Myanmar migrant workers entering China using temporary boarder passes are being deported for over-staying, according to local immigration officials.
“Starting from early months of 2012, over 500 migrant workers have been detained in China deported back to Myanmar," says Min Swe, an immigration officer from Muse border town.
The reasons for arrest and deportation are that migrant workers overstay their given period or attempt to travel beyond the limited area allowed to work. However, some are arrested because employers don't want to pay their wages.
"...Recent disasters at factories in Bangladesh also have them looking for new countries to source from. “I don’t think we have seen the fallout from Bangladesh yet,” said Steve Marshall, the liaison officer of the International Labour Organisation in Myanmar.
Several global brands have contacted his office as part of their research. “Obviously they are concerned about reputational risk,” he said, adding that they are “doing their due diligence, seeking reports on broader human rights and also specifically on labour market issues”.
Steps are also being taken to prepare the legal basis for the implementation of a Better Factories program here, which will allow ILO monitors to assess factories for compliance with labour laws and ILO conventions. This will provide Western brands some confidence that their images will not be tarnished if they outsource production to Myanmar factories.
“Essentially what everybody has agreed is that at this stage it is too early to introduce a Better Work type scheme here because the legal structures do not exist for it,” Mr Marshall said, citing the absence of a minimum wage law and another covering occupational health and safety as examples.
These laws are, however, expected to be tabled during parliament’s next session, which begins on June 25.
Besides input from the ILO, the labour ministry is also receiving technical assistance on developing labour laws – as well as the garment industry as a whole – from the European Union, trade-related agencies of Western governments seeking bilateral deals with Myanmar, and global buyers, industry representatives and officials said.
The ILO is helping develop a legal framework for the industry, enforcement mechanisms, and a more nimble association for factory owners as well as trade unions. A major goal, according to Mr Marshall, is a labour market that is “cooperative rather than confrontational”.
He’s betting that this can be achieved by ensuring “constructive social dialogue” between factory owners and workers so that the interests of both sides are taken into account in the decision-making process. It is a goal he acknowledges will be tricky to pull off in a country that recently emerged from 50 years of military rule.
“This country has basically been an orders-based environment. Orders were issued, orders were received, orders were passed on and orders were obeyed,” Mr Marshall said. “This applied in all environments, including the workplace.”
An attitude shift is needed among employers as well as workers, he added. “A non-profitable company does not employ staff … so we have make sure that companies can be competitive and maintain profitability, and that is achieved not on the back of low wages but on high productivity, high quality, low waste and less rework.”
Mr Marshall believes that Myanmar’s advantage is that it is starting from scratch, and that this allows the formation of effective unions and industry associations as well as a collaborative approach to creating a garment sector that benefits both. “I actually believe [starting from scratch] creates opportunities, which if we are all clever we could actually use for very useful ends in terms of developing not just the economy but … society,” he said, adding that “what goes on in the workplace is a microcosm of what goes on outside”.
"There are more than 400,000 Myanmar migrant workers in Malaysia, according to Tin Latt. About 300,000 are legal workers, he said, while about 40,000 are illegal and about 90,000 are in various processes of refugee status...""Myanmar urges probe into attack on its workers in Malaysia," People's Daily Online, 5 June 2013.
"... Teth Teth Win and her daughter Win Tanda Aong had illegally smuggled at least 15 people from Myanmar and forced them to work at a corn factory located in Tha Ma Kha district of Kanchanaburi province. Jatuporn said his team had arrested Teth Teth Win and rescued six women from Myanmar who had been detained and tortured while they were staying at a camp for workers located near the factory. They had never received any wages despite being forced to pay between Bt15,000 and Bt20,000 to Teth Teth Win and her daughter for entering Thailand through Mae Sot and travelling to Kanchanaburi.... All those rescued have been sent to a safe house. Teth Teth Win admitted that she had been involved in smuggling people from Myanmar, but said she did not know that it violated any human trafficking laws.""Bodies of Myanmar migrants found in Thai sea," Al-Jazeera, 3 June 2013.
"The bodies of at least 12 migrant workers from Myanmar have been found in the sea off Thailand's west coast after their boat sank during bad weather... Ranong is 460 kilometres south of Bangkok and borders Myanmar. Police say it is common for migrant workers to travel by boat to illegally enter Thailand."