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 GermanyThe
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 MaterialUkraine
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.
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