What Qatar chose is a system where a worker is owned by his employer. When your employer forces you to live in squalor, makes you work longest hours in extreme heat, doesn't allow you to change jobs, doesn't pay your wages on time, abuses you physically and psychologically, you have no way out, you can't leave. You are trapped.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the severe exploitation and lack of freedom faced by workers in oppressive labor systems.
This quote by Sharan Burrow emphasizes the dire conditions that workers can find themselves in under exploitative employment systems. It illustrates the profound power imbalance where workers are effectively owned by their employers, leading to abusive work environments, reduced freedom, and inhumane living conditions. Through this statement, Burrow draws attention to the urgent need for workers' rights and the dismantling of oppressive systems that trap individuals in cycles of abuse and exploitation.
In practice
During a seminar on labor rights, this quote can illustrate the impact of oppressive systems on workers.
When corporations refuse to practice due diligence by not establishing grievance mechanisms for remedy of abuses against the hidden 94% of their workforce in their global supply chains, they perpetuate a depraved model of profit-making that has driven inequality to a level now seen as a global risk in itself.
There is no doubt that the participation of women in the workforce is a serious productivity boost, but to enable this ambition, there must be investment in care - child care, aged care, disability care, health, and education - which are essential social support structures to enable women to work.
Many countries do not allow women to convey their nationality to their children - if they are single mothers, the children become stateless.
Yes, I am very unhappy, extremely anguished at human rights violations against Kashmiris in India or against Rohingyas in Burma or, for that matter, Christians in Orissa; but obviously, I am going to be more concerned of violations taking place in my own house because I am closer to the people who I live with. I have more passion for them.
Twenty-five million people who live in North Korea are denied freedom in every respect of their lives. In short, they are hostages. Imagine 25 million hostages.
The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode . . . .
The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view.
Women's rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda, trained on the equal dignity and ability to live in freedom all people should enjoy.
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