Labour migration

The Cizinky na úklid (Foreign Housekeepers) agency was supposed to start its activities on the 15th of October. Fortunately it did not happen because, as many of you thought, the agency is not real. It was “established” by non-profit organizations Association for Integration and Migration and People in Need, commentator Kateřina Kristelová and creative agency Ogilvy&Mather and Mather Advertures. We would like to apologize to those who received untruthful or zero information in a few past weeks. Also we would like to explain our motivation.

The Association for Integration and Migration is pleased to present you new information leaflets, which were created within the project named Foreign workers on the labor market, financed by the European Social Fund´s Operational Programme Human Resources and Employment.

Leaflets are created in both forms - in printed and electronic version in Czech, Russian and English, to make their content available to as many foreigners as possible. Leaflets inform foreigners about employment conditions and risks of illegal labor.

Are you a female migrant working as a domestic worker?

Are you considering working in Czech households and would you like to obtain useful information?

SIMI has prepared a free workshop for you on the 30th of April at Creative Gate, Prague 1.

The European Commission has presented a proposal for a Council Decision authorising Member States to ratify the Convention concerning decent work for domestic workers (Convention No. 189).

Countries ratifying the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention agree to ensure fair and decent conditions for domestic workers by protecting their fundamental labour related rights, preventing abuse and violence.

You can find some useful information on labour migration in the Czech Rep. in the presentation, which we have prepared in the past winter to our international partners from Germany and the UK in the project Foreign employees on the labour market.

The presentation contains comprehensive statistics showing the employment of migrants in the Czech Republic and summarises the evolution of the Czech migration policy as well as provides comments to the New System of Economic Migration, elaborated recently by the Czech government.

As part of the project called, “Equal opportunities on the threshold of Czech homes “, a new web site was created, dedicated to the issues of equal opportunities for domestic workers  www.pracovnicevdomacnosti.cz.

The web site contains information about domestic work for professionals and the general public as well as contains contacts of foreign organizations involved in the domestic work problematic. You can find here also stories of domestic workers and project material including publications, presentations, reference material and other literature on this topic.

Female migrants and employers can find on this page useful information about domestic work /including rights and responsibilities/ and contacts for free counselling.

Marie Jelínková

Forced labour, exploitation, and highly unsuitable working conditions are among those issues which the developed countries often want to believe have noting to do with them. If somebody does not focus on this topic, no one will realize that these problems exist. In 2007 the United Kingdom celebrated the bicentenary of abolition of slavery, some experts said that even though slavery is banned, it's modern form exists in the UK (as well as in other countries) on a massive scale. Nevertheless, thanks to the support and initiatives of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the UK a number of case studies dedicated to the issue of modern slavery have been carried out.

Translated Abstracts of British Studies on forced labour will be available on Migraceonline.cz. For the English version click here.

Now you can watch recordings of the conference on Labor Migration: the view of state, employers, trade unions and NGOs, which took place in November 2012.

• Information about the conference
• Watch the record on Migrace Online.

You can find there interviews with representatives of the Austrian organization ZeMiT (who provide legal and social counseling in Tyrol) on the topic of integration of migrant workers into the labor market and the role of Austrian NGOs in this process.