documentation of wage theft cases against Filipino migrant workers and other migrant workers for other partners
CMA and member organizations of Migrant Forum in Asia commit to collect disaggregated data for cases of wage theft against repatriated migrant workers under the global campaign for justice for migrant workers against wage theft. With collected data, member States and the international governmental bodies will be informed of the scale of wage theft cases that robbed migrants of their earned benefits that they could have used for the family's upkeep, including start up capital for livelihood and reintegration projects. The context of Covid-19 pandemic further exacerbated a situation that is already deplorable and unjust, impacting the deepest on low-waged men and women migrant workers in domestic work, construction, sales and services, fishery and the like-- workers who are already receiving wages that are way below the floor levels, as confirmed by the ILO December 2020 studies on pay gaps which revealed that migrant workers, on average receive 12.6% less salaries compared to local workers. This pay gap is much higher in the case of so-called low-skilled migrant workers at 71% less. With collected data, member States and the International Governmental Bodies can agree to our recommendation to set up an International Claims Commission that will International Claims Commission, administered jointly by the ILO and the IOM and with civil society taking part in it, that will address grievances, claims and labour disputes of worker victims of wage theft and to provide equitable remedies. The ICC may be administered jointly by IOM and ILO. To facilitate the work of the ICC, sub-commissions at regional and national levels may be set up to facilitate the process of disbursements from a Compensation Fund that will accompany the ICC and will be sourced from the GCM's Multi-Partner Trust Fund. The availability of a compensation fund will incentivize many more victims of wage theft to come forward. Justice for wage theft is one substantive way to move the GCM agenda forward.
