There would be astounding double irony if the giant technology firm Apple can help to put a stop to one of the most pernicious and blatant problems of human trafficking in Thailand. But that is what the US firm pledged last month. It specifically named Thais as one of the most victimised groups of contracted workers.
Apple said it considers recruitment fees paid by workers to be a form of bondage or slavery and vowed to work to stamp them out. This is despite the fact that Apple has no direct ties to Thai industry or labour. And it is a slap in the face of government policy which actually encourages recruitment fees, which put Thai workers in debt so deep that they are effectively in bondage for months or even years.
Apple has taken heavy criticism in the past couple of weeks. The company is one of the most profitable in the world, but its profits come from the sweat on the brows of hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly Asian. While the iPhone, iPod and iPad sell millions of units a month, many of the workers who assemble the products cannot afford to buy what they make.
Apple has hit back hard in the battle of PR machines. But long before the current media battles, Apple had begun its own programme to find abusive factories and abused workers. Last month, the firm issued a little-noticed 27-page progress report on its "Apple Supplier Responsibility", an initiative seeking to employ decent labour standards and fair wages. It is easy to be cynical about Apple's intentions, but the company has made progress. Apple now has promised to take up the issue of recruitment fees. This could prove a major boon to Thai workers. Recruitment agencies, some of which seem little better than enforcement gangs, have long collected breathtakingly high fees from poor workers. The Apple report correctly put it this way: "Apple views recruitment fee overcharges as debt-bonded labour, or involuntary labour."
The Bank of Thailand recently studied nearly 162,000 Thais who work overseas. Around 12,000 are skilled or trained managers, professionals or technicians. The vast majority, or about 150,000, work at jobs requiring relatively little training or skills. By working overseas, these men and women earn more than they can make at home. But work on farms, on industrial assembly lines and on various types of construction projects is often just subsistence work because of the necessity to repay the recruiting companies.
And it is clear the central bank vastly understates the numbers. Many, probably most, overseas Thai workers never even ask for government permission to go overseas to work _ and sign away their own economic freedom with the recruitment companies. A two-year study by the Prince of Songkla University, for example, found 200,000 Thai workers in Malaysia alone, who remit at least 300 million baht a year to Thailand.
The central bank also estimated that about two million migrants _ legal and illegal _ work in Thailand. About 90% hold jobs that are generally too menial for Thais, too low-paid, or both. Almost all lack special skills, training or education. These foreigners, however, are often indebted to job agents, and stand to benefit from any future enforcement of anti-trafficking laws which clamp down on excessive acts and fees which border on slavery.
Apple's attention towards Thai workers is most welcome. One hopes this important and powerful company will do what the government should have done long ago. Charging workers recruitment fees should have been abolished long ago.