Ombudsman finds systemic handling of labour disputes of migrants-Cypriot employers discriminatory
On 13.03.2010 the Ombudsman issued a report (Ref. Α/P 445/2006) entitled “Report of the Commissioner for Administration regarding the procedure for examining labour disputes between migrant workers and their employers” following several complaints against the procedure of the Labour Office in examining complaints of migrant workers against their employers. The complaints alleged delays in issuing decisions, the unequal and discriminatory treatment of migrants, the non-provision of interpreters during the hearing and other general malfunctioning of the process. In some cases when migrant workers complained to the police for violation of their employment contract, the police chose to take the case to the Criminal Court instead of referring it to the Labour office; when the migrant workers’ testimony was no longer needed, then they would be deported without their allegations having ever been investigated. At the level of the Labour Office procedure, the officials did not make the necessary effort to investigate the allegations of the migrant workers even for the most obvious contractual violations and viewed all allegations made by migrants with suspicion. By contrast, they took the employer’s allegations for granted without investigation, demonstrating a clear pro-employer bias even where the employer’s contractual violation were more than obvious. Often, the labour dispute was investigated without taking into consideration the position of power of the employer over the employee and the latter’s lack of choice when instructed by the employer to perform work outside his/her contractual obligations. Also, whilst compliance by migrants with the instructions of the immigration authorities is closely monitored, compliance by the employer is not. As a result, the sums due by the employer to the migrant often remained unpaid and the migrant worker was deported without being able to recover the sums due to him/her. The report concluded that the absence of a specific institutional framework for the resolution of these disputes has often led to the phenomena of racism and unlawful discrimination by the labour office officials against migrant workers who file complaints against their employers. Of particular concern are the inflexible regulations for the change of employer in the event of labour disputes, which often leads to the annulment of the migrant employees’ visas, their deportation and the placing of their names on the ‘Stop List’, which will prevent them from entering the country again.
