Photo credit: Amnesty International
Migrant workers at Carrefour sites, in Saudi Arabia, are exploited and forced to live in squalour.
According to a report be Amnesty International UK, workers from Nepal, India and Pakistan are made to work 16-hour days and threatened with costly lay-offs if they refused to work overtime.
One of the workers desribed the sleeping arrangement of six or eight to a room as, “like a cowshed.”
A former warehouse picker said, “Inside Carrefour stores, workers are not treated as humans. They treat workers as animals.”
Carrefour is a sponsor of the Paris Olympics and it has an annual turnover of over 94 billion euros. The company says it has lauched an internal investigation.
The Director of the Program on Climate, Economic, and Social justice, and Corporate Accountability at Amnesty International, Marta Shcaaf said, “Migrant workers in Saudi Arabia continue to be eubjected to the country’s kafala sponsorship system, have no guaranteed minimum wage and are prohibited from joining or forming trade unions.”
Mkgrant workers contracted to sites in Saudi Arabia franchised by French retail giant Carrefour have been deceived by recruitment agents, made to work excessive hours, denied days off and cheated of their earnings, according to Amnesty International in the new report.
The 56 page report titled, “I would fear going to work”: Labourexploitation in Carrefour sites in Saudi Arabia – Amnesty also shows how workers have been made to live in squalid accommodation and to fear being fired if they complained or resisted working overtime
The research is based on interviews with 17 men from Nepal, India and Pakistan who worked in various Carrefour facilities in Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah between 2021 and 2024. It shows that the abuses suffered by some of the workers are likely to amount to forced labour, including human trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation.
The Carrefour group has a franchise agreement with the UAE-based Majid Al Futtaim company which operates Carrefour facilities and stores in Aaudi Arabia. Neither the Carrefour Group nor Majid Al Futtaim took adequate action to stop worker abuses or offer redress to workers.
The workers paid recruitment agents in their home countries an average fee of 900 pounds to secure their jobs. They often took high-interest debts to do so. But such charges are not legal in Saudi Arabia, they are also prohibited by Majid Al Futtaim’s policies.
Almost all the workers interviewed by Amnesty were lies to or misled by the agents about the nature and benefits of the jobs in Saudi Arabia. Some were misled into believing they were being hired directly by international companies. Many only found out they would be employed by Saudi Arabian supply companies after paying the fees. It was too late for them to recoup their money and they were unable to back out.
When they got to Saudi Arabia, the men were met with arduous work and repeated underpayment. They described regularly working 60-hour weeks, sometimes up to 16 hours a day, especially during periods business was booming such as “salary weeks” and the month of Ramadan.
In breach of both Saudi Arabia’s laws and Majid Al Futtaim’s own policies, workers said managers at facilities would sometimes cancel their rest days. They reported havung to walk more than 12 miles per day in the course of their working day.
Many said the hardest part of the experience is not being paid properly for overtime hours as required by national law and company poliies. They were often denied additional hours’ pay a month, amounting to hundreds of pounds each year. They also described a culture of fear, with those who raised complaints directly with managers at the Carrefour facilities reportedly ignored or told to take up the matter with the labour supply companies.
Those who spoke out experienced retaliation from the supply companies or Carrefour facility managers which intimidated others into silence.
