"...Conditions are harsh in the factories, most of them Chinese or Taiwanese-owned and set up with special government investment and export privileges. Clothes are exported to the United States and Japan, among other markets, workers said. Typically, migrants work 12 hour days, get one day off a month and are paid around half the province’s 147 baht ($4.25) daily minimum wage. “There were no fans and it was very hot,” said 38-year-old Ya Zar, a geography graduate from Yangon university who worked in a knitting factory for four years before ill health and fatigue forced him to quit..." (www.dailytimes.com)
Myanmar workers toil in Thai sweatshops
By Ed Cropley
Despite labour laws guaranteeing legal migrants basic rights such as a standard eight-hour working day, paid overtime and a minimum wage, the regulations are universally flouted
THE Thai government grandly calls it an “export processing zone”. A more appropriate term for the town of Mae Sot, nestled in jungle-clad hills on the border with army-ruled Myanmar, might be “sweatshop labour camp”.
Connected to the former Burma by a bridge that opened a decade ago, the once-sleepy town is home to 235 mainly garment factories, manned by 36,000 legally registered migrant workers - and probably at least four times that number of illegal ones. Despite labour laws guaranteeing legal migrants basic rights such as a standard eight-hour working day, paid overtime and a minimum wage, the regulations are universally flouted, Reuters interviews with workers reveal.
Conditions are harsh in the factories, most of them Chinese or Taiwanese-owned and set up with special government investment and export privileges. Clothes are exported to the United States and Japan, among other markets, workers said. Typically, migrants work 12 hour days, get one day off a month and are paid around half the province’s 147 baht ($4.25) daily minimum wage. “There were no fans and it was very hot,” said 38-year-old Ya Zar, a geography graduate from Yangon university who worked in a knitting factory for four years before ill health and fatigue forced him to quit.
“Sometimes the women got very affected by the heat and fainted. A lot of workers couldn’t get enough rest so they became tired and sick,” said Ya Zar, who now works for the Joint Action Committee for Burmese Affairs (JACBA), which promotes labour rights among Myanmar migrants. Although Reuters found no evidence of child labour - Thai law defines anybody aged 15 or above as eligible to work - an International Labour Organisation report last year accused the Mae Sot factories of treating teenage workers like slaves.
“Mae Sot has perfected a system where children are literally working day and night, week after week, for wages that are far below the legal minimum wage, to the point of absolute exhaustion,” the ILO report concluded.
Dirty water, filthy food: Aumnat Nanthahan, chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries in Mae Sot, 430 km northwest of Bangkok, denied workers were underpaid, saying employers deducted board and food from workers living on-site, as well as administrative expenses. “It depends on their food and where they are staying,” Aunmant told Reuters. “The Thai labour law is very strict. Workers work for eight hours a day and beyond that is overtime. Maybe they choose no overtime because it is their culture.”
Many workers said dormitory conditions were so cramped they could hardly sleep and the food was inedible. “Our employer used to give us dirty water to drink and the rice was so poor we couldn’t eat it,” said 32-year-old Yin Ma who has been working in Mae Sot for four years and sending money back to her family in central Myanmar. She has not seen her 13-year-old daughter in three years.
Unlike many of her colleagues, Yin Ma - who preferred to be known by her nickname for fear of reprisals - knew about Thai labour laws, but when she tried to complain her employer took her work permit, technically making her an illegal immigrant. “I was scared that if I complained the police would come and I would be deported,” she said.
Only when she had quit did she have the time and courage to seek help from a Thai legal charity and take her claim for 40,000 baht in unpaid wages and overtime from her former boss, a Chinese businessman, to court. If successful, the ruling could provide a major boost to the 570,000 Myanmar and 743,000 Lao and Cambodian legally working in Thailand’s farming, fisheries, industrial and construction sectors.
“Better than Burma”: Despite the privations, many workers appeared happy, saying they were better off than being in Myanmar, where four decades of military rule, economic mismanagement and Western sanctions have left the economy in ruins. “In Thailand, we face difficulties, but at least it’s a job. In Myanmar, there’s no work at all,” Ya Zar said. “In Burma, you have no chance. At least in Thailand, you have a chance.”
Mr Song, a Burmese-speaking Taiwanese manager at a factory of 200 people, explained away the low wages by saying they were still way higher than anything available in Myanmar. “We try to help them and do the best for them, because their homes and families are not in Thailand,” Mr Song said, showing Reuters around his factory, a rusting barn whose only ventilation was the breeze coming through vents in the roof.
He declined to give the name of his factory. Labour activists have tried to put pressure on the factories by targeting the big name brands that buy from them. The factories have thwarted that strategy by stitching on labels elsewhere. “We think the clothes go to the United States, but we don’t know the brand,” said Aung Kyaw Soe, 29, drinking green tea at a roadside stall outside a Thai-owned unit called Thaisun. “They sew all the labels on at another place in Bangkok.” reuters
National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma
http://www.ncgub.net/article.php/20070605174814821