The
Myanmar Times continues its reporting of the Myanmar strike wave with this recent
article:
OVER the past two months – since employees at the Tai Yi shoe factory
in Hlaing Tharyar township stopped work on May 2 – a strike has
occurred every few days in Yangon’s industrial zones. A few have
captured a lot of attention, and many have passed with little notice,
the workers’ demands quickly resolved. For most of the thousands of workers who have stopped work, their
main complaint is their extremely low basic salary – usually about K8000
a month. But there are other, less well-known reasons for the strikes,
namely the environment inside the factory.
We also get some insight into the politics of certain labour activists, like
Ko Ko Gyi of the 88 Generation Students; these are politics that I do not share:
“Worker unions are needed now more than ever. And also owners need to
be smarter. They need to understand that worker unions are not there to
oppose the owners. They are just a group that will negotiate to solve
the problems between the owners and workers. And us activists will help
them to get a better future. “Problems between workers and owners are like fights between family
members. Regardless of how the family members are discordant, they have
to meet each other. Owners and workers are the same too. Owners can’t
run their business without workers and workers can’t live without
owners. We are just advisers,” he added.
