May 23, 2013
Secretary General Sawit Kaewwan of the State Enterprises Workers’ Relations Confederation (SERC) and President Aung Kyaw of the Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN) received awards yesterday in Washington, D.C., for their work to protect and promote the rights of migrant workers in Thailand. The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) presented the labor rights defenders awards to Kaewwan, Aung Kyaw and others May 22 in an event hosted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
“Before the Migrant Worker Rights Network, there were no organizations inside Thailand dedicated to promoting and defending the rights of the hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrant workers at work,” said Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau, who presented their awards.
SERC is largest labor union organization in Thailand representing more than 180,000 members in state-owned enterprises.
“Our awardees tonight are innovators in thinking about how do we come up with the global networks and the grassroots organizing that can help provide a counterbalance to the ever- sprawling global corporate supply chains,” said Judy Gearhart, ILRF executive director. “Because there needs to be that possibility for workers to speak up and have a voice vis-a-vis their employers whether or not their employers—the ones that have the influence—are thousands of miles away or in their home country.”
U.S. Senator Tom Harkin also received an award from the ILRF for championing the rights of workers at home and abroad and promoting labor rights conditionality clauses in U.S. trade agreements.
MWRN, founded by Burmese migrant workers in 2009, with support from the Solidarity Center and Human Rights and Development Foundation, has organized migrant workers into an informal trade union network. Its membership has grown to more than 700 workers, who labor primarily in seafood processing plants and also in the auto parts and plastics sectors and furniture-making industry.
Legally, migrants are prohibited from organizing or forming a union or collective bargaining in Thailand, which has not ratified core ILO Conventions 87 and 98 guaranteeing the freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively. More than 75 percent of the workforce—including Thai workers and more than 2.5 million migrant workers—is prohibited or severely limited by law and practice from exercising these fundamental human and labor rights.
In 2012, MWRN hosted an historic and high-profile visit by Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. During her visit, she held a private meeting at the MWRN office to hear migrant worker concerns and recommendations to improve their labor rights. Aung San Suu Kyi then brought their issues to the Thai government and promised to work with the authorities to address their problems. Migrant workers in Thailand often face dangerous working conditions, workplace injuries, unpaid wages, fear of employer retaliation and threats, extortion and forced labor and trafficking.
By enabling migrant Burmese workers in Thailand to “join together to stand up to major seafood manufacturers and exporters and demand safer conditions and fair wages, they can win;” said Bader-Blau. “And when railway workers in Thailand can organize, they can tell their bosses, ‘No’ to unsafe working conditions, they can save lives.”
May 20, 2013
At least 23 garment workers were injured today when a structure the workers used for rest breaks collapsed in Cambodia. The collapse comes just days after two workers were killed when a ceiling caved in at a Cambodian shoe factory.
Over the weekend, the owner of the Wing Star Shoe factory said negligence led to the collapse of an overloaded storage bin. He also said in a press conference last week that he does not expect to be prosecuted for the deadly incident. Another Wing Star official called the tragedy “a small incident.” Meanwhile, workers have been told to report back to work, despite government assurances on the day of the tragedy that a full investigation would take place.
“Although Cambodian garment factories have been hailed as providing safer working conditions than those in Bangladesh, that does not constitute a safe industry,” says Solidarity Center Cambodia Country Program Director David Welsh. “Of the 100 factories audited on an ad hoc basis, 25 were found to have safety and health violations,” he said, citing a recent International Labor Organization (ILO) report.
The report found “a worrying increase in fire safety violations,” in which only 57 percent of factories kept paths free of obstructions. The study, part of the ILO’s “Better Factories Cambodia” project, showed a large drop in compliance in fire safety measures, with the number of garment and footwear factories abiding by the legal requirement to keep access paths free of obstructions “unprecedentedly decreasing from 87 percent to 57 percent compliance.”
The ILO findings belie a statement by the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia that the factory collapse was a one-time occurrence. A separate report on a pilot project on footwear factories found they were not in compliance with a host of labor standards, especially regarding occupational safety and health. Chemical safety is a special concern, because the use of toxic solvents is much more widespread than it is for clothing.
A spokesman for Wing Star Shoe factory also said the company will pay the cost of the two victims’ funerals and the medical bills of the 14 workers injured. The family of one of the workers killed said she was 15 years old.
Yet the Phnom Penh Post reports that families were told they had to take the amount the company offered or get nothing—and the compensation was significantly less than they had sought.
According to the Post: Rim Rorn, 29, uncle of Rim Roeun, 22, who died in the collapse, said talks between his family and factory representatives had broken down. “The representatives told us to accept their offer . . . or it’s hopeless for us.”
The garment and shoe manufacturing industry is Cambodia’s largest formal employer, with 500,000 workers in more than 500 factories, and generated $4.6 billion in exports in 2012. Most garments and shoes are exported to the United States and the European Union.
The May 16 tragedy follows the April 24 collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, where 1,127 garment workers were killed. The eight-story building housed five garment factories and a government inquiry pointed to shoddy construction as the prime trigger of the collapse.
May 14, 2013
The Bangladesh cabinet approved a change to the nation’s labor laws that it says would enable workers to more freely form unions. The proposal, which must be approved by Parliament, would allow workers to join unions without showing the list of union supporters to factory owners to verify their employment—a practice that effectively makes it impossible for unions to gather sufficient support to register with the government because factory owners often penalize or fire workers who support unionization.
The move follows an announcement that the Bangladesh government would raise the minimum wage for the nation’s 4 million garment workers. Bangladesh garment workers at minimum are paid $37 a month, the lowest wages in the global garment industry, while often risking their lives just to be at work.
The government’s step toward improving Bangladesh labor laws is welcome, but significant issues remain, says Solidarity Center Asia Regional Director Tim Ryan.
“Registering unions is only part of the difficulty workers experience when they seek to form a trade union,” Ryan says. “In the ready-made garment industry, workers who want to join a union report they face anti-union harassment and discrimination on the job. Until the government takes steps to afford workers their fundamental right of freedom of association by bringing its labor laws into full compliance with international standards, Bangladesh garment workers will not be able to have a voice on the job that they need to improve safety and health conditions.”
Ryan also points to the lack of movement in finding those responsible for the murder of Aminul Islam, a union organizer in the garment sector who was tortured and killed last year. “Finding the perpetrators of those who murdered Aminul and obtaining justice for him would emonstrate that Bangladesh respects the rights of its workers.”
On Monday, major retailers that represent the largest purchasers of clothes made in Bangladesh announced they would help finance safety upgrades at apparel factories. This move follows the collapse of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, which resulted in the world’s worst industrial disaster since the 1984 Bhopal explosion in India. The announcement comes as rescue efforts ended at the site, with the bodies of 1,127 workers recovered from the rubble. The building housed five garment factories.
These actions by the government and brands follow weeks of protests and walkouts by garment workers across the capital, Dhaka, who joined together to demand safe working conditions and wages that can support themselves and their families.
Three factories closed Monday after workers spotted cracks on a wall. They immediately evacuated the building that housed the factories and began protesting outside. After cracks surfaced in the Rana building on April 24, garment workers were told to report to work. Within hours, the building pancaked in on itself.
In Ashulia, near Dhaka, garment makers said yesterday they are indefinitely closing all factories in the area because of worker protests. Workers have been demanding pay increases, benefits and workplace safety for the past 12 days. Ashulia’s more than 300 garment factories account for nearly 20 percent of total garment exports.
Also on Monday, several hundred workers at a ready-made garment factory blocked a road in Mirpur area of the capital for more than two hours, protesting dismissal of 13 co-workers.
Arati Bala Das, 18, was among those pulled from the Rana building after being pinned under a concrete pillar for three days. “When the building collapsed, I felt that I was going down,” she told Solidarity Center staff in Dhaka. “When it stopped, I found myself in the dark. It was difficult to breathe. I could not see anything. I could not move a bit. I realized that two dead bodies had fallen on my legs and a pillar had fallen on those dead bodies. I was very much afraid and I thought I would not be able to return alive.”
Arati’s mother, Titon, was killed in the collapse and Arati’s right leg was amputated. Both worked at New Wave Style Ltd. factory. Her father Adhir Chandra Das, a day laborer, now faces the likely impossible task of supporting Arati and her three young sisters without the additional wages of his wife and eldest daughter.
In November 2012, a fire at Tazreen Fashions killed at least 112 garment workers. Since that blaze, 18 garment workers have died at their workplaces and more than 650 have been injured in 43 fire incidents, according to data compiled by Solidarity Center staff in Dhaka. Just days after the Rana collapse, eight workers were killed at the Tung Hai Sweater Factory.
