Rafi, a migrant worker in Lebanon’s waste sector, has a wife and two young daughters back home in Bangladesh who depend on his monthly remittances to pay for school, food and other needs.
But for the past five months, Rafi says he has been unable to send any money back home, because the private waste-management company for which he works, RAMCO, violated his work contract by effectively slashing his wages from $300 a month to just over $100.
“It’s a very big problem, I cant send my baby to school,” said Rafi, who asked Al Jazeera to refer to him by a pseudonym because he fears retribution.
Rafi is not alone in his hardships, or his anger. Faced with a similarly untenable position, some 400 RAMCO employees – mostly from Bangladesh and India – took the unprecedented decision last month to walk of the job until the company pays them what they are owed.
Though initially overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, the labour strike seeped into the headlines on May 12 when employees blocked roads outside RAMCO’s main housing and storage site on the outskirts of Beirut and prevented garbage trucks from leaving.
Riot police were called in. Videos and images that strikers shot at the scene and shared with Al Jazeera showed security forces deploying tear gas and beating strikers – a small contingent of whom vandalised company property. Some of the images showed cuts to workers’ arms and hands. One showed a man with severe bruises to his face.
An employee was arrested during the incident and remains in custody.
While some of the strikers have crossed the picket line and returned to work since the strike was called on April 3, at least 250 are standing their ground and refusing to go back on the job until their demands are met.
“In the history of Lebanon, I don’t think that migrant workers made a weeks-long strike and protested in such a way,” said Lea Bou Khater, a labour movement specialist and researcher at the Consultation and Research Institute.
Bou Khater sees the RAMCO strike as a potential watershed for one of Lebanon’s most marginalised communities.
Denied basic labour protections, migrant workers are frequently exploited by employers who pay below minimum wage and can deport those who step out of line.
“Their accommodation and food depends on their employer,” Bou Khater told Al Jazeera. “They can be deported, they are protesting and striking in very difficult conditions.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/long-marginalised-migrant-workers-lebanon-strike-pay-200519203511280.html