South Asian Workers in Europe Deserve Better

On 19 June of this year, an agricultural labourer from India named Satnam Singh lost his life on a melon farm in Latina, Italy. He had been crushed by a machine that severed one of his arms and fractured his legs — horrific injuries, but, according to experts, injuries that would not necessarily have been life-threatening had he received immediate medical attention. Instead, Singh’s employer abandoned him on the street outside of his home, and he died in the hospital two days later.

Satnam Singh’s tragic death is exemplary of the systematic exploitation experienced by South Asian migrant workers in the EU. Migration into the European job market extends far beyond sectors in need of qualified personnel. On the contrary, migrant labour is especially crucial to the economy in sectors with a high risk of exploitation and where employment laws fail to offer adequate protections, such as agriculture and delivery work. The number of South Asians migrating to Europe to work in these and other sectors has skyrocketed in recent years, leaving thousands vulnerable to low pay, long hours, and rampant abuse. Workers and unions alike are fighting back, but they have a long way to go to ensure decent working conditions and equality on the job market.

To learn more about South Asian migrant workers’ plight around the EU, Nadja Dorschner, Senior Advisor in the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Asia Unit, spoke with Berlin-based researcher and activist Aju John about the circumstances behind Singh’s death and the conditions prevailing in Berlin’s delivery sector, which has seen a surge of South Asian workers in recent years.

Can you help us understand the circumstances that led to Satnam Singh’s death?

Satnam Singh bled to death in a hospital in Rome after his employer Antonello Lovato refused to take urgent action following an accident. With that reticence, the employer took the mask of decency off to reveal the exploitative conditions that characterize migrant work in several sectors across Europe, where non-citizen workers are shut out from the regular labour law enforcement mechanisms and systems of labour representation available to citizens. Workers classified under a variety of immigrant statuses have stratified access to labour and human rights, even on paper but especially in practice.

The circumstances of Singh’s death reveal that this multi-tiered and hypocritical system is no accident, but in fact necessary for the very survival of those sectors. The system that he was employed under was illegal, but the rule when it came to farm work in Latina. Thousands of workers have laboured in that illegal system for years, but employers do not get into trouble with the law unless they acknowledge a direct relationship with a worker — which may have been required of Satnam’s employer to report the accident.

How exactly does that system work, and who is employing the workers if not the farmers?

The political economist Ayan Meer conducted an ethnography of the Agro Pontino region in 2018 that is very instructive in this regard. To maintain labour discipline, large corporate farms in Italy rely on the caporalato (or gangmaster) system of labour intermediation. Prevalent in some Italian regions, it is a form of labour intermediation whereby farmers outsource the recruitment, transport, and control of workers on the field to caporali. This illegal system is pervasive — more than 160,000 workers are estimated to be labouring under it.

Satnam Singh earned 5 euro per hour, but even workers with work permits are not paid the wage amounts indicated in their contracts.

Caporali generally hire workers on short-term contracts and negotiate payment, working hours, and other conditions that are consistently below the standards set out under labour regulations. The caporali are not merely exploiters or labour market agents alone — they also facilitate migration and moderate tensions that could otherwise lead to labour struggles. Workers in fact often aspire to become gangmasters themselves.

How did the system come into place, and what role does migration from South Asia play in the Italian farm sector?

The demand for immigrant workers far exceeds the annual quotas allowed by laws designed to restrict immigration like the so-called “Bossi-Fini law”. A number of informal routes have opened up for migrants to enter the country as a result, but those who use them remain in a state of permanent deportability.

In recent decades, there has been a sharp increase in Indian migration to Italy and to the Agro Pontino region in particular, mostly from Punjab, known as India’s “bread basket”. Remittances to India from this region now exceed 50 million euro annually. According to official figures, the number of Indians in Italy rose from just over 121,000 in 2011 to 162,000 in 2022. Many Indians, however, arrive in Italy without immigration documents through so-called “donkey routes” and work in the fields of Agro Pontino for more than 14 hours per day.

Satnam Singh earned 5 euro per hour, but even workers with work permits are not paid the wage amounts indicated in their contracts. There are even cases of workers paying the gangmaster or the employer for a contract in order to provide proof of employment and maintain their work permit. This exploitation is compounded by language barriers.

The caporali system is essential for capitalist agriculture. On the one hand, food producers are squeezed by the low prices demanded by supermarket-led distribution supply chains. On the other, seasonal harvests in fruit and vegetable agriculture require a large number of workers performing complex and highly skilled manual tasks. Because only so much mechanization is possible, reducing the cost of labour is the only way for producers to respond to the downward pressure on prices.

What were the consequences of Singh’s death? Will the responsible persons be held accountable?

Antonello Lovato was arrested on charges of murder. Nevertheless, however unprecedented the circumstances of Satnam Singh’s death might be, it is the result of conditions that characterize the entire sector.

Another consequence of Singh’s death has been renewed attention both on the caporalato system and on the immigration regulations that produce exploitable workers for it. In the weeks that followed, the Italian trade union FLAI CGIL reported that complaints of exploitation, gangmastering, and failure to comply with applicable labour regulations had multiplied, and also called for the abolition of the Bossi-Fini law that “creates invisible people”. In August, some of Singh’s colleagues were granted a residence permit under an expedited procedure. According to the union, this act of “justice and civility” allows them to look for work free from blackmail and fear.

A month after Singh’s death, FLAI CGIL announced that its fundraiser for his family had collected over 360,000 euro. Later, the union lodged a complaint with the public prosecutor of Lazio urging the implementation of the law against gangmastering.

I would also like to ask you about the delivery sector closer to home, in Berlin, where large numbers of South Asians have begun working over the last few years. You have done extensive research on that sector. Why have so many South Asians moved into it?

A number of factors are at play, but the increased migration of Indians to Germany for study has been key. While South Asians arrive in Germany through a variety of routes and with a variety of immigration statuses, a large number of platform delivery workers in Berlin today are male international students from India, who are indebted and aspire to live in a Western country long-term. Indians today are the largest group of international students enrolled in German universities. Their numbers doubled in five years and grew over 26 percent from the previous year alone to reach almost 43,000 by the 2022–23 winter semester. Over 70 percent of them are male and over 60 percent of them are enrolled in engineering courses.

How do you explain this rapid increase?

The rise in overseas students relates to strategies pursued by universities to survive austerity and boost profits. Many universities as well as local economies now rely on international students, who in turn weigh the potential return on their investment, including the prospects for gaining permanent residency. India is one of the most significant countries of origin for international students, and has been prioritized by destination countries with migration policies that allow for so-called “two-step migration”, which seek to first attract international students and then retain them as skilled workers.

Although delivery platforms provide labour market access to international students, they integrate them into a segment that offers limited chances of upward mobility.

For students, opportunities to remain after graduation are an important factor in their choice of destination. Other than the comparatively low cost of education, the opportunity to remain in this or another Western country as a skilled migrant is a key factor behind why Germany has become so attractive for Indian students. An industry has emerged that caters to students’ aspirations. It comprises education agents and consultants, recruiters, moneylenders, and others who facilitate all aspects of students’ migration for studies — including, increasingly, labour platforms.

Why is the platform sector so attractive to Indian students?

The question is whether the delivery platforms attract the students or the other way around. Sociologist Barbara Orth has recently shown how platforms in Berlin draw heavily from particular migrant populations on specific visa and residency statuses, such as student visas and working holiday visas, both of which are more accommodating of migrants with lower incomes, unstable employment relationships, and low German language abilities than the official work visa.

By lowering the barriers to entry, by providing opportunities to earn an income soon after they arrive, and by appearing as a reliable source of income to people who are about to migrate, these labour platforms are an integral part of “migration infrastructures”. Thus, although delivery platforms provide labour market access to international students, they integrate them into a segment that offers limited chances of upward mobility.

Many delivery workers study not at public universities but at new private universities that cost in excess of 12,000 euro per year. A high number of Indian students finance their education at such private institutions through loans. International students are indebted subjects restricted by visa regulations and serve as important sources of low-wage labour. Accepting the conditions of low-wage work is a price they are willing to pay to eventually achieve economic success on the high-skill labour market.

What does the delivery sector look like in Berlin?

Broadly speaking, platforms’ practices including subcontracting, union-busting tactics, and the use of migrant labour undermine labour rights, such as the right to due process and fair representation. However, conditions vary between across platforms. Flink, which has a close relationship with the German supermarket giant REWE, is the only grocery delivery platform that remains operational in the country today. Gorillas was bought by the Turkish company Getir, which then closed it down.

Both Flink and Lieferando, the brand under which the Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway operates in Germany, offer employment contracts to their app-based delivery workers. Because they offer a guaranteed monthly income, many would hesitate to classify working for these platforms as “gig work”. Lieferando, however, which delivers meals from restaurants, also employs people indirectly through staffing companies such as Young Capital. The contract in such cases is between the worker and the staffing company, and Lieferando has no contractual obligations towards those workers.

One of the drawbacks of a works council-centred organizing strategy is that works councils only have the power to represent the employees of a company.

Two other prominent companies are Wolt and Uber Eats. Neither of them, to the best of my knowledge, offer contracts to workers at all. The work is mediated in different ways. In some cases, a staffing company mediates the relationship. The practice of “renting accounts”, where delivery workers rent accounts on the app from another person — right now, the rent is around 200 euro per month — and are then paid in cash by that person, is also prevalent and condoned by both companies.

Some work through a labour intermediary who manages a group of workers and pays them in cash, sometimes after first taking money from them to be able to access the platform, a system reminiscent of the caporalato system or, as my friend the anthropologist Jagat Sohail often says, of thekedari system prevalent in northern India and Pakistan. Recently, the anthropologist Valentin Niebler and some others also showed how even in legal contexts that require platform labour to be performed under an employment relationship, platform companies use subcontracting arrangements to transfer the obligations of employment on to a subcontractor.

The strict limits set by the Kündigungsschutzgesetz, Germany’s employment protection law, which protects workers from being fired after six months of employment, are also regularly subverted in the sector. In 2023, Lieferando fired a large number of its employees within six months of hiring them, that is to say before they acquired any firing protections. Worker representatives at the company claim most terminations happen after five-and-a-half months, and are used by the company to rapidly scale up and down its workforce in response to seasonal business fluctuations. Workers are also frequently fired after this six-month period, in violation of the law, but violations often only come to light when a worker resists by, for example, taking the matter to the works council.

Speaking of works councils, given the unclear employment relationship, to what extent do such councils exist and are they able to address the challenges you describe?

“Council busting” is another practice we have seen in Germany’s platform sector. This includes steps to prevent the establishment of a works council or to not cooperate with one that has been lawfully elected. Between 2020 and 2021, an informal group of workers delivering for Gorillas first led work stoppages and then campaigned to establish a works council. In 2022, groups of workers at Flink and Lieferando organized to establish works councils at those companies with widely differing degrees of success.

To establish a works council, activists had to seek the support of co-workers to attend and vote at worker assemblies and works council elections. The Flink Workers’ Collective, their great efforts notwithstanding, was stopped from establishing a works council through a series of legal and other council-busting barriers erected by the company. Meanwhile, those working for Getir organized — unsuccessfully — to resist the installation of a management-friendly works council. By completing all the steps in the legal procedure, the Gorillas Workers’ Collective and the Lieferando Workers’ Collective were able to establish works councils at their companies in 2021 and 2022, and then exercise collective power through that institution.

The works council at Lieferando has entered into collective bargaining negotiations with the company over aspects such as the distribution of working time in the company. It has provided legal support to workers who went on to successfully challenge their terminations, counselled individual workers regarding other issues with the management such as conflicts over their shift schedules, and conducted several workers’ assemblies where the formerly “atomized” platform workers gather to discuss their concerns. On one memorable occasion, the members of the works council at Lieferando participated in protests along with and extended legal support to some sub-contracted South Asian students at Wolt who had not been paid wages by their sub-contractor.

There need to be measures to counteract the exploitation of South Asian men in the city as labour for platform companies. Solutions could include providing them easier access to unemployment insurance and better provision of subsidized food and housing for students in the city.

One of the drawbacks of a works council-centred organizing strategy is that works councils only have the power to represent the employees of a company. The members of the Lieferando Workers’ Collective on the company’s works council go above and beyond this remit to extend help to delivery workers who are not employees, but that is not a solution to the structural absence of collective representation for most workers in the sector. A significant number of Lieferando’s delivery workers are not represented at their works council. Flink’s workers are employees, but there is no works council to represent them. At Wolt or Uber Eats, the delivery workers are not employees.

Another drawback is that workers are organizing primarily within their companies, without building collective strength across the sector. Workers’ movements that adopt a works council-based strategy may be limited to seeking agreements on a limited set of matters. Seeking new regulation from the state is not automatically part of the mandate of any works council, but requires a workers’ movement that uses works councils to build collective strength across the sector.

Apart from forming works councils, what other limitations to the implementation of labour laws affect migrant delivery workers in particular?

One of the reasons platforms are able to exploit many grey areas of German labour law is that in this country, labour standards emerge primarily from collective bargaining. Over half the country’s workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements that set out standards concerning wages, working time, termination processes, and health and safety. Delivery workers, however, are not covered by any collective bargaining agreement, and no union has been able to win one. Even after several months of strikes and campaigning, the Food, Beverages and Catering Union (NGG) has not been able to compel Lieferando to come to the negotiating table. Presumably, the food delivery company understands that the majority of its workers are not union members.

With a workforce comprised mostly of migrants who speak little German and a high rate of employee turnover, unions have their work cut out for them. Recently, Ver.di has also made renewed efforts to increase membership among delivery workers after previous efforts to intervene in the workers’ movement at Gorillas. At more recent workers’ assemblies at Lieferando, more South Asian delivery workers have been present and voiced their concerns, often about the terrible treatment they face from the restaurants they visit to pick up orders, about changed pay structures that result in wage reductions, and about drivers not being compensated adequately after fuel price hikes.

What kind of reforms are needed to protect South Asian workers in Germany and across Europe?

First of all, there need to be measures to counteract the exploitation of South Asian men in the city as labour for platform companies. Solutions could include providing them easier access to unemployment insurance and better provision of subsidized food and housing for students in the city. Minimum wages should better reflect the cost of living and immigration regulation could reconsider the current cap on the number of hours that students are permitted to work. These measures would improve their bargaining position, and make them less amenable to bad working conditions.

Next, there needs to be better regulation of platform work. Currently, most platform delivery work takes place in a grey area that is not even legible to the state. Labour courts should be more open to piercing this façade of freelancing and intermediation by assuming the existence of a relationship of employment if certain basic parameters are met. The tax administration could also enforce the laws against pseudo-self-employment more strictly.

German unions need to conduct more outreach among Hindi-, Urdu-, and Punjabi-speaking students to understand why people who aspire to stay in Germany and thus have a stake in better working standards are still hesitant to join unions, and take corrective action.

To address violations of labour regulations such as improper terminations, it is important to strengthen both individual and collective accountability mechanisms. Labour courts must become more accessible to precarious migrants who are often hesitant to claim their rights for reasons that include unfamiliarity not only with the German language, but also with the availability of state funding for some litigation and applicable labour regulations. In addition, the labour courts also need to be more vigilant about systemic “council busting” tactics so that platforms follow not only the letter of the law but also the spirit of co-determination. Effective works councils at these companies are the best collective accountability mechanism for labour law violations.

These changes are likelier to happen if delivery workers are organized into unions and workers’ collectives. German unions need to conduct more outreach among Hindi-, Urdu-, and Punjabi-speaking students to understand why people who aspire to stay in Germany and thus have a stake in better working standards are still hesitant to join unions, and take corrective action. A strong workers’ movement at these companies, organized through unions, would be able to take effective collective action to compel companies to improve. In the absence of a right to vote, demonstrations and protests by large numbers of workers remain one of the few ways in which migrants can influence politics.