Andy Hall - Migrant workers rights activist

Media About Me and My Work

2024

2023

2021

2018

2017

2016

2015 

2014

2013

Main Media Citations/Quotes

2024

Andy Hall said:

“This high profile Pengerang abuse case required a deterrent kind of settlement within the justice and law enforcement systems to show the government and judiciary took seriously its duty to crack down on this organised crime syndicate that is trafficking Bangladeshi victims into Malaysia. This result is not the strong punishment against the perpetrators that was committed by the ministers in the latest joint press conference,”

 

2023

Andy Hall said:

“Migrant workers migrating to dangerous conflict zones in search of work, with little protection and legal enforcement, has been a big issue for decades”

The Media said:

“In a strikingly similar case, a pineapple processing company in southern Thailand filed multiple criminal and civil charges against British labour activist Andy Hall in 2013 over a report he helped research which alleged that the company had mistreated its workers.

The trials and appeals went back and forth, alternately finding Mr Hall guilty and not guilty, sometimes overturning these verdicts, for seven years, eventually forcing the activist to leave Thailand because he said the endless court appearances were preventing him from working.”

Andy Hall said:

“The farms, supermarkets, recruiters and law enforcement in both countries needed to make a concerted effort to address the allegations. 

Passing the buck and claiming a lack of primary remit or responsibility for solving these cross-border issues by any of these actors in either country must stop.” 

Andy Hall said:

“Migrant workers are too often excluded and forgotten from most global conversations about the climate crisis even though they are clearly one of the most vulnerable groups at risk,”

The Media said:

“The high profile case of Andy Hall, a workers rights campaigner who was sued by a fruit company, definitely sent a chilling message to anyone trying to expose firms abusing their workers.”

In both articles Andy Hall said:

“These workers are at high risk of forced labour and severe destitution,”

 

2022

The Media said:

“Despite Malaysia being relatively economically advanced, its migration, labour and employment policies continue to mirror that of developing countries”

The Media said:

“Labour rights activist Andy Hall, who filed the petition to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to investigate Supermax, has said his interviews with the firm’s workers showed the workers paid high recruitment fees – which resulted in debt bondage – faced unlawful wage deductions and lived in cramped conditions.”

The Media said:

“Central Medicare also explained how it is currently identifying former workers, with the help of its recently contracted adviser, Andy Hall, to secure their reimbursements. It raised its basic wage to 1,300 ringgit from the country’s minimum wage, 1,200 ringgit, starting from January 2022, an 8 percent basic wage increase.”

 

2021

Andy Hall Said: 

“According to recent US customs records, Brightway Group is a significant supplier of gloves to both Ansell and Kimberly Clarke Corporation (KCC), two of the world’s largest gloves and personal care companies to whom I have also complained about appalling conditions at Brightway Group since early 2020,” 

Andy Hall said: 

“The risks of a failed or corrupt recruitment process to Malaysia’s government and industry reputation at this time, already reeling from U.S. forced labour sanctions and a blackened image globally, are real,”

The Media said:

“The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) opened an investigation into ATA in April over unethical recruitment practices and poor working and living conditions, according to independent labour rights activist Andy Hall, who sought the inquiry. He showed Reuters a letter dated April 19 from the agency informing him of the investigation. CBP declined to comment.”

The Media said:

“The activist, Andy Hall, shared a letter the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had sent him informing him it had agreed to investigate an ATA unit after he flagged complaints received from workers.”

The Media said:

“From rock bottom four years ago, much of Malaysia’s glove industry has embarked on efforts to achieve greater transparency and better conditions”

Andy Hall said:

“I welcome the decision to lift the ban in light of the considerable improvements in foreign workers living and working conditions at Top Glove”.

Andy Hall said:

“We’ve seen so many of the workers in the industry during the COVID working every single day, so they’ve been working in excess of what’s allowed under Malaysian law and definitely what’s allowed under international standards,”

Andy Hall said:

“I crucially continue to engage IOI directly on specific issues of concern relating to forced labour risks in its operations,” 

The Media said:

“The Edge cited two letters sent by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to labour rights activist Andy Hall, who petitioned the agency to investigate the firms. In both letters, the CBP said it has sufficient information to “investigate the merits” of Hall’s allegations,” 

Andy Hall said:

“Top Glove remains an unethical company which prioritizes profits and production efficiency over the welfare and basic rights of its workers.”

Andy Hall said:
 
“CBP’s decision should be a wake-up call to the rest of Malaysia’s rubber gloves industry because much more needs to be done to combat the systemic forced labor of foreign workers that remains endemic in factories across Malaysia.”

Andy Hall said:

“CBP decision should be a “wake-up call” to labour-intensive industries, the government and customers. Top Glove’s investors now urgently need to be held to account also as it is the company’s owners and investors who have profited most handsomely from this failure to combat forced labour,”

Andy Hall said:

“Activists from NGOs, trade unions and community groups need to be able to undertake their important and independent work in promoting responsible corporate conduct in societies across the world, without fear of legal action.

Companies that are receptive to constructive criticism and seek to engage openly and transparently with civil society actors, whatever their views, will surely have available to them stronger and more sustainable due diligence processes to combat human rights risks in their operations and supply chains in the long run, than those that engage in litigation.

Specifically, SPD can also now re-focus its efforts on ensuring that any indicators of forced labour amongst its own foreign workforce are investigated and remediated in a worker-centric and fully transparent way.

As this legal action for discovery has now been withdrawn, I have decided to continue to work alongside the SDP Board and Impactt as a member of SDP’s Expert Stakeholder Human Rights Assessment Commission, in contributing to support further moves by SDP towards a situation where it’s operations are considered free of systemic forced labour as soon as possible.”

Andy Hall said:

 “Nepal and Qatar’s governments need to urgently come with a transparent, legal and ethical agreement that ensures the upcoming increase in recruitment of security personnel needed for the FIFA World Cup 2022 can be undertaken in a way that prevents the systemic extortion of the candidates involved. Recruitment must be legal and ethical with all costs borne by the Qatari state or Qatari employers.”

 

2020

Andy Hall said:

“Migrant workers across Asia continue to remain at high risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 due to their inability to practice social distancing both at their labor intensive workplaces and at their crowded and often insanitary living accommodation,”

Andy Hall said:

“The U.S. sanctions are translating into real impact and real money into workers’ pockets in remediation and remedy, which is really important.”

Andy Hall said:

“To hire foreign laborers, Malaysian rubber glove companies rely on recruitment agencies and subagents in the workers’ home countries, with whom they sign contracts containing hiring targets, sometimes through another layer of intermediary agencies located in Malaysia”

“There is often a single bathroom and toilet for up to 25 workers, so they have to get up 2 or 3 hours before work to queue up for these facilities”.

Andy Hall said:

“These laws can easily be used maliciously or inappropriately in a variety of ways. No one wins from this situation where expensive cases drag on for years thereby also clogging up the court systems.”

Andy Hall said:

“There would be close monitoring by multiple stakeholders across [Top Glove] sites to see whether orders are shifted to get around the CBP. 

Top Glove will find it hard to sidestep the impact of the ban given the severity of the challenges facing the company’s reputation now.”

Andy Hall said:

“It’s a terrible situation. Many people come to Malaysia from Bangladesh owing up to US$5000 in recruitment fees, from Myanmar and Nepal owing US$1000 or US$1500. This means they can work for months, or sometimes years, just to pay back that debt.” 

Andy Hall said:

“Forced foreign labour in Malaysia’s gloves industry could only be addressed and reduced when past recruitment fees and related costs, which hold such workers in debt bondage, are fully repaid.

In order to ensure no future debt bondage of these workers, ethical recruitment practices or zero cost recruitment policies should be put in place in practice, if the industry moves ahead to recruit more foreign workers in the future,”

Andy Hall said:

“It’s a very risky situation. These hostels are not designed with a decent way of living in mind. They’re incredibly congested.”    

Andy Hall said:

“Most of the workers who are producing the gloves that are essential in the global COVID-19 endemic are still at high risk of forced labor, often in debt bondage,” 

 

2019

Andy Hall said:

“So they’re quite tense. It’s clear that, I think, it’s going to be a lot better than in the past because everyone’s focusing on this now after the last scandal, when workers were … having to pay up to $5,000 each.”

“Forced labor remains systemic throughout Malaysia’s manufacturing sector. I helped with the U.S. probe of WRP and was told by U.S. authorities that several more Malaysian companies in the rubber glove industry and others, more than a dozen in all, were under investigation for possible withhold release orders. They’re investigating so many cases in Malaysia, and the pressure is on.

The import ban on WRP was meant to put the rest of the industry on notice. What WRP will find now is when they negotiate with U.S. authorities to try to lift the ban, the U.S. authorities will be saying to them, ‘But all these workers are in debt bondage, and so the only way that you can get them out of debt bondage and hence out of forced labor is to pay back the money.’ And so once WRP realized that, the message will start going through the industry,”

Andy Hall said:

“Workers at WRP and many other rubber glove factories have been forced to pay staggering fees as high as $5,000 in their home countries, including Bangladesh and Nepal, for jobs that don’t meet their promise.

Some of the rubber glove makers don’t pay workers for months, house them in unkempt and overcrowded conditions, hold their passports so they can’t leave and don’t allow them to quit.

CBP’s detention orders fired a starting gun to warn both Malaysian and Thai governments that rubber manufactured products like gloves, condoms, medical equipment as well as an array of other labor intensive products from the region that are currently manufactured using systemic migrant forced labor cannot be exported to the US.”

Andy Hall said:

“The death sentence against the two accused and their conviction should be reversed and quashed.”

Andy Hall said:

“My activism for over a decade in Thailand intended only to promote and uphold the fundamental rights of millions of migrant workers in the country.”

 

2018

The media said:

“Andy Hall’s protracted legal battle stemmed from a 2013 report that alleged labour abuses at Natural Fruit’s pineapple canning operation.”

The media said:

“Andy Hall was taken to court in one of a series of lawsuits relating to alleged human rights abuses by Natural Fruit.

A court in the Thai capital has ordered a British labour rights activist to pay 10 million baht (£226,000) in damages to a company which filed a civil defamation suit after he helped expose alleged human rights violations at its factory.”

 

2017

Andy Hall said:

“The mass movement leaves undocumented workers vulnerable. It’s clear to me tens of thousands of migrants only move like this after instigation. Despite the threat of punishment, corrupt officials would try to seek bribes and mass profit is to be made in a short time from the panic and commotion.” 

The Media said:

“The mass movement leaves undocumented workers vulnerable, said Andy Hall, a British specialist in migrant workers’ rights who has monitored such migration in Thailand for more than a decade. ‘It’s clear to me tens of thousands of migrants only move like this after instigation,’ Hall, who has worked extensively with Myanmar workers, told Reuters.

Despite the threat of punishment, “corrupt officials” would try to take bribes from fleeing migrants, he said. ‘Mass profit is to be made in a short time from the panic and commotion,’ Hall added.”

Andy Hall said:

“We believe this negotiation will be successful and lead to a trickle-down effect where other employees will be empowered and feel confident to organise and collectively bargain to make demands of their employers,”

 

2016

Andy Hall said:

“We’re trying to hold Betagro responsible for the system of contract farming,” he said. “If we can, it will have huge implications for contract farming and the responsibility of corporate supply chains across Thailand.”

Andy Hall said:

“The policies of the Myanmar government have not contributed to safe migration at all – if anything they were complicit. The NLD government was very willing to change these policies, but we see huge challenges: the military controls the Home Affairs Ministry and holds veto power over many migration issues.”

The Media said:

“However, Andy Hall, a British lawyer and migrant activist, said Thailand had made ‘some significant improvements’ last year, and putting the nation on Tier 2 ranking could give authorities the chance to show a commitment to combating trafficking. ‘If there is no further significant progress during this one year or if developments backtrack or slow, it could and should be back to Tier 3,’ Hall said.”

Andy Hall said:  

“In 2012, she gave a promise to the workers … that she would support them, both to return to Myanmar but also to have a better life here,”

Andy Hall said:

“100 percent of the costs of recruitment is falling on workers. This is completely unacceptable. Companies should be paying to recruit workers, or at least they should be taking a very fair share of the burden,”

“It’s the main issue leading to human trafficking, debt bondage and slavery these days,”

Andy Hall said:

“Certainly there seems to have been a lot of changes. But whether that’s led to some kind of reduction in exploitation is very difficult to say. I mean we see the policies that are coming out from the government that are really not making much sense in terms of having a long term migration policy that promotes human security. So we’re still very skeptical that there has been significant improvements.”

 

2015

The Media said:

“Andy Hall, 35, could face up to seven years in prison if found guilty of criminal defamation by publication and offences under the country’s Computer Crimes Act.”

The Media said:

“We are innocent and we were not involved in this horrific crime, we didn’t kill. We want freedom, the duo was quoted in a statement released by Andy Hall, a British human rights defender based in Thailand, after he visited them in prison”

 

2014

Andy Hall said:

“They’ve come out with this commission saying that they are setting up this commission to address migration issues. I mean I think it is a good thing because migration as a policy in Thailand has been absolutely chaotic. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have been left with without any policy,”

 

2012

The Media said:

Andy Hall, a migrant specialist at Mahidol University’s Migration Center, said brokers charge $600 or more to process the paperwork, costing months’ worth of wages.

“So, whereas the migrants become legal through this process, the costs are very exorbitant,” said Hall. “And, what we’ve seen is, we’ve seen a shift from like this informal corruption by police officers, who are shaking down workers, immigration officials and labor officials, who are taking money from workers. We’ve seen a shift from that to this irregulated broker system whereby brokers who are in charge of national verification process, who are in charge of issuing passports, are now getting money through these vulnerable migrants through these other means.”

Andy Hall Said:

“About 2.5 million people from Myanmar work in Thailand, often in low-paid jobs, contributing as much as 7 percent of Thailand’s G.D.P.”

 

2011

Andy Hall said:

“Why are the migrant [workers] staying there? They are staying there because maybe they do not understand the situation, maybe they are scared because the do not have documents, maybe they are being coerced to stay in their communities there are mafia [style] organizations in those areas who want to prevent undocumented workers coming in contact with authorities.”    

2010

Andy Hall said:

“The need for labor is there; it’s there and the workers need to be in the country. But the system for managing that is a real failure at the moment. It’s not been well thought out,” said Hall. “And when you have system failures, you don’t have good planning, you don’t have sustainable management of migration, then you’re going to see human rights abuses like we’re seeing at the moment.”  ,

Scroll to Top