Daily Archives: January 21, 2022

Siddiq Shehab arrived in the Gulf from his native Mangalore in South India in 1982, carrying an almost empty suitcase. Siddiq left everything behind and travelled to the Gulf to work for one of the largest contracting companies so he could save money for his marriage.

Two years later, Siddiq got married, but he returned to the Gulf where he stayed for 39 more years. He only saw his family for two months once every two years, as he had to stay in the Gulf and work, spending all his income to support his family and parents.

Siddiq, who worked as an electrical supervisor, never thought he would return home empty-handed after not receiving his salary for 18 consecutive months. With no choice, Siddiq left the Gulf for good in March 2021 with the contracting company owing him $48,900 in salary arrears and end-of-service benefits, burying his dream of securing a dignified life after retirement.

Siddiq and 18 of his colleagues who make up the last remaining employees of a company that once had over 1,000 employees have been receiving their salaries irregularly since 2017. The company had allowed them to live in its designated workers accommodation where they had to make ends meet $53 a month and rely on charity for food with minimal healthcare services access. On top of that, Siddiq, who had turned 70 years old, faced another dilemma when his residence permit expired in May 2019, thus putting him at risk of imprisonment and deportation since he has become an irregular migrant worker.

Siddiqs and his colleagues stories shed light on the problem of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the Gulf countries who are deprived of their wages and their end-of-service benefits a common violation committed by kafeels (Arabic for sponsor) and employers. Workers rights organizations describe this as wage theft. There are laws that regulate the relation between the employer and employees; however, they are full of loopholes that some employers exploit if they want to.

Even though there are mechanisms to lodge complaints and litigation procedures to resolve disputes, there are various difficulties and obstacles that most of the time prevent migrant workers from resorting to them to preserve their rights.

By the time the residence permits of Siddiqs 18 colleagues, who worked in the company for different periods of time that ranged between three and 38 years, ended, the company owed them money that ranged between $7,089 and $108,152 each. The total amount of money owed to them is $526,000 an amount that is enough to construct a 500 square meters medium-sized villa in the Gulf.

However, the large company, which implemented public and private sector projects worth hundreds of millions of dinars, never paid these dues.

According to the Saudi Ministry of Human Resources and Social Developments contractual Relationship Improvement Initiative document, which was prepared in August 2020, there are 1.2 million migrant workers whose wages have been delayed.

These workers constitute 8.3% of the total workforce in Saudi Arabia where 79% of this workforce is made up of migrant workers. This reflects the problem of wage theft in the Gulf. The workforce in Saudi Arabia constitutes about 50.2% of the total workforce in the Gulf countries, and Saudi Arabia alone hosts47.3%of the total number of migrant workers present in the Gulf.

Its estimated that there are 24 million migrant workers in the Gulf countries, constituting 83.3% of the total workforce of the Gulf countries. Migrant workers constitute the majority of the workforce in Qatar (94.0%), the United Arab Emirates (92.5%), Kuwait (84.2%), Bahrain (79.4%) and Oman (78.4%).

The document, written within the framework of Vision 2030 initiatives, reveals the real magnitude of the problem, and aims to improve contractual relations between employers and employees based on international standards. In December 2020, Saudi Arabia signed the Protection of Wages Convention, 1949 (No. 95); hence becoming the only Gulf country to sign this convention that aims to protect wages of workers as much as possible so far.

The implementation of this convention requires fulfilling three main elements: efficient supervision, appropriate penalties, and means for compensating the victims.

key principles of Convention (No. 95) *Workers shall be free to dispose of their wages as they choose. *Wages must be paid in national currency. *In cases of partial payment in kind, the value should be fair and reasonable. *No unlawful deductions are permitted (right to receive wages in full). *In cases of employer insolvency, wages shall enjoy a priority in the distribution of liquidated assets. *Regular payment of wages, including full and swift final settlement of all wages within a reasonable time, upon termination of employment. Source:International Labor Organization

In Bahrain,Minister of Labor and Social Development Jameel Humaidansaid that 2,863 workers in 18 companies received irregular wages in 2018, adding that companies delayed wages payment for periods that ranged between two months and six months.

In addition to legal migrant workers, who are theoretically protected by employment contracts but practically face the risk of wage theft due to employers exploitation and deception, there are hundreds of thousands of irregular migrant workers who are in fact the most vulnerable to wage theft. This category of migrant workers who work outside legal frameworks is called wandering workers or free visa workers.

Except forSaudi Arabia, there are no accurate numbers of irregular migrant workers in the Gulf and the data only shows the numbers of those whose residence permits have expired or whose residence permits were cancelled by their sponsors. The law views these workers as violators although they have not intentionally violated the laws and they have simply found themselves in this situation because renewing their residency permits is not possible except through a sponsor.

These workers situation becomes more dangerous if their sponsors lodge a complaint accusing them of Horoob (absconding). Those are the most fearful of getting caught regardless of why they escaped even if its due to abuse and violation of their rights.

The penalty for absconding in Gulf countries is arrest and deportation. In Kuwait, for instance, these workers are also blacklisted and banned from re-entering the country for a certain number of years. In Saudi Arabia, these workers face being fined $13,000 and imprisonment for six months followed by deportation and a permanent ban from re-entering the country. Hence, these workers who face this accusation of absconding keep a low profile while working in secret, hence becoming more vulnerable to exploitation and wage theft.

A migrant workers rights activist, who requested to remain anonymous said: A form of irregular employment has emerged in the Gulf due to exploiting the sponsorship system to sell visas. Employers or ordinary individuals issue migrant visas as domestic workers, then, with the permission of the employer, allows them to take other jobs in exchange for payments that range between $3,200-$3,700 (every 2 year) and the worker usually pays the sponsor once every two years.

Some workers willingly travel (to this destination country) fully aware of the situation as they need (to make a living) and are (often) promised by agents (who facilitate their travel) plenty of job opportunities in the Gulf. Sometimes, the sponsor does not renew the visa, and the worker does not have the capability to return home; hence he unwillingly ends up in a legal dilemma.

In addition to migrant workers who face the risk of wage theft, domestic workers, particularly females, also face similar risks. Domestic workers, whoconstitute25% of the total migrant workforce in the Gulf, work in residences which are not inspected, and their work is also not governed by labor laws.

The only exception, however, in this regard is Bahrain which included domestic workers under 13 Articles of labor law in 2013. Although Gulf countries except Oman have set laws to protect migrant workers, a report by the author of this investigation with the title Domestic Work: A Comparative Overview between Bahrain and the Rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries showed that these laws are still superficial when defining the rights of domestic workers and are governed by a social culture that fears granting this category of workers their full rights and equating them with the rights enumerated in these countries labor laws and in accordance with the Convention on Domestic Workers which none of the Gulf countries have signed. Gulf countries also exclude domestic workers from their wage protection systems.

Migrant workers are the human fuel of GCC economies

Migrants have played a significant role in building Gulf countries' economies since the 1970s. During the past three decades, they have contributed to their growth. Migrants constitute the largest percentage of population growth that reached 151.5% in all six Gulf countries.

Figures indicate that the number of migrants have tripled when compared with the national population increase in the past three decades where the number of citizens has increased by 87.5%, that of migrants increased by 267.4%.

During this period, Gulf economies recorded agrowth, in their GDP from $210 billion to $1,817 billion (765%).

The number of migrants in Gulf countries reached 30 million, constituting 11% of thetotal number of migrant workers worldwidewhich is estimated at 272 million. This is despite the fact that the population of all six Gulf countries does not exceed 0.8% of the worlds population. Migrant workers in Gulf countries constitute 14.2% of the total number of people migrating for work internationally and which reached 169 million according to figures byILO.

The number of migrants in Gulf countries reached 30 million, constituting 11% of thetotal number of migrant workers worldwidewhich is estimated at 272 million. This is despite the fact that the population of all six Gulf countries does not exceed 0.8% of the worlds population. Migrant workers in Gulf countries constitute 14.2% of the total number of people migrating for work internationally and which reached 169 million according to figures byILO.

Period: Three decades from 1990 until 2019. Source: United Nations and World Bank

Wage theft is a permanent problem that migrant workers face in the Gulf. The coronavirus pandemic, which negatively affected Gulf economies and the global economy, helped expose the violations of migrant workers rights.

Wage theft had the worst impact on migrant workers whose main purpose of traveling to the Gulf was to make a living to provide for themselves and for their families at home. This issue also shed the light on the loopholes in labor laws and the obstacles that migrant workers face when they resort to the available complaint mechanisms and litigation procedures.

At the end of 2019, it had been an entire year since Siddiq last received any salary from his employer, and six months since his last day at work. Siddiq began to get worried due to the companys procrastination in paying his dues. At the time, Siddiq had not visited his family for five years.

Due to his ill health, he finally decided to file a complaint at the Ministry of Labor and Social Development against the company. Siddiq said: In early 2020, (news emerged) about a virus spreading in the world, and we heard that we may be prohibited from travelling. I want to be with my family. Time passed quickly while I was working. Every time I intended to return home, I kept postponing my return for another year because of my financial obligations.

After his residency permit expired, Siddiq could no longer go to the governmental healthcare center. He also could no longer afford buying medication for his chronic health conditions as those cost him $106 per month, i.e. twice the amount which the company paid him ($53) to live on. His colleagues also faced similar problems.

The company informed Siddiq and his colleagues that travelling was prohibited and reassured them that these were exceptional circumstances and they shouldnt worry if their residency permits expired.

Siddiq and his colleagues were only capable of accessing healthcare in case they were infected with Covid-19 as the government announced that it will treat migrant workers without examining their legal residency status.

At this point, ordinary work at ministries (employees attendance at offices) was suspended; hence, Siddiq and his colleagues were not able to follow up on their complaint at the Ministry of Labor. The company stopped communicating with them. They continued to live in their accommodation provided by their employer, but they faced the risk of eviction after the company stopped paying the rent. They lived in dire conditions and they had to rely on charity for their subsistence. The landlord eventually had the power cut off, leaving them to rely on power from a generator. worsening their living conditions even further as they suffered from power outages during the scorching summer heat because they could not afford fuel to refill it.

As Covid-19 spread, work was suspended in several sectors in the Gulf. The pandemic and its economic repercussions on Gulf economies exposed the fragile situation of migrant workers in Gulf countries and their vulnerable position.

Although migrant workers are the backbone of the labor market in the Gulf countries, considering that they constitute 83.8% of their workforce, these countries crisis response did not consider those to be part of their priorities. Instead, they rushed to help private sector companies by activating force majeure measures in their laws to allow affected companies to decrease employees wages or force them to take paid or unpaid leave. On the level of workers rights, this looked more like a measure that paved the way for wage theft during the pandemic.At the same time, the governments helped These companies pay the wages of citizens. They also helped with rent and exempted them from fees to renew residence and work permits of migrant workers, subjecting only migrant workers in the private sector to harm due to force majeure.

Governmental measures to confront the pandemics consequences in the private sector

UAE-Enabling employers to reduce the wages of migrant workers via activating Ministerial Resolution No. 279 of 2020 regarding the stability of employment in the private sector.

Bahrain-Activating Article 43 of the Labor Law which stipulates that if the worker is prevented from executing his work for reasons of force majeure beyond the employers control, the worker shall be entitled to half his wage.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Center, which follows up on violations of migrant workers rights in the Gulf, recorded that the allegations of abuse in Gulf countries between April 2020 and August 2020witnesseda 275% increase when compared with allegations of abuse for the same period during 2019. Out of the 80 allegations of abuse that the center recorded during this period, non-payment of wages was the most frequent of cases as this violation was cited in 81% of cases.

In Saudi Arabia, labor courtssettled31,766 lawsuits during the year when Covid-19 spread (from March 2020 until March 2021). Lawsuits that pertain to wages constituted 59% of them. Other lawsuits pertained to requesting compensations, allowances and bonuses, which all fall within the practice of wage theft.

Areportpublished on the website of Bahrains Ministry of Labor and Social Development noted that up until October 2020, the ministry received 16,532 requests to settle disputes between employees and employers. It added that 50.3% of these disputes were resolved amicably.

The ministry also received 14 complaints lodged collectively, and they were also resolved amicably. This number (16,532) reflects an increase of 52% when compared with the number of complaints filed in the previous year. Although the author of this investigative report communicated with relevant parties in all Gulf countries, she could not clarify the nature of these complaints and whether they pertain to non-payment of wages.

She also could not obtain the number of lawsuits that are related to migrant workers and could not obtain the total number of complaints or lawsuits which are related to non-payment of wages in all the Gulf countries discussed in this investigation.

Migrant workers also faced problems during the pandemic due to the suspension of work at some government departments, including courts and offices where complaints are lodged. Meanwhile, departments that continued to operate were under pressure due to reduced working hours and employees capacity. In theUAE, the suspension of labor courts work resulted in delaying looking into non-payment of wages lawsuits.

The ILO Regional Office for Arab States said, in the summary of its meeting that was held in February 2021: Labor dispute commissions in the Gulf have reduced their operation capacity to 30% due to Covid-19. It also noted that wage protection systems in the Gulf that were set up to punish employers who violate workers rights in terms of wages, (received an enormous amount of complaints).

Workers insurance funds in Qatar and the UAE were also unable (to address) challenges. For example, the Workers Support and Insurance Fund in Qatar was only able to disburse $3.85 million as of August 2020 to 5,500 workers, a large number of other workers did not receive their wages.

There is no statistics about the size of migrant workers whose livelihoods were affected during the pandemic. However, the numbers of migrant workers who have left Gulf countries for good during the pandemic indicates there are unusual circumstances that pushed them to leave. These workers left either because of the termination of their job contracts or work or out of fear of the protective measures that excluded them, particularly amid governmental statements that urged its institutions to expedite nationalization of their labor forces, and reduce the reliance on migrant workers.

Credit Rating Agency Standard & Poors estimated that the population of the six Gulf countries, which this report discusses, hasdecreasedby 4% during the year when the pandemic spread and attributed this decrease to the high levels of job losses in the Gulf.

Gulf governments facilitated irregular migrant workers departure by exempting them from fines for violating their residency status. This raised fears about the dues owed to these workers, pushing international workers rights organizations, civil society, and labor syndicates to mobilize. They launched a globalcampaignthat calls for establishing urgent judicial mechanisms to retrieve these workers wages from employers. The campaign also aimed to draw the worlds attention to these inhumane practices committed against migrant workers.

It must be noted that theMigrant Forum in Asia(MFA), which led this campaign along with other organizations, documented 1,465 cases of wage theft against migrant workers in all Gulf countries between June 2020 and May 2021. These cases, however, were documented based on the victims initiatives and on the organizations which followed up on these cases; thus they represent a model and do not reflect the magnitude of the problem in each country.

Legal migrant workers constituted the largest percentage of these cases in all Gulf countries except Kuwait. This indicates that these victims were subjected to wage theft while working in prominent companies. It also indicates how difficult it is for irregular migrant workers to demand the payment of their dues since most of them work without contracts or on a daily basis. The database which ARIJ has obtained with assistance from MFA showed that 89% of (the 1465 cases) were male and 11% were female. The majority were from India (51%), Nepal (31%), Bangladesh (10%) and Philippine (7%) with (1%) from Indonesia.

This investigative report reveal that there are at least eight indicators out of 11indicators of forced laboras specified by ILOs Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labor that were derived from ILOs theoretical and practical experience. Forced labor is considered a form ofhuman trafficking.

The fact that there are laws that prohibit the practices that these indicators are based on, reflect how dangerous they are. However, these practices have become common due to the lax implementation of the laws that are also full of loopholes. This is in addition to the fragile conditions that those affected live in, and their circumstances that prevent them from seeking help or justice.

Lawyers and activists in Gulf countries have identified 17 types of wage theft that vary in Commonality according to the differences in the strictness of the laws that regulate wages and the contractual relationship between the employer and the employee. In addition to the monthly wage, wage theft also includes the theft of overtime allowances, leave entitlements, and end of service gratuity.

1- Some recruitment agencies in countries of origin and countries of destination impose fees on the individual in order to recruit them. The worker thus ends up in debt (even before taking up their new job) although the laws of all Gulf countries except Kuwait prohibit charging fees to workers.

Ibrahim S. is one of 120 workers who were subjected to wage theft during the pandemic. They were deported without being given their end of service gratuity and after their wages were withheld from 2017. MFA reported that these workers paid between $673 and $1,076 to a recruitment agency in India to employ them in a large construction company in Saudi Arabia. The company, which is owned by investors from Saudi Arabia and India, employs around 10,000 such workers.

Recruitment Fees

2- Replacing an agreement with another for a lesser wage upon arrival

Migrants are deceived by dual agreements, one in the country of origin and another in the country of destination. The agreements have different conditions. (When the migrants realize this is happening to them), it would be too late (to do anything) as they have already become in debt and theres no way back.

Source: Dr. Nasrah Shah, a professor in the faculty of economy at Lahore University, who worked for 30 years in Kuwait University as a lecturer in demography.

3- Termination of services and deportation without paying dues.

4- Blackmail by confiscating passports to force workers to sign work compensation settlements even if not all dues have been paid.

Confiscation of passports is common in Gulf countries although the law in these countries prohibit this practice.

5- Working without a valid visa

An employers consent is mandatory to renew the visa. In Bahrain, courts deem employees who demand their dues after their visa expires as ineligible, even though the employees cannot renew their visa without the approval of the employer.

6- Compulsory working period

All Gulf countries do not allow workers to change their jobs without the approval of the employer or only allows them to do so after a certain period of time has passed. Some employers exploit this period of time to force workers to work for a lesser wage until this period ends.

7- Not paying overtime remuneration

Some laws allow the employer to have certain employees in positions such as security guards to work additional hours. Employers exploit this to note it in the contract without granting them extra money for the additional hours worked.

8- Manipulation of end of service gratuity

The amount of end of service gratuity is calculated on the basis of the employees last wage. Some employers pay their salary dues once every two years of service; hence, the employee may get a lesser amount of money.

9- Changing a workers visa to indicate that they are working for another registered company, although owned by the same original employer often without the workers knowledge.

Changing the companys register deprives the worker of his right to demand any dues such as end of service gratuity a year after changing the companys register even if the holding company of the new firm is the same.

10- Procrastination

Employers often use empty promises to deter workers from filing a lawsuit. They keep making these promises until the limitation period to claim wages and other entitlements due passes. The worker also does not get a remuneration for wrongful termination and does not get the wages and other entitlements due to them for the remaining duration of the contract or a compensation as stipulated by law if the limitation period has passed.(In Bahrain, for example, a worker cannot make any claims if its been one year since the contract was terminated).

11- Employers withhold the employees ATM cards to withdraw money after the agreed wages were deposited, then they hand the wage to workers in cash, often part of it apart from the constant delay in paying peoples salaries on time.

Some companies circumvent the law that stipulates paying workers via a bank deposit. They exploit the workers lack of knowledge of their rights and their need to work and make a living. These companies keep the workers ATM cards so they can deposit and withdraw money on their behalf which is often considered a criminal act. In Kuwait, for instance, this is considered a crime of forgery that the perpetrator is punished for according to the penal code. The aim of such a practice is to mislead the authorities in case the worker demands his wages and entitlements and to hide the exact amount of his wage. In Kuwait, for instance, this is a violation of the Labor Law of Kuwait No. 6 of 2010.Meshari AlHumaidan, a Kuwaiti lawyer

12- Recruitment agents deduct a sum of the agreed salary, hence violating the agreement between the recruitment agency and the employers

This practice is very common in the case of domestic workers and security guards in all Gulf countries where public and private companies hire these employees via agreements with recruitment agencies.

13- Exploiting the salary rates as set for certain sectors

In Kuwait, there are specific salary brackets for work in certain sectors. Employers issue work permits for certain jobs that are linked to government benefits and advantages which the workers are supposed to get. However, after the work permit is issued, the employers change the workers job title and function to another for a wage thats different from what was stipulated in the original contract.

14- Female domestic employees work around the clock

Most laws that pertain to domestic work jobs in the Gulf do not determine what the working hours of those should be. Some of them stipulate that the domestic worker is entitled to a certain number of hours to rest per day. Domestic workers end up working for 15 hours per day without any financial compensation and in violation of all international standards.

15- Some wage theft practices begin in the country of origin based on an agreement between the recruitment agencies and the families who want to hire a domestic worker. The agency and the family agree not to pay the domestic worker a wage for a month or more after the workers arrival to the destination country in order to decrease the capital cost of the domestic worker's employment for the employer.

16- Making domestic workers work for long hours and making them work at relatives houses for free

I have never received a full wage on time ever since I arrived at work ten months ago. According to the contract, my wage is $235 but I only received amounts between $77 and $105 per month while I worked. Then I was asked to work for free in the house of my employers daughter who had fired her domestic worker. I fled because of this treatment, and my passport is still with them. I think they filed a lawsuit against me and accused me of absconding. I do not know for sure, but they must have done that.Sarah (26 years old), a Kenyan domestic worker who works for a family in Riyadh.

17- Not paying workers who returned to their country of origin and could not return to the destination country because their visa expired during the pandemic. Employers refuse to pay them their financial dues owed to them.

Before and after the pandemic, a large number of workers returned to India and got stuck there. Their visas expired, hence, they could not return to the destination country unless the company renew their visas. Some of them worked for these companies for a long period of time such as 30 years. They were thus not paid their wages, their end of service gratuity, and employers did not renew their visas because they are aware that the financial dues constitute large sums of money." SourceSotheer Thironelath Director of humanitarian affairs at the World NRA Council and the director of the Indian Embassys emergency trust fund in Bahrain.

Kafala (sponsorship), main reason for abuse of migrant workers rights

There are many reasons that have made wage theft in its various forms common and even acceptable by the employer, employee and the society as a whole. This imbalance of power between migrant workers and employers in the Gulf is mainly attributed to the sponsorship system, which was introduced in 1928 during the British colonial period.

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Slavery Entrenched by Law: Immigrant Workers in the Gulf Story - Al-Bawaba

The scheduled deactivation of California Correctional Center has become a hot-button issue for the town of Susanville, sparking anger and a still-pending lawsuit to prevent the prison from closing at all. The fears of residents who have become dependent on prisons for their livelihood have been covered widely in the media, but these stories often erase the voices of millions of Californians including people currently and formerly incarcerated at CCC who are demanding these state-funded prisons be permanently shut down.

Prison closure in California is a complex undertaking. The task has many moving parts, including important questions about labor and infrastructure in communities like Susanville, where prison economies have taken over. Yet the fixation on these concerns continues to obscure why we must close prisons in the first place: Prisons are racist institutions that are disastrous to our nations public health and overall economic well-being.

The evidence is overwhelming. Incarceration is an ongoing humanitarian crisis that disproportionately affects Black, brown and poor communities. The U.S. spends $300 billion on the prison industrial complex annually. Theres also a $1.2-trillion effect from lost earnings, adverse health effects and financial damage to the families of incarcerated people. Mass incarceration, historically inextricable from slavery, hurts everyone in the United States and has shortened our average overall life expectancy by two years. During a global pandemic, sustaining deadly and infectious prisons is a terrible strategy to prop up employment in rural America.

Closing CCC, a 60-year-old facility requiring $503 million in infrastructure repairs, will save Californians $173 million per year. The nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office calculates that shutting down five of Californias 34 adult prisons would save $1.5 billion per year by 2025. Significant, but only a dent in this years whopping $18.6-billion state corrections budget, the clearest indicator of Californias incarceration addiction. Coalitions like Californians United for a Responsible Budget maintain that at least 10 prisons should close over the next five years, achievable through sentencing reforms that increase releases, deep community investment and strong political leadership.

It is true that thousands of people rely on income from working at prisons in California. However, if towns like Susanville cannot survive without a system that criminalizes, cages and harms people, they have an obligation to rethink the structure of their economies. And no, replacing government prisons with private detention centers is not helpful. There are smart public policy solutions that could address some of these communities concerns.

Prison towns should be proactive in demanding more state investment in better jobs, creating new pathways to careers that have a viable future and pay a competitive wage. Prison jobs offer high salaries but are deeply traumatic and lead to negative health outcomes. These are not good jobs. However, the troubles of prison guards pale in comparison with the violence inflicted upon those who are locked in prison cages. Its also no secret that some corrections officers are guilty of perpetuating the toxic culture of prisons.

People against closing prisons are missing a chance to imagine and fight for a new, valuable infrastructure for their towns. This represents a failure of public education, public planning and political will. Lack of innovation, not the closure of a prison, will be the cause of any serious economic consequences in Susanville. In fact, the prison is the problem.

Prisons temporarily sustain small communities through employment but ultimately devastate individuals and society, making them remarkably similar to oil and mineral companies. They harm local environments and the planet while enriching a few special interest groups.

These problems have similar solutions. As a nation, we must transition to a sustainable future. Environmental justice groups are innovating in these areas, winning a recent, major victory in Tonawanda, N.Y., by uniting labor and community interests. Just Transition strategies can move us away from extractive economies like fossil fuels and prisons, providing pathways for workers to new, high-quality jobs with integrity. Prioritizing re-entry, training and other services for formerly incarcerated people would help them join these new economies. Why arent these productive ideas being implemented on a larger scale? Advocates have been demanding them for decades.

One smart job creation idea: Susanville, which is in Lassen County, could have been destroyed by the Dixie fire, one of the largest in Californias history. Climate change is real. Preventing, fighting and recovering from wildfires are more useful jobs than guarding prisons. State governments can end racist mass incarceration and engage with stakeholders to serve real community needs.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sold towns like Susanville on the promise of prisons to address the longstanding unemployment in rural economies. In order to weigh a future without prisons, we need to reckon with the powerful institutions that benefit from these rationalizing narratives.

Lawmakers must reduce imprisonment and promote an alternative, positive vision for California. As the state reduces prison spending, it should increase resources for formerly incarcerated people and invest in towns that would be most affected by prison closure. Thats the conversation to be having: not about what would be lost if a prison closed, but about why prisons must close, and what possibilities come into view when our culture diverts resources away from human caging and toward things that actually keep people safe, like jobs and healthcare.

We need a more substantive dialogue on the issue of prison closure if we are going to inform and empower the public to build a healthier, greener, more just society.

Brian Kaneda is the deputy director of Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

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Op-Ed: When a prison closes, its town has a shot at redemption - Los Angeles Times

Debate

16:35

by Michael Mosbacher

The House of Lords voted in favour of repealing the Vagrancy Act

In an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the House of Lords this week voted in favour of repealing the Vagrancy Act in its entirety, defeating the Government in the process. The Act is a rather unusual piece of legislation to still find on the statute books, not least because it dates back to 1824. Its language is undoubtedly antiquated. The Act calls beggars idle and disorderly persons; those repeatedly convicted of begging shall be deemed a rogue and a vagabond. It has nasty things to say about those endeavouring by exposure of wounds and deformities to gain or obtain alms and those lodging in any barn or outhouse.or in any cart or waggon.

The law has few defenders; when the Government opposed the Amendment it did not offer a thoroughgoing defence of the Vagrancy Act far from it. Home Office Minister Baroness (Susan) Williams stated that the government was committed to repealing the legislation but that its repeal without something in its place would leave the police without the necessary powers to clamp down on persistent begging.

Few would argue that the Vagrancy Act should be the central tool used to fight the complex and interrelated factors that can lead to rough sleeping, begging and its all too common corollaries of alcoholism and drug addiction. Governments use many measures to combat the ill of rough sleeping with mixed success; criminal prosecution is rightly not the foremost tool in this armoury.

There is, however, a strong case for the Vagrancy Act as it stands. The Act sends a moral message that certain forms of behaviour are a non-trivial nuisance and undesirable; society does not approve of them. Aggressive begging is a major problem in cities and it does no good to repeal a law that aims to curb it. Is that really a message we want to send? We live in a society where laws whether we think it a good thing or not constantly make moral judgements on matters that do not clearly harm others. Since that is the case, why is it wrong for the law to make a moral judgement about aggressive begging, especially as it clearly does cause nuisance and potentially distress to others?

Other than the laws quaintness, the main argument made against it is that it criminalises poverty. By any fair-minded reading, this is not correct. It does not criminalise the fact of poverty but certain behaviours associated with poverty. In the mythology of parts of the Left, opposition to anti-vagrancy legislation has a particularly cherished place as Karl Marx himself inveighed against them in Das Kapital. In the German messiahs reasoning vagrancy, legislation was passed to control the peasantry dispossessed by the enclosure of Common Land and thus give the burgeoning proletariat no alternative but to succumb to wage slavery.

In the current climate so much of what is proposed from protestors taking down statues to councils renaming streets is about sending a moral message rather than policy outcomes. Whatever a Bristol jury might have thought, very few would argue that the tearing down of Edward Colstons statue and dropping it into Bristol harbour did anything to improve a single persons life. It is a form of public moralising and should public moralising only come from one direction?

The Government will consider how to respond to the Lords amendment when the Policing Bill returns to the Commons. It may simply seek to overturn the amendment while pledging to repeal it in the longer term. But it should be more robust and make the case for the Vagrancy Act and the opprobrium it attaches to begging. The fact that this law today is foremost a moral statement rather than practical policy makes it very much a law for our time.

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In defence of the Vagrancy Act of 1824 - The Post - UnHerd

As a high-school student with still-shaky English proficiency, I found a collection of Platos dialogues in a garbage pile near my house in Corona, Queens. I had grown up in a mountain town in the Dominican Republic and emigrated to New York City just before my 12th birthday. My mother had left the Dominican Republic a few years earlier, secured the only job she could get, earning the minimum wage in a garment factory, and petitioned for my brother and I to join her. In 1985, we entered New York Citys overcrowded public school system, where the free lunches supplied a good portion of our sustenance. Like many immigrants, we were poor, exposed, and disoriented by our uprooting.

It was not an auspicious beginning for the career I would have as student, academic administrator and faculty member at an Ivy League university. But the jarring journey became, at some point, less of a handicap and more of a peculiar vantage point from which to reflect on the intellectual and social world I had entered. My development was nourished by an education in what some people call the great books. That same education has made me sensitive to a culturally influential critique of the canon that insists that Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Montaigne, Cervantes, Goethe, Hegel, Dostoyevsky, Woolf, et al, are not for people like me, that they are for white people, or rich people, or people born with class privileges that I lacked.

In the collection of Platos dialogues that I rescued from the garbage pile on that winter night in Queens, I encountered an old man named Socrates in his final days. He was defending himself against accusations of corrupting the youth and of introducing new gods to the city. Men of Athens, he protested,

By the end of the collection, we find him in prison on the day appointed for his execution, calmly and easily drinking the poison, laying down, and dying: Such was the end of our comrade, says the first-person narrator, a man who, we would say, was of all those we have known the best, and also the wisest and the most upright. I did not need to be rich, privileged or cultured to find in those words something that spoke to the deepest sense of my own being. And I did not need to be white or European to be startled by the claim that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Every summer since 2009, I have used these same Platonic dialogues to introduce low-income high-school students, who hope to be the first in their families to attend college, to the philosophic, ethical and political tradition that Socrates inspired. Every year, I see my students roused to serious self-examination and, in many cases, to an earnest and lasting reorientation of their lives. They do not see Thucydides, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and other texts we study, as alien objects belonging to others, but as thinkers who speak with a living voice to issues of urgency and relevance to their own experience. Again and again, I see these young people awaken to a source of self-worth and meaning that is not constrained by the material limitations that have otherwise hemmed in their lives.

The liberatory power of the canon is easily lost in the theoretical haze of the academic humanities. At the same time, institutions of higher education have been all too ready to abandon the idea of liberal education of learning for its own sake in favour of professional and specialised studies. But the old classics still have the power to move and transform young people in ways that no technical education can. We dont have to dilute the practical value of a higher education nor ignore the insights of the academic humanities to restore the vitality of liberal education in our colleges and universities.

In my last year of college, I took a comparative literature seminar with the literary scholar Gayatri Spivak. At the time, I was immersed in what was broadly called theory and, inspired by French deconstruction, was writing a thesis on St Augustines treatise on biblical interpretation, De doctrina christiana (c397-426 CE). I was thrilled by the chance to study with Professor Spivak, who had translated Jacques Derridas groundbreaking work of deconstructive criticism, Of Grammatology (1967).

About halfway through the course, we started reading William Shakespeares King Lear. In class, Professor Spivak would ask us to read passages aloud, insisting that we respect the plays iambic pentameter with five stressed and five unstressed syllables in each line. Thus, in the climactic opening scene when King Lear asks Cordelia to outdo her sisters in declaring her love for him, Professor Spivak drew our attention to the portentous silences the blank beats of the pentameter:

She made us read the passage several times, until we learned to stop and let the mute beats of the metre do their devastating work. Nothing, my lord. Pause. Nothing? Longer pause. Nothing. Long pause again.

How was it that loving Shakespeare had come to feel to me like something dirty?

At one point, when reading from another scene, Professor Spivak stopped, put down the book and said, in a tone that lay somewhere between a confession and a sigh: Im sorry, I love Shakespeare. Im sorry, and resumed her reading. I was relieved that she, the renowned postcolonial feminist theorist, could say this, and that our reading of Shakespeare would not simply be an exploration of the ways in which he was the product of and a mouthpiece for patriarchal, Eurocentric and imperialist discourses. We were also reading a Shakespeare that was lovable, and witnessing a family drama that touched our shared humanity. I too loved Shakespeare, and Professor Spivak was giving me permission to admit it. Across four centuries and multiple cultural chasms, sparks were flying from Shakespeares text that illuminated my whole sense of self.

Beyond feeling relieved, I was also surprised by my own complex reactions to Professor Spivaks half-embarrassed disclosure. How was it that loving Shakespeare had come to feel to me like something dirty? Had I, like Dantes pilgrim, taken a wrong turn somewhere and become entangled in a thicket of confusion, having lost the path that does not stray? How could I reconcile the life-altering encounters with great books that Id had in Columbia Universitys Core Curriculum with the prevailing sense among the literary thinkers I most admired that those texts were morally tainted and that to value them as great was to be complicit in wrongdoing?

There is a widespread conviction among literary scholars that there is no such thing as a great book. Better put, there is a prevailing view in the academic humanities that there is no basis upon which one can make generalisable judgments about the greatness of a book. The claim extends to works of art in general. At first sight, this may sound odd what are museums for, if not to single out and display works that command special attention?

But the challenge to the idea of greatness the challenge to assigning hierarchical value to cultural expressions isnt as preposterous as it might first appear. If, for example, one points to the aesthetic qualities of a work, one must reckon with the fact that aesthetic quality is notoriously difficult to pin down, and that attempts going back to antiquity have failed to give us an objective standard by which to judge. Moreover, aesthetic judgments can easily boil down to individual preferences, which, though perhaps finely attuned to prevailing social norms, are actually the result of particular kinds of education. In other words, its hard to extricate aesthetic value from cultural and aristocratic prejudice.

One might also justify the judgment of greatness in a book or work of art by pointing to its influence on a tradition of thought or to its impact on how we have come to see the world. In that case, a theoretically sophisticated sceptic might argue that such value judgments point not to anything intrinsic in the work, but to a historically contingent configuration of social power, which, the conscientious critic might add, is inextricable from forms of oppression, exclusion and domination present in our contemporary world. In this critical reading, the elite forms of cultural power embodied in values of greatness are undergirded by the exploitation and dehumanisation of the other.

These anti-foundational critiques of greatness carry the high-voltage implication that any hierarchy of artistic value is probably complicit in moral corruption. Up-and-coming scholars who endorse the particular value of certain works, especially canonical ones, do so at their own career-ending peril. In contemporary literary scholarship, its better to stick to critique all the more so when it comes to old books.

Great works are great because of an evident yet elusive capacity to illuminate our shared humanity

But without minimising the insights of critical theory, we can contain its paralysing force by eschewing any effort to define a great book or a classic with reference to some defining essence, whether aesthetic, ideological or historical. We can simply survey the bodies of texts that have come down to us in our few thousand years of written records and note that certain works, and not others, have demonstrated a capacity to illuminate the lives of many different kinds of people in many different historical circumstances. These works somehow transcended the conditions of their own creation they spoke within their time, but also beyond it. I dont need to understand much or anything, really about the political struggles of 14th-century Florence, ubiquitous as they are in Dantes Divine Comedy, to have that work inspire deeper reflection of my own humanity, beginning with its invocation of an individual reaching a crisis point in the life journey we all travel:

What makes Dante a candidate for literary greatness is not his immersion in the theology of the medieval Church, or in the factional intrigues of central Italys politics, but rather his capacity to reveal, in the midst of those trappings, something that is vitally meaningful to, say, a 21st-century, unbelieving Dominican living in the United States. By the same token, it is not Toni Morrisons immersion in the legacy of American chattel slavery that makes her novels arresting and yes, great but her ability to make that human experience alive and accessible to someone who has no historical connection to it. Great works are great because of an evident yet elusive capacity to illuminate our shared humanity. It is the mysterious quality found by a 15-year-old preacher in Harlem named James Baldwin in a course of reading that began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky and that brought about the crumbling of his Pentecostal faith.

One does not need to posit a metaphysical essence to human nature in order to recognise that all people share fundamental similarities from a specific biological organisation, to a specific genetic architecture, to specific forms of cognition, to the existential condition of living with the consciousness of death. The insights of critical theory can be retained without, at the same time, abandoning the ground upon which to form judgments about how works of art can illuminate our common human experience. And we can delight in the uncanny fact that art captures this communality precisely by foregrounding its opposites individuality, subjectivity and particularity.

A conspicuous aspect of our commonality and of its heterogeneousness stems from our experience of ourselves as autonomous individuals; beings capable of ordering our lives according to subjective conceptions of our own good. This capacity for self-determination puts front and centre, for all of us, the question at the heart of Platos Republic, arguably the founding text in Western philosophy.

In the opening pages of the Republic, one finds Socrates debating the sophist Thrasymachus about the nature of justice. Thrasymachus argues that justice is simply a function of power the advantage of the stronger and that those with power set the terms of what is considered just and unjust. The best course of action, argues Thrasymachus, is to behave justly in order to avoid the consequences of contravening a superior power, but to disregard norms of justice and seek ones own advantage whenever possible. Unwilling to submit to Socrates cross-examination, Thrasymachus then tries to leave the discussion, but Socrates begs him to stay, asking: do you think it a small matter to determine which whole way of life would make living most worthwhile for each of us? Here is the animating concern of the Republic and, indeed, the bottom-line question of both philosophy and religion.

In a story from the Pali canon, the ancient collection of Buddhist teachings, the Buddha frames this same question in a memorable way. During a visit by King Pasenadi of Kosala, the Buddha asks him about his whereabouts and the king replies I am paraphrasing Ive been doing typical kingly things, affairs of state and the like. The Buddha then poses the following scenario:

This messenger is followed by three more, from the west, the north and the south, each with the same dreadful news of an approaching cataclysm. Faced with such calamity, asks the Buddha, what should be done? King Pasenadi responds with platitudes: what else should be done but to live by the Dhamma, to live righteously, and to do wholesome and meritorious deeds? The Buddha then presents his at-once startling and self-evident teaching:

When teaching great books to Columbia undergraduates completing the same required Core Curriculum that I took 30 years ago and that consists, roughly, of canonical works in the Western tradition, I often ask them to bring this question When ageing and death are rolling in on you, what should be done? to the intellectual encounters they will have in the course. The question always resonates with students. It is true that they come to college to improve their employment prospects and to gain marketable skills, but they also come gripped by existential dilemmas and looking for a way to orient not just their careers but their lives.

Liberal education is not pursued in the service of disciplinary, professional or occupational goals

Liberal education is an approach to learning that foregrounds our existential condition. It takes seriously the idea that rational enquiry into the fundamental questions of life is a worthwhile endeavour for each of us. There is probably no more powerful tool for such an enquiry than open discussion, in small groups of dedicated readers, of seminal works from our literary and philosophical past.

In the US, most bachelors degrees include a nod to liberal education in the form of general education requirements a set of courses outside of a students major or concentration that is meant to provide a common foundation of knowledge and skills for all. General education is liberal in that it is not subordinate to any specific professional or vocational aim, but focuses on the general competencies required in all fields. But following the theoretical developments in the humanities that I have described above, general education programmes at most US colleges have devolved into a hodgepodge of distribution requirements, often aimed at little more than introducing students to a variety of academic disciplines outside the major. Yet liberal education is precisely an education that is not pursued in the service of disciplinary, professional or occupational goals. A disciplinary approach to liberal education comes close to an oxymoron, and all the more so when the humanities disciplines have largely abandoned the idea of rational enquiry into the human good as a form of education.

If the approach to liberal education that I am describing sounds like the traditional education of social elites, it is because liberal education does significantly resemble that. And this, by itself, is no grounds for rejecting it. In fact, to cast liberal education as a mere affect of privilege is precisely to perpetuate the structures of social power that have long plagued our unequal society, and to put crucial tools for social, political and personal agency beyond the reach of those who need it most.

My point is simple: give the underprivileged access to the cultural wealth that has long been the exclusive purview of the elite, and you will have given them the tools with which to subvert the social hierarchies that have kept them down. Beyond equipping them with marketable skills and the means for economic self-advancement, this deeper work of education is the most valuable gift that colleges and universities can give to young people. It is also the most valuable contribution they can make to a democratic society.

Original post:

Why the great books still speak for themselves, and for us - aeon.co

Toson Knight, dean of culture for East English Village High School.

The institution of slavery was a multi-trillion-dollar industry that laid the foundation for several economic factors that would lead to a massive chain reaction for African Americans. By todays standards, the economic value for Black bodies would equal more than $42 trillion for the year 1860 alone. The 400-year-old institution was just the start of economic fulfillment at the expense of Black populations in the United States.

From slavery to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights era until now, the financial impact Blacks have in America hold true to the economic structure of today. Though African Americans generate and have the ability to hinder cash flow through the country, they continue to fight for economic freedoms and wealth in America.

Toson Knight, dean of culture at East English Village High School has witnessed the impact of Americas economics on Black students. Often at a disadvantage, Black schools, teachers and communities have fewer resources severely lessening their chance at obtaining wealth.

With America and the way theyre making money, my biggest problem is that we need to see more of the money being poured into our communities; more of the money being poured into our education system, so that we can eventually benefit from it, said Knight. Of course theyre making the money off of us, but were not really benefiting.

The Civil Rights Movement is, in many ways, synonymous with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s legacy and his dream. Leading one of the most recognizable boycotts in the countrys history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King along with his camp of supporters was able to cost the city of Montgomery approximately $3,000 dollars daily during the 13-month long boycott thus showing the buying power African Americans held at that time.

In 1964, with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed racial segregation across the country, it was thought African Americans would have access to a more tangible piece of the countrys economic structure, but this proved to be more societal and racial propaganda. In 1966, still fighting for Black economic inclusion, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned an article for The Nation, a weekly newspaper, in which he stated in part:

Someone has been profiting from the low wages of Negroes. Depressed living standards for Negroes are a structural part of the economy. Certain industries are based upon the supply of low-wage, underskilled and immobile nonwhite labor.

This sentiment still holds true today. Though progress has been made since the publishing of the article, African Americans continue to grapple with economic inclusion proven by the widening of the racial wealth gap.

Overall, we are still lacking as it relates to our people being able to have access to wealth and we are also lacking as it relates to being able to set our people up where theyre able to get jobs and investments that will put them to a different level, said Knight.

In the same article, Dr. King mentions, Negroes are a structural part of the economy. Demands for equal pay, access to education and racial equality were just some of the issues the Civil Rights Movement worked toward solving. Advancing economic opportunities was one of the goals for Dr. King. Though integration of schools happened in 1954, equal education continues to be a hot topic.

Our educational system, and this is of course stemming back to the Civil Rights Movement, our educational system is poor. Its not properly funded and therefore our kids are not getting the proper education and resources to be able to get good paying jobs, said Knight.

More than 50 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination, Black communities continue to struggle to find their place in the American economy. Though responsible for much of the countrys financial success, Blacks see little of it in return leaving the question, are we closer to or further from Kings dream? As King said in his 1963 I Have a Dream speech:

America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

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Kings Dream: Economics, Education and Today - atlantadailyworld