Interviewed by WF
The Hong Kong Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Unions (FADWU) is a federation composed of local and migrant domestic workers (MDWs) unions in Hong Kong, with the membership of its numerous affiliate unions comprising of Hongkonger, Thai, Nepalese, Filipino, and Indonesian domestic workers. FADWU was founded in 2010, and is itself an affiliate of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF).
Recently, FADWU organised a press conference calling attention to the Hong Kong Immigration Department’s crackdown on “job hopping” practices among MDWs in Hong Kong. MDWs deemed to be engaged in “job hopping”, which can be loosely characterised as the practice of switching from one employer to another before the end of their two-year contract with their current employer, have had their visa applications rejected even in cases where the MDW has secured a new employer willing to sponsor their visa application.
We interviewed Ratih, the chairperson of Union of United Domestic Workers, and Fish, IDWF’s regional coordinator for Asia, about the MDW situation in Hong Kong and the Immigration Department’s crackdown on “job-hopping” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Q: Since when did the government start paying attention to “job hopping” among MDWs? Did it have to do with the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic?
Ratih: Even before COVID-19, the government has been targeting “job hopping” cases. I remember that the government started to pay significant attention to “job hopping” during 2013. Since the pandemic, there have been many more cases of the government rejecting visas to MDWs due to “job hopping”. This year the number of rejection increased nine times more than the previous year, and in the first six months of this year, 72% of the applications were rejected, please see our press release for more information.
Q: What is the definition of “job hopping”? Is it when a MDW terminates their employment contract early?
Ratih: It not only refers to the breaking of the employment contract, but that the employer also terminated the contract without a clear reason. In some “job hopping” cases that we had to deal with, the employer did not provide a reason for the termination of the contract to the Immigration Department. As a result, we have to help the MDW write up a chronology of their employment explaining why they sought to terminate their contract early and send that to the Immigration Department. Many MDWs don’t get enough food, and sometimes the employers’ kids beat the worker, which is something they don't want to report to their employment agency. When they do file a report to the agency, the agency usually says “it’s OK la, you finish your contract with this employer and after you finish we find a better employer for you la”.
Q: As I understand it, the mechanism for the termination of a contract involves the MDW, their employer, and the employment agency. If the employer wants to terminate the contract, they are supposed to pay compensation to the worker.
Ratih: Yes.
Q: And when the worker wants to break the contract, the Immigration Department will say that they will not renew your visa if you break your contract?
Ratih: If a worker fights with their employer and breaks their contract, then attempts to find another employer and re-applies for a work visa, the Immigration Department often refuses to issue the new visa. In some rejection letters for visa applications we’ve seen, the explanation is that the MDW has not completed the two-year contract, and as a result, they must return home to their country of origin first before returning to Hong Kong as a newcomer.
Owing to the two week rule, MDWs have 14 days to find a new employer after their contract is terminated. But if the Immigration Department rejects their visa application, they have to return to their home country.
In one case, the elderly employer of a MDW died, which terminated her contract. Even though her former employers and her prospective employer sent letters to the Immigration Department vouching for her, her visa application was still rejected.
Q: Has this resulted in any cases where people are detained at the Castle Peak Bay Immigration Centre (CIC)?
Ratih: No.
Q: So if their visa application is not renewed, are they just deported? That is, they will not be detained at CIC prior to deportation.
Ratih: During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of flights were cancelled. During that time, which was around two to three months in 2020, we visited some MDWs detained at CIC because their contract had ended but there were no flights back and they didn't know any way to apply for an extension of stay from the Immigration Department within the two week timeframe. Some don't know how to approach unions for assistance. The two week timeframe is very short, and some who don't know anything end up overstaying. During the two weeks, if you know how to apply for an extension of stay, the Immigration Department will grant you extensions of up to three months. The extension can't be further extended. In 2020, because there were no flights and the borders were closed, the Immigration Department was routinely giving out extensions of up to three months. During that time, many MDWs would try to find new work in Hong Kong.
Agencies don't like the MDWs who stay in Hong Kong to find new work. They love the new arrivals who they can overcharge the most (1). Those who are already in Hong Kong begin to know their rights under law, and those who find new employers don't have to pay the agency as much. Even though Indonesian law forces MDWs to go through an agency to find an employer, if the MDW knows how to argue and haggle, the most they have to give up is 10% of their first month’s salary. But if they can't find an employer, they will have to find work via the employment agency. The agencies run boarding houses, and they charge for board.
In general, agencies are not on the side of the MDWs. To them, you are both a consumer with little bargaining power and a product.
Moreover, agencies make money from both sides of the transaction when a MDW signs a contract with a new employer. Agencies have to compete against each other for business, meaning that they have to compete to attract Hongkongers employers, to whom they make many promises, such as the option to change the MDW free of charge if the employer doesn’t like them. Some agencies say a lot of stuff to undermine the trust between an employer and their MDW; for example, they advise the employer to keep or withhold the MDW’s passport or else they'll use it to work illegally or borrow money.
Fish: From the employer’s perspective, they’re hiring a person to live in their home with their family. Normally, this kind of situation creates a lot of concern and worry for the employer: a complete stranger from abroad who will be living in their home, alongside their kids and elderly parents.
This means that the employer is already wary of the stranger in their home. The employment agencies take advantage of this inherent wariness to encourage the employer to keep their MDW under close supervision.
Fish: On 22 June 2022, FADWU sent a letter to the Immigration Department to discuss the “job hopping” problem (2). They said that the most complaints are from employers saying that MDWs are job hopping. We believe that “job hopping” has become a catch-all term which dissatisfied employers use when they have a bone to pick with their previous MDW: because the employer does not like the MDW, they tell the Immigration Department that the MDW is probably engaged in “job hopping”.
It’s a strange phenomenon where society disparages MDWs for engaging in “job hopping”. It’s not a legal offence nor a term that appears in Hong Kong’s labour laws, because in a free market economy, the idea is that an employer can choose employees and vice versa. There is supposed to be the freedom of choice on both sides of the employment relationship.
In Immigration Department policy, they do define the premature termination of contract as the termination of the contract within 2 years prior to the contract’s end. However, the only time the term “job hopping” appears is in government department press releases, and also in the emails they send to MDWs when they reject their visa applications.
Q: How long after the termination of their contract do MDWs have to find a new employer?
Fish: Once the contract has been terminated, you only have two weeks left to stay in Hong Kong. Even though the MDW may have found a new employer, the Immigration Department will not grant them a new visa within two weeks. The visa application process usually takes six to eight weeks. If the new employer really puts pressure on the Immigration Department, then the Immigration Department might hurry up. Even if the MDW gives one month’s notice to their old employer and has found a new employer before they leave their old employer, all this before the two weeks time frame after the termination of their contract, the window of time to get everything done in order to remain in Hong Kong is still extremely tight.
The Immigration Department’s line is that once the contract ends, a MDW must return to their home country. This increases costs for both the MDW and the employer. The employment agency will charge both the MDW and the employer expensive agency fees. That the MDW has been forced to return home means that prospective employers can only conduct interviews online. But in-person interviews are most advantageous to employers.
Ratih: One friend I know worked for 16 months until being fired by her employer, but was able to find a new employer. However, the Immigration Department rejected her visa application. 8 months later, having returned home, they found a new employer in Hong Kong but their visa application was also rejected. The MDW doesn’t know why their visa was rejected; they sent a chronology of their original employment to the Immigration Department but are still in the dark.
Is the rejection permanent? What did I do wrong? It's all very unclear.
This has a chilling effect on MDWs that makes them very afraid. If they get terminated, does this mean they can't get a new visa forever once they’re forced to return home? The fear of this makes them willing to endure abuse at the hands of their employers.
Some elderly employers make a habit of physically beating their MDW, but because the MDW is afraid of not getting a visa if they leave halfway through their contract, they endure the beating and verbal abuse in the hopes of making it through the two years contract.
Even if the MDW reports abuse to the Immigration Department, their investigation is usually biased towards employers. The Immigration Department rarely asks the workers their side of the story, or about how the employer treated them at home.
We had a case where a MDW whose contract was prematurely terminated wasn’t able to get their work visa renewed. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the global restrictions on travel, they couldn’t return home and ended up sleeping on the streets for a while. When they tried to appeal the Immigration Department’s decision on their visa application, they documented the reasons why they decided to terminate their contract with their previous employer early. They sent the Immigration Department photos of their sleeping situation where they had to sleep in the kitchen. Because of this, they lost a lot of weight in a short period of time due to not being able to sleep well in the kitchen. A lot of MDWs are forced by their employers to sleep in the kitchen and the toilet. This means that if the employer gets up at night to go to the toilet or the kitchen appliances, the MDW’s sleep gets disturbed as a result. We all know how small Hong Kong apartments are. There’s no space, and no privacy.
In this case, the Immigration Department didn’t seem to consider the MDW’s account of her poor living conditions under her previous employer as a valid justification for the premature termination of her contract. However, in a lot of cases, the Immigration Department seems to give considerable weight to complaints filed by employers against their former MDWs in accepting or rejecting visa applications. The whole process is very opaque, and we think it’s biased against MDWs whose side of the story is often ignored.
Q: Are the employment agencies which connect MDWs with prospective employers in Hong Kong offering any help?
Ratih: Most agents will not help. For an Indonesian MDW who has to return to their home country, they will need to go through an agent to find a new employer in Hong Kong. This means they’ll have to pay a lot of agency fees like the first time they came to work in Hong Kong. The fees range from 3,000 to 4,000 Hong Kong Dollars (HKD) every month for five to six months.
When they get into trouble with their employer, most MDWs contact their employment agency for help. In some online forums for Indonesian MDWs, their first recourse upon getting fired by an employer is to reach out to their employment agency. This is because they don’t know their rights under Hong Kong law, or alternate sources of recourse.
On Sundays and public holidays, FADWU tries to do outreach among MDWs. We tell them that we can help, and that they can help themselves by joining a union, but many MDWs choose to sleep at home or on the streets on their holidays simply because they are exhausted from working long hours and need the time to rest. So they choose to rest rather than to talk to us
Q: What happens to the union when MDWs who have been in Hong Kong and with the union for many years decide to return home? Does this lack of permanence negatively affect organising and continuity of practices and experiences within the union?
Fish: If a MDW union member goes home, they can still choose to remain in the union.
Ratih: Some MDWs don’t want to join the union, since they will be going back home in the future anyway. Some MDW leaders, like FADWU’s chair, have a lot of experience and want to keep doing union organising work and help other MDWs in Hong Kong. But sometimes they don’t have a choice, and can’t choose to not go back. When good leaders leave the union, there are lasting negative consequences.
For example, unions usually elect an executive committee once every two years. For a union in Hong Kong, you need the treasurer, the chairperson, and the secretary from the executive committee to attend in person in order to change the union’s bank details.
For MDWs, they must first ask for a holiday from their employer, since banks are closed on Sundays which is the only day off during the week for MDWs.
If a member of the executive committee has to go home, this creates a lot of administrative inconvenience for the union.
These additional obstacles to opening a bank account are seriously detrimental to MDW unions. It was cited as an incident of political suppression when Joshua Wong’s Demosistō organisation was unable to open a bank account in the past. Local Hongkonger trade unionists may only be able to open bank accounts in their union’s name if they go to smaller banks. MDWs face even more additional obstacles on top of this.
Another practical obstacle standing in the way of MDW organising, and union organising in Hong Kong generally, is the lack of public recognition or understanding of unions as a legitimate form of civil society organisation. The Hong Kong Community Chest as well as many non-governmental organisations require proof of a union’s tax-exempt status under Section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance [colloquially known as an “88 permit”] before giving you financial aid or letting you borrow their premises to use as a community space. There were some initiatives that wanted to teach MDWs’ organisations to use Facebook to promote their activities, but had to turn us down because those organisations could not show that they had an “88 permit”.
The thing is that unions in Hong Kong are tax-free organisations already, so us not having an “88 permit” shouldn’t be a concern. However, even banks and community centres ask us for an “88 permit” because they aren’t aware of this fact.
Q: Are there some MDWs who want to settle in Hong Kong, but are prevented from doing so because MDWs are explicitly excluded from the rule that permanent residency in Hong Kong is automatically gained upon continuous residence in Hong Kong for a period of seven years?
Ratih: Most MDWs want to go home, but they still have to think about the union they’re leaving behind.
In 2011, there was a judicial review case brought by a MDW which failed because Article 23 of the Basic Law excludes MDWs and unskilled labourers from applying for residency even if they have been ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for seven years.
In this case, the judicial review claimant was a migrant worker who was going to take over their boss’s business and had their boss’s support, but the court still rejected the migrant worker’s claim.
At the time, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) launched a massive campaign opposing the reform of the law to no longer exclude MDWs from acquiring the right to residence like other immigrants. The rhetoric they used was that MDWs who gained residency would end up stealing taxpayers’ welfare benefits. The DAB still uses this issue to rouse support from the upper-middle classes.
This rhetoric is not only deeply discriminatory, but illogical as well. Hong Kong imports MDWs because they need a skilled workforce to look after children and the elderly. Why is the experience and value that MDWs contribute to Hong Kong’s society and economy not recognised?
Moreover, if a MDW gives birth to a child in Hong Kong, that child won’t automatically gain residency status either. A couple who worked for the same employer had a child in Hong Kong, but their child was denied permanent residency status. This only happens to MDWs; children given birth to by immigrants from mainland China become permanent residents of Hong Kong even if their parents are not permanent residents.
Fish: It’s very hard to assert that the right to residency should be a universal or basic right, because that will lead to a lot of attack and opposition from wider Hong Kong society.
When we held the press conference on “job-hopping”, we received a lot of hate mail and angry emails from employers, who made threats such as lowering the wages of their MDWs in response to our speaking out.
Ratih: We pointed out that “job-hopping” is nonsense. Some MDWs are forced to leave their contract early because of the abusive or unacceptable behaviour of their employers. That is, the employer abused the MDW to the point that she had to leave for her own safety. In any other situation, this would be a clear-cut case of constructive dismissal. Workers are entitled to the right to leave their job or to switch jobs, but if a MDW is forced to leave Hong Kong within two weeks of their contract being terminated, how can they fight their constructive dismissal case at the Labour Tribunal?
The rhetoric from the business establishment is that MDWs who leave their contracts early are “princesses” engaged in “job-hopping”, and who are taking advantage of the system. Employers have the right to endlessly fire and replace their MDW, so why don’t MDWs have the right to resign and replace their employer?
Normally, if an employee has the ability to job-hop this is seen as a positive thing. It’s a sign that the employee is talented and has some amount of bargaining power in the job market. So why is it a problem that MDWs want to find better salaries and better working conditions? It’s not a crime to aspire to a better job.
Q: What difficulties do MDWs face after they end their contract?
Ratih: the MDW bears most of the cost. They have to find a temporary place to live after being kicked out of their employer’s home. They’re usually saddled with agency fees, and are faced with new fees that will increase their debt to the agency. Then there’s the uncertainty about their new employer, if they manage to find one.
If they return to their home country, they will have to wait for at least six months before returning to work in Hong Kong. There’s the time lost to quarantine, and the expenses of getting properly vaccinated and doing COVID PCR tests. Upon arrival in Hong Kong, many MDWs find themselves in the position of having to pay for their own quarantine in a hotel, and employers often cut the wages of MDWs in proportion to the time spent in quarantine.
Many freshly-arrived MDWs don’t know who to turn to if they encounter a bad employer. Their only recourse is their employment agency, who usually tells them to suck it up and serve out the remainder of their two-year contract.
Q: Do the governments of MDWs’ home countries provide them support in times of need?
Ratih: The interchange of MDWs between different countries doesn’t only involve MDWs, employers, employment agencies, and the destination country government, but the home country governments as well.
One problem facing MDWs is that the sending countries like Indonesia have no bargaining power against the destination country, nor are they particularly interested in driving a hard bargain because their economies are reliant on remittances from MDWs. For example, one third of Sri Lanka’s Gross Domestic Product comes from overseas remittances. It’s a similar story with the Philippines. At the same time, these sending countries don’t benefit from this relationship of outsourcing labour abroad – it causes a lot of brain drain and the loss of a skilled workforce.
Q: Do MDW organisations carry out political advocacy work in their home countries?
Ratih: Yes, they do have unions in their home country as well. But these unions can only influence government policy in Indonesia, and they have almost no influence on the Hong Kong government. Where the MDW works is where their interests lie. No matter how hard they fight in their home country, it’s what happens in the destination country that matters.
The most they can do is to get their government to bargain a bit harder on behalf of their MDWs, but we were once told by a consulate worker that they’d sent a list of demands from MDWs, including fixed hourly wages, to the destination country government, only to receive no response.
Poor countries cannot stand up to rich countries. That’s the nature of the power dynamic that MDWs are situated in.
Q: Ratih, why did you become involved with FADWU?
Ratih: When I first came to Hong Kong, I did not know my rights. I worked for two years without any holidays and my employer didn’t pay my wages fully. This was in 2004. Back then, there were no unions, but now, there are a lot of MDWs’ organisations.
In 2015, I encountered some trouble with my visa, with complications on both the side of the Indonesian consulate and the Hong Kong Immigration Department. One of my friends introduced me to FADWU, who helped me with my case. Afterwards, I began volunteering to help with FADWU’s case work.
I think that employers’ attitudes towards MDWs haven't changed that much. In many cases I’ve had to deal with, the employers treat their MDW really badly. Still, we will continue to work hard.
On Sundays, which is the sole day off for MDWs, we do outreach in Shatin and Mei Foo in the areas where MDWs congregate. We enquire about their relationship with their employer, and inform them of their rights and their employers’ obligations to them. We also organise workshops about Indonesian and Hong Kong labour law, as well as on HIV and AIDS.
Not only do we want to help MDWs, but also to train MDWs to know their own legal rights and make them able to help other MDWs and help the union become a voice in society.
We provide training for MDWs, but in a union there’s also a lot of learning by doing. MDWs in the union have to do very hard work – they work six days a week, then they volunteer with the union on their sole day off, receiving calls, often from very needy or panicked MDWs in dire need of help.
Fish: We have to involve MDWs in our work, and show them that their actions lead to success. People like Ratih, who have faced abuse and want to make a difference, are who we need. The first step is finding these workers who want to voice out, and then find some matter on which they can make their voice heard.
Even to speak to a room full of reporters at a press conference, like the one we did to talk about “job-hopping”, takes experience and confidence.
The most prominent tactic a union can employ is a strike, but strikes don’t happen out of nowhere. They require the building of bonds and connections with workers over many years. Only then, when a crisis arises, can there be a possibility of strike.
For example, it took a decade’s worth of persistent organising work among Hong Kong’s metal bar bender construction workers to build the conditions for a strike.
During the pandemic, MDWs who gathered in public spaces on their day off were fined by inspectors of the Health Department on the grounds that they violated social gathering restrictions. We started discussions with MDWs on Facebook pages, and we found out that there were a lot of these cases that were happening to other MDWs. On this issue, we were able to mobilise people.
If you have a spokesperson who can do everything on behalf of the worker, then the workers won’t have any incentive to do it by themselves, for themselves. It’s hard for workers to put their head on the line and to step into the limelight. Workers’ reliance on District and Legislative Councillors in Hong Kong makes workers feel that there’s no need to unionise
What can students do? Society sees you as students, and people feel that there is a kind of naivety and genuineness to students which makes them feel that it is normal for students to fight against injustice. So they take students’ activism at face value and rarely suspect ulterior or selfish motives. But now, the government and the political establishment are targeting students’ organising and activism.
The dockworkers’ strike in 2013 was the first strike in recent years that enjoyed widespread support from society. On the other hand, the Kowloon Motor Bus company drivers’ union’s work-to-rule industrial action in 2018 received a lot of criticism from the public, especially commuters who were affected. The Hospital Authority Employee Alliance’s strike in early 2020 enjoyed public support.
MDWs are dispersed across individual households. This makes them hard to organise due to the completely atomised nature of their workplace. Moreover, the opponent of a MDWs’ strike is not an exploitative company or an oppressive boss, but the community at large – that is, their employer, most of whom are middle-class Hongkongers. As a result, we are forced to frame our struggle as against government policy rather than employers.
Footnote:
(1)For the agency fee please visit FADWU research
(2)The Immigration Department replied:
“While valuing much the contributions made by FDHs to Hong Kong’s society and economy, the Government takes a serious view on the problem of abuse in changing employers through the arrangement for premature contract termination (commonly known as "job-hopping"). Job-hopping undermines employment relationship and leads to unfairness and inconvenience to the employers.”
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