Rafi, a migrant worker in Lebanon's waste sector, has a wife and two young daughters back home in Bangladesh who depend on his monthly remittances to pay for school, food and other needs.

But for the past five months, Rafi says he has been unable to send any money back home, because the private waste-management company for which he works, RAMCO, violated his work contract by effectively slashing his wages from $300 a month to just over $100.

"It's a very big problem, I cant send my baby to school," said Rafi, who asked Al Jazeera to refer to him by a pseudonym because he fears retribution.

Rafi is not alone in his hardships, or his anger. Faced with a similarly untenable position, some 400 RAMCO employees - mostly from Bangladesh and India - took the unprecedented decision last month to walk of the job until the company pays them what they are owed.