0000 debt that he had now acquired.

And what has Narong’s family received from all the years of struggle of four strong and healthy men? A not yet finished house and a pickup, which all of them are attempting to pay for.

Narong desires little more than to able to live a ‘self-sufficient’ life on his own small piece of land. At present he attempts to survive from the family fish pond and by breeding frogs.

* * * * * * *

36

APPENDIX TWO

MIGRANT WORKERS UNION THAILAND (MWUT) DECLARATION (Draft)

Stop exploitation – Stop labour trafficking For over 50 years the poor people of Thailand have been forced and bullied into abandoning their means of production in harmony with nature. They have been told that their agriculture is backward and inefficient and forced into producing for export. They have been dragged into the global market and pushed into the trap of consumerism where, unable to earn sufficient income as either farmers or labourers in industry, they have been denied their abilities and their rights to live their lives with dignity. Between 60-70% of the population of Thailand goes out to work with only 4, or 6, but not more than 9 years of basic education.

Since 2500 B.E (1957) every government that came to power in Thailand has promoted the destruction of the way of life of the rural poor. Instead of acting in the interest of the people government has done nothing other than promote the interests of the upper-class and capitalists in their competitive bid to gain in wealth from the global market.

Thailand’s neo-liberal policies weigh heavily on the shoulders of the farmers and the poor, particularly on agricultural communities and people in areas without water, price guarantees or subsidies. Government promotes chemical agriculture whatever the material or health cost to the people, whatever the impact on climate. Forced into debt, millions of small-scale farmers find themselves having “to work 5 years to earn the income of 3”.

Thailand’s long string of neo-liberal governments, with their capitalist, often militaristic commanders have done all they can to block the people’s participation in development. Under such circumstances many of the populist expressions used by government such as ‘Sufficiency Economy’ and ‘strengthening community’ not only lack vision but are hollow.

50 years of development, directed by the State elite, has caused tremendous, incalculable damage to Thailand’s millions of small-scale farmers and their rural communities, especially in terms self-reliance and food security. Government failure to support and improve the livelihood of Thailand’s millions of small-scale farmers has led to their mass exploitation by labour traffickers.

Through labour trafficking propaganda (supported by government policy), the poor are led into dreams about some other better life. Labour trafficking has become a successful money-maker. The poor are lured into going out to hunt false dreams, into taking huge risks, into gambling with their property and the lives of their families.

Local brokers specialise in selling dreams to poor people without regular income or to those earning less than say 5 Euro / day (250 Baht). They promise . . “If You work 3 years You will be able to earn 700 000 Baht” (Taiwan, 2544 / 2001), or “3 people can earn almost a million Baht” (Sweden, 2552 / 2009), or “You will earn 70,000 Baht / month or almost 4 million Baht with a 4-year contract” (Spain, 2552 / 2009). The promises of the traffickers are often completely irresponsible, yet few are held to account. It is the workers who bear the burden of these lies - and go bankrupt as the traffickers profit. According to what little reliable data there is, more than a million households, 70% in the Northeast, now live with increasing debt to trafficking agents.

Trafficking agencies and brokers in both sending and receiving countries connive to persuade poor people to work only in the ‘capital cities’ of the world. In this way the dreams of the poor can be commercialized, while governments, government officials, upper-class people, city people and even those in the receiving countries laugh and spit at trafficked workers when their dreams are shattered in the mill of the trafficking industry.

The labour trafficking cartels are only able to flourish and sustain themselves by defrauding people, by violating laws and taking advantage of legal loopholes. Almost none of the 218 labour recruiting agencies registered with the Ministry of Labour collect recruiting fees within the limits set by law. To work in Israel a Thai worker is obliged to raise and pay 350 - 380,000 Baht, or 330 - 350,000 to work in Portugal, or 580,000 for Spain, 120,000 for Libya, 300,000 for France, 280,000 to work in Korea.

The Thai laws governing recruiting agencies is ambiguous and leaves huge loopholes for interpretation. After the military coup of 19 September 2006 (2549), the Ministry of Labour secretly issued regulations permitting recruiting agencies to charge up to four months of expected salary for just the ‘processing’ of applications, four times higher than in the Philippines.

37

Under the enormous external force and pressure of growing consumerism, in a world ruled by consumerism, the life of millions of small-scale farmers has become nothing more than a relentless daily struggle for mere survival. There is no time to think or reflect or develop alternative strategy, demands and expenses are consistently higher than possibilities to earn income. The same goes for poor people in all sectors.

For the Thai poor, all agricultural workers, construction workers and most employees, life in Thailand has become a vicious cycle. Tens of millions live a hand-to-mouth, day-by-day existence, and are only able to survive through endless borrowing and loan-taking. Loans turn immediately to debt, because of the people’s need to invest immediately in new means of short-term survival. In desperation people turn to sell themselves into labouring overseas - through the plethora of private trafficking agencies. In Thailand the debt incurred from high-interest, short-term ‘survival loans’ has started to exceed the debt from loans to maintain agricultural production.

Behind all this under-the-carpet tragedy is the prevalence of a callous, class attitude within the Thai bureaucracy, which runs something like: ‘If workers have been able to raise large sums and get cheated, they must face the consequences themselves’. When workers do file complaints, government acts as an unconcerned mediator e.g. by simply passing the information from the complainant to the company accused. This frequently results in workers being threatened and forced to either withdraw or accept less than minimal compensation. With government showing little or no interest or intention of holding companies accountable, workers in Thailand have no incentive to take injustices to court. The main objective of government is to silence any complaint that ruffles their system as quickly as possible.

This order of injustice has managed to survive for a long time. A large amount of money has been used to advertise the fact that Thai workers abroad send ‘home’ 40 - 60 billion Baht every year. In reality more than half of this goes into the pockets of labour traffickers, corrupt politicians and government officials.

The system is deep-rooted and no Thai Government has dared to play a radical role in rooting out the corruption. This is because the relevant authorities are either themselves actively corrupt, or are so thoroughly accustomed to the status-quo that they see no other way. The ties and links between the recruiting agencies, companies, government officials and politicians, from the local to national level, are as hard as stone and certainly not easy to break.

Over the past few years we have been continuously urging the State to take-over the labour recruiting process, to take firm action to terminate trafficking, and to legislate to eradicate indebtedness and stop the break-up and disintegration of families and agricultural communities. But, so far, the Government of Thailand, has been claiming, without shame, that their ministries, especially the Ministry of Labour, have no capacity to do this, that it is the responsibility of the private sector e.g. of the private labour recruiting agencies.

We, the Migrant Workers Union of Thailand, declare here and now, that we will tolerate no longer the indignity of being forced to live disgraceful lives, nor bear the debt and consequences caused by insensitive, disastrous, government-sponsored labour migration policies that use unscrupulous government-supported labour trafficking cartels and networks to milk the poor.

We will not seek help from the Government. We will work to ensure that government does what it is supposed to do: reimburse the great losses inflicted upon workers by bad governance and re-build our village economies.

Since the Government is proud to claim that Thai workers overseas enrich the Thai economy by many thousands of millions every year, we shall demand interest on the sweat of our labours, and act to ensure that this interest is used to support policies and projects aimed at re-establishing our livelihoods, at home, in a fully sustainable manner. We will act to rescue and restore dignity to our families and to lives lost, and to ensure that all are able to live with equal rights and dignity in their own communities.

We endorse the name ‘Migrant Workers Union Thailand (MWUT)’

Done this day 14 December, 2009

Baan Kok Ngam, Khon Kaen Province, Thailand.

Migrant worker representatives from the provinces of

Lampang, Tak, Chiang Mai, Phetchabun, Chaiyaphum, Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, Nong Bua Lamphu, Ubon Ratchathani, Kalasin, Nong Khai, Buriram, Surin and Bangkok.

38

APPENDIX THREE PROPOSALS submitted by NAT to the Swedish Embassy Bangkok, 9 October 2009. This type of short-term job creation should not be used for profit-making

by the labour trafficking business. We request that the Embassy of Sweden only grants permission to

workers who apply through the procedure and channels that have been agreed by all parties, by the Embassy of Sweden, by NAT and by the Thai Ministry of Labour. We wish to request that the Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok discuss with

the Sweden Forest Berries Association (SBIF) the possibility of setting-up a fund to compensate / assist the victims on the list attached, that have launched their complaint to the Thai Government and appealed to the Embassy of Sweden. NAT is submitting the list of names to both the Thai Government and the Embassy of Sweden and will be most grateful for any assistance. NAT wishes to see some pressure placed on the Thai Government to

ensure that an independent committee is established to investigate the Thai trafficking agencies and associated Government agencies and officials, especially the Thailand Overseas Employment Administration (TOEA). We have heard stories about corruption in this department for years and suspect that this is part of the reason why the TOEA keeps handing the responsibility of recruiting workers to go overseas to the business sector, instead of appointing government, or non-profit organisations, or worker’s organisations to take responsibility. We wish to request that the workers named on this petition, which are all members of NAT, be included in the first quota list of the Embassy of Sweden for the next years berry harvest season. NAT, without taking profit from our members, will process their applications and logistic arrangement in Thailand and will develop dialogue with LO in Sweden for further necessary support in the Sweden.

39

APPENDIX FOUR The blueberry or bilberry http://www.wildblueberries.maine.edu/factsheets.html

Photos by Ilkka Jaakola

Bilberry or European blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus L.) and lingonberry (V. vitis-idaea L.) belong to the genus Vaccinium, which is widespread over the world with over 200 species of evergreen and deciduous woody plants varying from dwarf shrubs to trees. The genus Vaccinium includes many economically important cultivated small fruit species, like blueberries and cranberries. Bilberry grows in the area of Europe and Asia, most abundantly in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and at higher elevations in Southern Europe. Bilberry and lingonberry are the most significant wild berries in Northern Europe. The fruits and leaves of these small fruits are rich with phenolic compounds, especially flavonoids, whose bioactive properties have received notable attention in recent years.

Dr. Laura Jaakola Department of Biology, University of Oulu P.O.B. 3000 FIN-90014 Finland laura.jaakola(at)oulu.fi ******************************************************** The Nordic Wild Berry Seminar (8.12.2008) http://www.oulu.fi/nordicbilberry/english.html The Nordic Wild Berry Seminar 2008 was held in November in Oulu, Finland. The event was organized by the bilberry project participants, and it gathered a group of about 50 industry representatives and researchers from the Nordic countries, as well as from Scotland, Canada and Japan. ETC!

40

ALMOST EVERYTHING GROWS IN THAILAND - EXCEPT BLUEBERRIES!