Werner Rügemer, Nachdenkseiten, 21/7/2022
Translated by Lena Bloch
Ukraine is corrupt — we know, doesn’t matter, it’s for the good cause. But the poorest and sickest population, country as a hub of Europe-wide low-wage and cigarette smuggling, world leader in trafficking of the female body — and more soldiers than any European NATO state.
When a statutory minimum wage was first introduced in Ukraine, in 2015, it was 0.34 euros, or 34 cents per hour. After that, it was increased: in 2017 it was 68 cents, in 2019 it was 10 cents more, which is still 78 cents, and since 2021 it has been 1.21 euros. Ever heard of it?
Even this lowest wage is not always paid
Of course, this doesn’t mean that this minimum wage is actually paid correctly in this state. Thus, for a full work week in 2017, the monthly minimum wage was 96 euros. But in the textile and leather industry, for example, this minimum wage for one-third of the mostly female workforce only came about through forced and not specifically paid overtime. Payment by the piece is also widespread — a certain number of shirts must be sewn in one hour; if this does not work out, unpaid reworking is required.
If there were no orders, unpaid leave was ordered. In many cases, the annual vacation due by law was not granted or not paid. Management prevented the election of employee representatives. With this minimum wage, people were far below the official subsistence level: It amounted to 166 euros in the year in question.
The Hunger Wage Chain from Ukraine to Neighboring EU Countries
There are about 2,800 officially registered textile companies, but also a presumably equally high number of unregistered small businesses. For decades, they have formed a normal shadow economy, often in small towns and villages.
Yet most of these companies rank only as second-class suppliers for the internationally better-connected low-cost producers in neighboring EU countries, especially in Poland, but also in Romania and Hungary.
Thus 41 percent of the shoes go as starvation-wage semi-finished goods from Ukraine first to the low-wage factories of Romania, Hungary and Italy: There they get the benign and beautiful label “Made in EU”.
Textile workers themselves can only afford second-hand imports from Germany
The majority of the approximately 220,000 textile workers are older women. They keep their heads above water only by subsistence farming, for example by having their own garden with a chicken coop. Diseases due to malnutrition are common.
The textile workers mostly buy their own clothes from second-hand imports, which come mainly from Germany, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA. Ukraine imports much more textiles than it exports.
The expensive Boss and Esprit imports from the rich EU West, which are pre-produced in Ukraine, are destined for the rich elite and the NGO bubble in Kiev — while the majority of imports are the cheapest second-hand textiles. The textile workers, as well as the majority of the population, can only afford the almost free disposable textiles from the rich states.[1]
But Western unions and “human rights activists” still look to Asia and Bangladesh for low-wage jobs in the textile industry that violate human rights. Although low wages in Ukraine are much lower. Also in the current discussions in the EU and in the German Bundestag about a supply chain law: There the view goes far out, globally, to Asia, while the EU-Ukrainian poverty chain is denied.
Here it sits, the corruption: C&A, Hugo Boss, Adidas, Marks&Spencer, New Balance, Esprit, Zara, Mexx are the profiting end users. They live from the exploitation which is against human rights. Here in the rich EU states sit the main players of corruption. Clammily they gleefully welcome the non-existent or complicit labor inspectorate of the Ukrainian state, and the EU covers the systemic labor injustice as well, with ritual hypocritical and inconsequential admonition of corruption in Ukraine.[2]
Automotive suppliers, pharmaceuticals, mechanical engineering
The textile and leather industries are similar to other sectors. Ukraine was a focal point of industrial production in the Soviet Union. After independence in 1991, oligarchs took over the companies, made profits, and put nothing into innovation. For Western companies, millions of well-qualified employees were available — at low wages.
Thousands of companies, mainly from the USA and EU countries — about 2,000 from Germany alone — placed subcontracting orders for rather simple parts: Porsche, VW, BMW, Schaeffler, Bosch and Leoni, for example, for car cables; pharmaceutical groups such as Bayer, BASF, Henkel, Ratiopharm and Wella have their products filled and packaged; Arcelor Mittal, Siemens, Demag, Vaillant, Viessmann maintain assembly and sales branches. Wages of two to three euros are paid here, i.e. more than the minimum wage, but still lower than in the neighboring EU countries of Hungary, Poland and Romania.
This is why the Ukrainian sites are closely networked with the sites of the same companies in these neighboring EU countries, where the statutory minimum wages are above 3 euros and below 4 euros. However, the networking is just as valid with the even poorer neighboring states of Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, which are not EU members. Branches are also operated here. In the course of the “Eastern Neighborhood”, organized by the EU, all differences of qualification, even lower payment are exploited — with Ukraine as a revolving door.
Labor migration in millions
This selective exploitation of locational advantages by Western capitalists has not led to national economic development, on the contrary. Ukraine became economically impoverished. The majority of the population has been made poorer and sicker. A mass reaction is labor migration.
It began early on. By the late 1990s, several hundred thousand Ukrainians had emigrated to Russia. Wages were not much higher, but in Russia excessive Westernization of lifestyles and increases in the cost of living for food, rent, health and government fees do not stick.
Since the 2000s, and accelerated by the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup, some 5 million Ukrainians have been migrant workers — about two million more or less permanently abroad, and about three million commuting to neighboring states. In particular, the Polish state, which in any case lays claim to western parts of Ukraine, encourages labor migration from Ukraine. About two million Ukrainians are employed in Poland, mainly in low-skilled jobs as cleaners, domestic helpers, waiters, caretakers for the elderly, and truck drivers. [3] In Poland, the business of employment agencies is also flourishing: they declare Ukrainians to be Polish citizens and place them as home care workers in Germany and Switzerland, for example: they pay the minimum wage there for a 40-hour week, but in reality the care workers have to be on call 24 hours a day, according to the contract with the Polish agency.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are also employed on a permanent basis, on a temporary basis or shuttling back and forth in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with minimum wages between 3.10 euros and 3.76 euros. Ukrainians are happy about this, even if they are pushed a bit below these minimum wages — it is still much better than in their home country, and the labor inspectorate says nothing and the EU says nothing either.
Students from Ukraine like to be engaged seasonal workers in EU agriculture. In Lower Saxony alone, there are about 7,000 students annually, who admittedly do not necessarily study, but enter with forged matriculation papers. Neither in Ukraine nor in Germany is there any control, as a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation found.[4]
Minimum wage in Lithuania: in 2015 it was 1.82 euros, five times higher than in Ukraine at the time; in 2020 it was 3.72 euros. The EU is promoting the development of Lithuania into a European freight forwarding center: with the help of artificial intelligence, cheap and willing truck drivers from third countries such as Ukraine and Moldova, but also from further afield such as the Philippines, are steered across Europe. They don’t need to learn any language; they receive their instructions via smartphone and navigator. For example, with the start of the war in Ukraine, trucking companies in Lithuania and Poland were suddenly short of over 100,000 truck drivers — from Ukraine, they were not allowed to leave because of military service.[5]
Women’s Poverty I: Forbidden Prostitution Flourishes
The patriarchal oligarch state of Ukraine has extremely deepened the inequality between men and women. With a 32 percent gender pay gap, Ukrainian women are in the very last place in Europe: on average, they receive one-third less pay than their male counterparts, and in the field of finance and insurance the figure is as high as 40 percent for the same work[6] — the EU average is 14 percent. Because of patriarchal stereotypes, women are also particularly often pushed into precarious part-time jobs, even more so than in Merkel’s Germany, which ranks second to last among EU countries in terms of discrimination against women.
This patriarchal poverty of women includes the prohibition of prostitution, which, however, particularly flourishes under these very conditions. Primary school teachers, who cannot get by on their 120 euros a month, are also among the estimated 180,000 women who work as prostitutes in Ukraine, divorced single women with children, the unemployed.
Because prostitution is forbidden, brothel operators earn money, as do police officers and cab drivers, because they have a good income through silence. Private apartments are also used, like the brothels in prime locations in the capital Kiev. Tourists are lured in — with 80 euros they are in. Eight services per night — not uncommon. A little less than half of the income remains with the women. Some hope for a transitional period of one, two or even three years. Often in vain. One-third become drug addicts, one-third are HIV-positive.[7]
After the “liberalization” of sexual services by the federal government of Schröder/SPD and Fischer/Greens, Germany became the “brothel of Europe”. The federally owned development agency GTZ advertised in its “Germany Travel Guide for Women” for Ukrainian women who now had good prospects in the sex business. Many came. Merkel’s Germany became the European center for commercial prostitution, the majority of which was also illegal and tolerated by the authorities — favorable conditions for women who did not come from an EU member state. So it stands to reason that pimps are now trying to recruit fleeing Ukrainian women already at the border in 2022.[8]
Women’s Poverty II: The Female Body as Exploitation Material
Ukraine is a pleasing location for Western companies to engage in practices that are otherwise forbidden, a thousandfold site for U.S.-led globalization. This is also true for the commercial use of the female body, far beyond illegal prostitution.
Ukraine is the global hot spot for industrial surrogacy, with more extensive “liberalization” than otherwise. Widespread female poverty provides an inexhaustible reservoir.
Vittoria Vita, La Vita Nova, Delivering Dreams or more prosaically BioTech — these are the names under which surrogacy agencies in Kiev and Kharkiv advertise their services and their women. Pretty, healthy Ukrainian women are offered in catalogs for wealthy foreigners. Between 39,900 and 64,900 euros are the prices for a healthy delivered baby. The wish child tourists come from the USA, Canada, Western Europe, and China.[9].
The intended parents couple delivers egg and sperm in one of the dozens of special clinics. They are fertilized in a test tube. Then the foreign embryo is implanted in the surrogate mother. The surrogate mother carries a genetically foreign child. This was developed in the USA, but it is much more expensive there: between 110,000 and 240,000 euros. In Ukraine it is less regulated. The woman carrying the child must not have anything to do genetically with the child, she is just a foreign tool that is to be forgotten immediately after use, no longer exists at all — and is ready for the next use for a completely different foreign couple.
The prices differ depending on whether the intended parents want a specific gender for their ordered baby or not: without a choice of gender, it costs 39,900 euros at BioTech, with two attempts at the desired gender it costs 49,900 euros, and with unlimited attempts it costs 64,900 euros. These offers include hotel accommodation, issuance of birth certificate and passport in the German consulate. So far, more than 10,000 such babies have been delivered worldwide.
The surrogate mother — a surrogate mother company bears the appropriate name: Surrogacy Ukraine — receives a monthly bonus of between 300 and 400 euros during pregnancy; after successful delivery of the product, the bonus is increased to 15,000 euros. If there is a miscarriage, the child is disabled or its adoption is refused, the surrogate mothers get nothing. Their psychological condition is not taken into account, and there is no social security against damage to their health. There are no studies on the long-term consequences.
