Newly Emboldened Burmese Workers Press for Change, IPS

KHON KAEN, Thailand, Sep 14, 2010 (IPS) – When nearly 1,000 Burmese migrant workers launched a strike at a fishnet factory in north-east Thailand a week ago, activists expected it to be a short burst of anger. After all, this frequently abused labour force was often gripped with fear during brief work stoppages in the past elsewhere in this South-east Asian kingdom.

But with the strike at the Dechanpanich Fishing Net Factory in the city of Khon Kaen entering its seventh day on Tuesday, labour and migrant rights activists are portraying this unprecedented work stoppage as an emerging sign of boldness by migrants better informed of their rights.

Such confidence is also reflected in the striking workers choosing a team of six to represent them at negotiations with the owner of the factory to address their demands. Among them was the reinstatement of six ailing Burmese workers, who had been dismissed from their jobs on Sep. 6, thus triggering the strike.

“Strikes by Burmese migrant workers in Thailand have never been as long as this one,” says Moe Swe, general secretary of the Yaung Chioo Workers Association, a non-governmental organisation for Burmese migrants’ rights based in Mae Sot, a town near the Thai-Burma border. “It is clear that the workers are united and feel strong enough to fight for their rights.”

“This action offers a message of hope for other Burmese migrant workers,” he tells IPS. “They are following it closely.”

The work stoppage at the factory, which promotes itself as among the largest nylon fishnet manufacturers in the world, has also been used by the workers to address other long-term grievances. These include the migrants being compelled to work for free for one-and-a-half hours daily over the past nine months to help the factory owner recover the cost paid to a recruiting agent for the Burmese labourers. The strikers are also demanding that the company owner give up possession of the workers’ passports, overseas workers identity cards, and work permits.

These demands come on top of the factory owner reportedly paying the migrants less than the minimum wage paid to Thai workers in Khon Kaen. The Burmese are being paid only 140 baht (around 4.60 U.S. dollars) a day – lower than the government-sanctioned 157 Baht (5.20 dollars) as the minimum daily wage.

This dispute, although isolated, has broader implications for some 90,000 Burmese migrants who have come on board a new migrant labour registration programme pushed by the Thai government, known here as the National Verification (NV). A further 800,000 Burmese workers have till February 2012 to get their NV papers.

Besides them, an estimated 300,000 Burmese migrants who also were eligible to join this NV process had not signed up. And shut out from this process, while still in Thailand, are an additional one million undocumented Burmese migrant workers.

These workers, who labour in jobs described as “dirty” and “dangerous,” are key to keeping Thailand’s fishing, construction, agriculture and garments sectors humming, in addition to having a substantial presence in domestic work as cooks, maids, and gardeners.

The NV process was held out by the Thai government as a measure for the Burmese migrants, who regularly enter Thailand “illegally” by crossing the porous borders, to become legal workers, with protection and rights guaranteed. It followed a 2003 agreement signed by the military regime in Burma and Thailand.

Bangkok’s migrant labour policy shift stemmed from an endless stream of reports in the media and by labour and human rights organisers shedding light on the scale of abuse the undocumented migrant workers were subjected to by Thai employers and Thai officials, including the police.

Migrant workers, both documented and undocumented, have been victims of “violence, intimidation and extortion from state authorities, including police, military and immigration offices,” revealed Human Rights Watch, the New York-based global rights lobby, in a report released early this year. “These abuses include killing, beatings, sexual harassment and rape, forced labour, abductions and other forms of arbitrary detention.”

But now, with the workers at the fishnet factory on strike for labour rights violations, concerns are being expressed on how sincere the NV process is.

“It reveals that even after the Burmese migrants had got their legal documents, it does not improve working conditions,” says Jackie Pollock, director of the Migrant Assistance Programme Foundation, a labour rights lobby based in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. “The employer cannot hold the personal documents of the workers.”

What makes the strikers at the Dechanpanich Fishing Net Factory significant to labour rights activists is that they were among the first group to join the NV process in mid-2009.

“They are discovering the limits of their rights,” says Andy Hall, consultant to the Bangkok-based Human Rights and Development Foundation. “Is the NV a genuine process?”

Yet Hall and Pollock confirmed during interviews that the very act of the migrants striking for a week has much to do with the NV status that the Burmese enjoy.

“Previously, employers would have sacked the striking workers,” says Pollock. “The space the workers have to negotiate their demands is positive.”

(END)

By Marwaan Macan-Markar