Democratic Voice of Burma: Academics say anti-union campaign continues

DVB provides an update of the transfer of academics involved in union organising.

Pro-union lecturers at Rangoon University are being transferred to different institutions across Burma in what the professors say is a deliberate move to undercut unions.

Confusion over registration extension

According to The Nation, the Thai Ministry of Labour has stated that there is no plan to provide a 3-month extension for migrant worker registration in Thailand, as had been previously reported.

The fate of Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand is hanging in the balance as labour ministers of the two countries fail to reach common ground over the extension of nationality verification.

The migrant registration deadline (and its extension)

There have been a bunch of articles recently regarding the 14 December 2012 deadline for registration of migrants in Thailand.

• An excellent Mizzima interview (14 December) with Jackie Pollack of the MAP foundation about the implications of the registration deadline.
•  A VOA article (14 December)about the ILO urging the Thai government to extend the deadline.
• A report in the Phuket News (15 December) stating that unregistered migrants will be deported starting 14 December.
• An article in the Myanmar Times about Myanmar president U Thein Sein urging Thai PM Yingluk Shinawatra to extend the registration deadline.
• A brief notice by The Irrawaddy (17 December) that the registration deadline has been extended for three months.

Workers struggles in Myanmar (November 2012)

Sparticus' list of links to articles on labour struggles in Myanmar (via libcom.org).

• Protest against land seizure in Chaung Tha Village, Irrawaddy Division (link 1) 
• Strike over working conditions and contracts at Taw Win wood factory in Yangon (link 1) (link 2) (link 3)
• Protest by miners over compensation in Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw (link 1) (link 2)
• Protest against Latpadaung copper mine (link 1) (link 2) (link 3) (link 4) (link 5) (link 6) (link 7) (link 8) (link 9) (link 10) (link 11) (link 12) (link 13) (link 14) (link 15)(link 16)(link 17) (link 18) (link 19) (link 20) (link 21) (link 22) (link 23) (link 24) (link 25) (link 26) (link 27) (link 28) (link 29) (link 30) (link 31) (link 32) (link 33) (link 34) (link 35) (link 36) (link 37) (link 38) (link 39) (link 40)
• Strikes over wages and conditions at Golden Day garment factory and Hlapa Thaw wood factory in Dagon Seikkan (link 1)

Raids, arrests and deportations of migrants in Thailand

Factory raids and mass arrests of undocumented workers in Thailand began yesterday as Thai authorities had said in advance.

On 13 December, VOA reported that

Thailand is threatening to deport more than a million migrant workers, most of them from Burma, if they do not complete required documentation by a December 14 deadline. Rights groups say the nationality verification process, while aimed at providing legal protection, is being exploited by corrupt officials, brokers and employers to further abuse vulnerable migrants.Thai authorities in charge of regulating migrant labor had pushed back previous deadlines for foreign workers to become documented.

Response to FTUB organised meeting in Yangon

Phophtaw News Agency reports that the Myanmar Industrial Trade Union (MITU) rejected an invitation from the Federation of Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB) to attend a meeting in Yangon this December with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which is visiting with the plan to set up an office in Myanmar. MITU chairperson U Ye Kyaw Thu stated that the reason for rejecting FTUB's invitation is that FTUB "has no position in Myanmar".  This follows an 8 October statement by the Agricultural and Farmers Federation of Myanmar (AFFM) in which the association said that it "will not become a member of FTUB because they [AFFM member organisations] don’t want to be under their control."  Furthermore, AFFM chairperson Daw Than Than Htay stated that the FTUB's statement that the AFFM was under FTUB was not true.

အျပည္ျပည္ ဆိုင္ရာ အလုပ္သမား သမဂၢမ်ား အဖဲြ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ITUC) အစည္းအေ၀း အတြက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အလုပ္ သမား သမဂၢမ်ား အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ (FTUB) အဖြဲ႔၏ ဖိတ္ၾကားခ်က္ကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ စက္မႈဇုန္ အလုပ္သမားမ်ား သမဂၢ (MITU) မွ ပယ္ ခ်ခဲ့သည္ဟု ဥကၠ႒ ဦးရဲေက်ာ္သူက ဆိုပါသည္။

Persecution of union members in Mandalay

DVB reports:

Leading members of the University Lecturers’ Union in Mandalay have been transferred to several institutions across Burma in what they claim is a deliberate move by education officials who dislike unions. Among those being transferred are professors from Mandalay University, University of Distance Education and Foreign Languages University in Mandalay who are members of the University Lecturers Union that was officially registered and recognised by the Labour Department in June.