Why doesn no-one care about slavery when the slaves are female?

[margerykemp]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2011/oct/18/visa-migrant-domestic-workers

most of the best threads DO wind away quietly and bring in all sorts of themes/experiences/stories that aren't the immediate subject matter of the OP. It just looks on this one as if that process (from me and garlic) started a little early in the life of this one! So I do apologise for my bit in that. And of course the slavery expereince IS best represented by a sort of Venn diagramm of common experience and women feature more heavily in that, esp. in the arena of domestic drudgery as has been said.

^^ wot he said :)

Can anyone signpost any good estimates of slavery as it exists in the UK.

Because it isn't just an issue of domestic servants in slavery (as highlighted by the recent arrests, and other sectors have been mentioned above). It would be illuminating to know the relative scale of the problem and whether there are noticeable differences in the response by the authorities to slavery in its varying forms and whether there are significant differences in how the issue is tackled depending on both sector and characteristics (sex, nationality) of those who are the majority in each sector.

Well.

Yet another thread where there's strenuous objections to discussing something from a feminist POV in the feminist section.

[hbiscuit]

I hope that wasn't aimed at me. I'm aware I know little about this, and was hoping that someone among the well-informed would share some of their expertise.

No, not you EW [hsmile]

Good places for information are:

Anti Slavery International (a UK based charity)

Anti-Trafficking Legal Project

Kalayaan

Eaves and The Poppy Project

Stop the Traffik

am not seeing anyone strenuously objecting to discussing this, wooooooooooppity - nope, re-read it. expanded beyond OP design but no strenuous objections, as you say.

Please, Woooo (I like your seasonal name, btw!), don't take my posts as anti-feminist if mine are among those you're finding offensive.

My view goes something like: "Yes, it is horrible and I'm glad the article brought this issue to your attention! Did you know that virtual slavery is actually widespread in the UK, and the dismally minimal protection currently afforded to non-citizen workers here is about to be eroded even further?!"

Every town of any size has employment agencies specialising in casual labour for construction and for catering. If you walk past one of them at 7am or thereabouts, you'll see long lines of downtrodden chaps (mostly) waiting to be bundled off without knowing where to, or who with, for a day's work at what turns out to be less than the minimum wage. The employer pays the agency (supposedly) the minimum wage and the agency takes a percentage before paying the workers - late. This is not what they say they do; the employers are supposed to pay an agency fee on top of the wage, but they don't. Last I knew, many agencies were also taking non-returnable registration fees from the workers. Now, I imagine, they're stinging them like mad.

After an undetermined number of hours, the workers are left to make their own way home from wherever they were taken. They receive no support whatsoever, are nominally self-employed so receive no NI contributions or sick pay etc, are paid for fewer hours than they had to do and are often explicitly abused in the workplace. Many of them are trying to support families under these conditions and, no doubt, their wives try to supplement the family income but find themselves unable to afford childcare when they can only get domestic work at laughable rates.

These are not illegal immigrants.

Down the road from me is a farm that was closed down recently, due to the shocking conditions they provided their seasonal workers. The farm is five miles from the nearest shop. The bus fare is £5. After a fiercely-fought battle, the farm built new accommodations which passed legal requirements. It's a clump of concrete boxes, each intended to house a family in one room, with bathroom and cooking facilities shared between homes - a concrete campsite. The sewerage was never completed (no mains out in the country, they have to use filter tanks) and is inadequate so the workers actually dig holes outside to use as toilets. They are charged £25 a day for the accommodation, plus water and electricity.

There are many, many worse off than this.

As per all the "Why feminism?" debates, women end up at the bottom of the pile however rotten that pile is. This is one issue. The fact that our economy; our society, depends increasingly on a raft of underpaid, disrespected, unsupported and exploited labour is another. I'm unable to see the two matters through a single lens.

Rant over, going to vent the rest of my steam in the bathroom!

It really is impossible to quantify how many people are held in slavery in the UK, precisely because they are underground and kept away from or in fear of the authorities.

It is also hard to put a figure on it because it is hard to define modern slavery. There are many people in the UK who are not held against their will or forced into labour, but they are subject to horribly exploitative working conditions because they feel they have no other choice. For example, persons who are in the UK without permission from the UK Border Agency, but who are fearful or unwilling (because they would return to even worse conditions) of returning to their country of origin. They are not permitted to claim benefits, or to work legally, so have no option but to take on 'illegal' work, which surprisingly enough, never pays the minimum wage. Strictly speaking, they could leave, but they have no other viable option but to remain in exploitative conditions. There are certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of people in the UK in such a situation.

In terms of slavery internationally, most of us probably buy several products a month, if not a week, that are produced by people who feel they have no option but to work in exploitative conditions.

I haven't read anywhere the reasonong behind the removal of rights under visa to change employer, unchallengable and for a fixed period. Have those people who work in that environment shown themselves to be particularly difficult and antsy? Or is it really a further method to ensure a total lack of security for poorly-paid women (largely/massively) in the UK? Would be curious to know the stated reasonings behind that gem of a move.

the reasoning behind the removal of rights under visa to change employer

• The Daily Mail?

It's tempting to think of it as deliberate in some way - or at least deliberated - whether that be to increase the vulnerability of women or some other nefarious motive - but I suspect we are governed entirely by PR at present. The mythical "Mrs Mumsnet", who reads the Daily Mail and is a floating voter with shallow values, wants cheap childcare and a cleaner. She's terrified DH will lose his job, a danger she blames squarely on Those Immigrants Taking All Our Jobs. (She doesn't know the cleaner was a biochemist before the Polish crash, because she's all uptight about blue-collar workers and prefers to label them all incompetent.)

She will, says the PR guru, be very happy if she believes her potential to choose between a fulfilling career, a fulfilling SAHM life, and a handy combination of the two, can be assured by Stopping Those Immigrants From Taking All Our Jobs and simultaneously providing the amazing Adrianna to look after her house and children ("She's taught them all arithmetic! My children are so clever!") Which can be smoothly assured with a bit of paper tweaking

God, I should go back into marketing. No, I shouldn't.

Good posts, Thistledew, well said.

Another very irksome issue is the fact that some 'slaves' (though i do use that word speculatively) will have 'lived and worked' here for a handful of years, and still have little or no English and be utterly bemused at how anything is structured re assistance. Typically they are entirely undocumented immigrants, or asylum-seekers who assessed they would have little hope of acheiving refugee status, and so drop out of sight into gang-masters clutches.

And when something happens which brings them to the attention of authorities, and police investigate, suddenly no-one knows them at all.

Thanks for the links!

There have always been echelons & classes within slaves, even in societies that we built on human engines.

The fact remains that a person without the right to exercise free will is a slave. The very best-treated and well-paid nanny; the most fabulously respected restoration builder, is a slave if s/he cannot freely move from one position to another or choose to stop work if they can support themselves otherwise. That's what 'bonded' means - the word will never be used by our present administration - and, in essence, that's what our legislation is moving towards very fast.

Once a society has official approval to 'bond' labour, there's nothing to stop it assigning different levels of humanity to bonded people, treating them as non-human and denying them human rights. If they break their bond they are criminals ... and, as non-human criminals, are exposed to the worst of treatment. It's an abuser's charter.

I know I'm sounding awfully alarmist. But - well, look at what's happening :(

Not alarmist garlic, absolutely spot on and well put.

am just trying to not go down a path of degrees of 'slavery', though all you say is authentic garlic, I think, so perhaps I shouldn't equivocate over using the word. ta.

Interesting last post garlic. I don't think you're being alarmist either.

I'm very worried by some of the recent trends in our society. You're going back to the Romans but I often feel we're going back to the Victorian era of deserving and undeserving poor with our approach to those dependent on benefits, whether that's unemployment benefits, top-up benefits for low earners, or disability benefits.

It would be interesting to extrapolate your argument about bonding in terms of benefits and forced voluntary labour. Because for many people it really isn't a choice between benefits or working. They're highly unlikely to get a job ever, so some people seem to think that justifies them being forced to 20 hours per week litter picking (despite the fact that this would actually work out as below NMW).

ANd to bring this back to a point specifically about benefits, I wonder how this would affect the many single parents out there with children young enough to need childcare but not old enough to mean their parents are exempt from having to seek work. Or the thousands of women caring for elderly/infirm relatives on an unpaid basis because carer's allowance is so hard to get.

And that's just UK citizens who are hugely, hugely advantaged in comparison to the migrant women mentioned in the original article.