Myanmar’s overflow, The Economist

Migrant workers battered by the slump

MORE than 1m people from Myanmar have opted to labour in the sweatshops, fields and fisheries of Thailand rather than endure the daily struggle for survival many face at home. The global downturn has conspired to make their prospects, never rosy, even bleaker.

An estimated 120,000 migrant workers live in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. Most work in garment factories, seen as the best of a few bad choices. Others have to take dirty and dangerous jobs processing fish or spraying crops, where abuses, including beating and enslavement, are reportedly most common. Garment-workers say they typically take home about 70 baht ($2) a day, less than half the legal minimum wage. They dispute employers’ claims that the discrepancy reflects the cost of food and lodging.

Some workers, particularly from minority ethnic groups, are fleeing persecution. One young woman, stitching baby clothes, is saving to pay for a physics course at Yangon University. But most workers are in Thailand to support families at home. According to Sean Turnell, a specialist on Myanmar’s economy at Macquarie University in Australia, the average worker sends back around $300 a year, a crucial prop for hundreds of thousands of poor families.

The downturn was quick to hit Mae Sot’s export-focused garment factories. According to Chaiyuth Seneetantikul, of the local chapter of the Federation of Thai Industries, orders are down by only around 12% and redundancies have been minimal. But many workers say that production has dwindled; the talk is of lay-offs, unpaid leave and the cancelling of overtime, on which most rely to make any savings.

The value of their remittances has been further eroded by the appreciation of Myanmar’s currency, the kyat. It has risen by a quarter against the baht over the past year, mostly, says Mr Turnell, because of inflows of aid after Cyclone Nargis. The appreciation has been exacerbated by falling demand for imports inside Myanmar, a symptom of a slumping economy.
The plight of migrant workers in Thailand is worsened by the unregistered and hence illegal status of at least half of them. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation by employers, frequent extortion by the police and periodic clampdowns. Migrant workers have been quietly encouraged, but no new registrations have been accepted since 2006. In January, when his government was under pressure over the army’s callous treatment of ethnic-Rohingya boat people, originally from Myanmar, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister, told journalists that the illegal-immigrant problem had to be solved. “We will push them out of the country,” he blustered.

According to activists in Mae Sot, the next three days witnessed the rounding up and expulsion of 1,500 migrant workers. Most reportedly came straight back across the open border. There may be more such incidents as the Thai economy worsens. But the impact of the slump on migrant labour may not be straightforward. Garment-workers will doubtless continue to feel the pinch and suffer redundancy and lost income. But those toiling in dirty and dangerous jobs may still be in demand, even as prices and incomes fall. Cheap labour is rarely scorned in a downturn.