Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Two strikes by migrants in Thailand

Regarding the Phatthana Seafood Company strike, which the Phnom Pehn Post covered yesterday, Australia's ABC quotes the following comments by Mahidol University's Andy Hall:

"The management apparently decided to reduce the benefit for the workers and almost immediately a protest erupted... Workers were very angry so they gathered outside of the gate, and it started to get a little bit heated and there were police brought in, shots fired and now we just have a situation where we have a lock-out. The evidence suggests this is quite a large factory and an international exporter from what the reports have been saying. If so then the conditions would be particularly bad because generally with these international factories they are monitored quite closely. We often find that in smaller factories with smaller workforces - prawn peeling sheds or things like that - we often find very exploitative conditions including trafficking, forced labour, violent failure to adhere to the minimum labour standards. But this is an exceptional case because the workers actually are some of the first workers to come in through the new legal import system. International importers rules outlaw debt bondage and the holding of passports by employers, and Mr Hall says Australia should be asking questions about the origins of its seafood. Seafood is one of the most significant export products from Thailand - making up something like 50 per cent goes to the US. But there's also a large amount going to Europe, Australia and within Asia and this is the responsibility of the corporations. It is also the responsibility of people in countries like Australia to be asking and demanding answers about where their seafood does come from."

Regarding a separate strike by Myanmar migrants in Kanchanaburi Province, the Bangkok Post provides this rather insufficient article:

More than 4,000 workers, mostly foreign labour, on Wednesday staged a protest at a pineapple factory in Kanchanaburi province, demanding the government's promised 300 baht daily minimum wage. Reports said most of the workers are from neighbouring Myanmar. Police arrived at the factory to deal with the protesters.

New union formations in Yangon

The Irrawady reports on the formation of unions among factory workers and construction workers in Yangon. According to one factory worker named Ko Pyi Phyoe:
“က်ေနာ္တို႔ စက္႐ုံေတြမွာ အလုပ္သမားေတြဟာ အလုပ္သမား အခြင့္အေရးကို ျပည့္ျပည့္၀၀ရဖို႔ မေျပာပါနဲ႔ အလုပ္သမား အခြင့္အေရးဆိုတာကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ၾကားဖူးတဲ့သူ နားလည္တဲ့သူေတာင္ ရွားတယ္။ လုပ္ခတို႔ ဘာတို႔ ဆိုတာကလည္း အရမ္း နည္းလြန္းတယ္။ ဒီၾကားထဲ အလုပ္ရွင္က ေခါင္းပံုျဖတ္တာေတြ ဖိႏွိပ္တာေတြလည္း လုပ္ေသးတယ္။ ဒါေတြကို ကာကြယ္ဖို႔က အလုပ္သမား သမဂၢ ရွိမွ ျဖစ္မယ္လို႔ ယံုၾကည္တဲ့အတြက္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ဒီ ခ်ည္မွ်င္ႏွင့္ အထည္ခ်ဳပ္ အလုပ္သမား မ်ား သမဂၢကို ဖြဲ႕လိုက္ၾကတာပါ”

Tuesday, 10 April 2012

Threats against strikers, labour shortages and nationality verification

The Phnom Penh Post reports on threats made by Thai police against Myanmar and Cambdian migrant workers who were on strike at a seafood factory in Songkla:
Police threatened workers and fired shots into the air as a dispute involving about 800 Cambodian workers at Phatthana Seafood Co Ltd in Thailand’s Songkhla province escalated yesterday, a workers’ representative said.

Sok Sorng said “many police” had threatened workers with guns as more than 1,000 workers, including some from Myanmar and Thailand, rallied against management locking them out of the factory, which is believed to be a supplier of retail giant Walmart, a day after they went on strike over wages.

"There were so many police deployed in front of the factory," he said.

Police had threatened to shoot workers if they entered the factory, and fired their guns into the air to disperse the crowd, Sok Sorng said.

"They wanted us to be scared," he said.
The Bangkok Post provides another report about a looming labour shortage in Thailand linked reforms in Myanmar and a related growth in employment opportunities there.
Some Thai businesses feel besieged just as the minimum wage was hiked because a possible labour shortage looms with Myanmar opening its economy.

The construction, fishery and food industries will be the hardest hit as they rely heavily on migrant workers from Myanmar.

...

"I'd say all factories are facing a labour shortage. No matter how high wages rise, we have to pay them because of the shortage we are facing," he said.

...

As Myanmar undertakes political and economic reforms, especially after this month's by-election, analysts have begun to point out that positive developments there will tighten the labour market in Thailand over the next few years.
And MCOT reports on the opening of five new nationality verification offices for Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand, to assist with the current round of migrant passport applications.
Myanmar migrant workers nationality verification centres are expected to be ready and opened for services late in April as the nationality verification process will be completed by June...

... the parties discussed the latest developments regarding the establishment of five nationality verification centres for Myanmar migrant workers—one each in Bangkok, Samut Sakhon, Samut Prakan, Surat Thani and Chiang Mai.

Friday, 6 April 2012

Two articles on the formation of labour unions in Myanmar

An article from Mizzima published earlier in March states that Su Su Nway and workers at Tai Yi Footwear Factory in Hlaing Thar Yar are in the process of forming a union.

Workers at the Tai Yi footwear factory in Rangoon Region formed an unofficial trade union on Sunday.

...

Su Su Nway said that the workers were ready to face pressure from the government for forming an unofficial trade union without permission.

“We are not a political party,” she said. “We are real workers working in this factory. We formed the trade union to protect workers’ rights. We will provide them systematic training and the trade union will provide leadership in demanding their rights and presenting their grievances to the employer.”

A separate article from the Myanmar Times indicates that labour strikes are to be overseen by "labour federations".

The Labour Organisation Law (2011) came into force on March 9 and allows workers from any sector – except essential public services such as water, electricity, fire and health – to strike according to the rules of the relevant labour federation.

Labour federations are an executive committee with an odd number of members that range in size from seven to 15 people and are formed with the recommendation of not less than 20 percent of the members of region or state labour organisations.

Above the federations will be the Myanmar Labour Confederation and under the federations will be region or state labour organisations, township labour organisations and basic labour organisations for each trade or activity.

“If a basic labor organisation wants to strike it would need to get permission from the relevant labour federation. After that they can do the strike whenever – they don’t need to follow the procedures in the peaceful protest law of the Ministry of Home Affairs,” U That Naing Oo said.

The law states that labour issues will have to be filed through the basic labour organisations to a township conciliation body formed under the Trade Dispute Act. The workers can strike only if the township conciliation body is unable to solve the problem and it has permission from the applicable labour federation.

Thursday, 5 April 2012

ILO to begin work in ethnic conflict zones

DVB reports on the extension of ILO activities in Myanmar:

A UN body tasked with pushing for workers’ rights and an end to forced labour in Burma has been granted access to conflict zones in the country’s border regions that for years have been largely off-limits to international monitoring groups.

The agreement means the International Labour Organization (ILO) becomes one of the first overseas bodies to begin sustained operations in the volatile areas where Burma’s government has been battling ethnic armies.

Monday, 2 April 2012

Myanmar reforms could mean tighter SE Asia labor market



The Wall Street Journal reports:

As Myanmar tallies the last votes from Sunday’s critical parliamentary by-elections, many business leaders are pondering the implications of the country’s recent run of political reforms. For many Southeast Asia-based companies, the big issue is whether migrant workers from the country also known as Burma decide to return home, resulting in a tighter labor market – especially in Thailand.An estimated one million or more Burmese migrant workers fill mostly low-wage jobs in Thailand. If political and economic conditions keep improving in Myanmar, experts believe it’s likely that many of those workers will indeed go back, while others still at home might decide to never leave at all. All that would mean companies in Thailand and elsewhere could eventually face higher labor costs.

Friday, 2 March 2012

Court resolution on Tai Yi dispute

Mizzima reports on a resolution by a local industrial arbitration court on the Tai Yi dispute.

A township labour arbitration court has ruled that striking workers at the Tai Yi footwear factory in an industrial district in Rangoon should receive a pay raise to 120 kyat (US$ 15 cents) per hour, amounting to a wage increase of about US$ 24 per month.