The following attachment is the proceeding report of AMRC regional meeting on informal workers' organizing and collective bargaining in Bangkok on October 17-19, 2011. The meeting concluded three-year project on New Ways of Organizing. In this meeting, the groups exchanged their experiences in solving problems and barriers encountered in organizing and exercising collective bargaining strategies.
The following attachment is the proceeding report of AMRC regional meeting on informal workers' organizing and collective bargaining in Bangkok on October 17-19, 2011. The meeting concluded three-year project on New Ways of Organizing. In this meeting, the groups exchanged their experiences in solving problems and barriers encountered in organizing and exercising collective bargaining strategies.
The book provides an analysis that capital mobility has become major and underlying factor of the precarity of workers in Asia. The chapters - case studies on Japan, China, Philippines and Thailand - illustrate that workers’ collective bargaining power has declined which can be seen in the intensification of irregularisation, union busting actions, company closures, and massive dismissal of workers reported across the region. In many cases, this condition has resulted in the weakening of militancy of workers in countries that used to be dynamic actors in the labour rights movement.
Since the 1980s the pattern in Southeast Asia, and other developing nations and regions, has been to suppress and maintain authoritarian control over labour and trade unions in order to maintain ‘investor confidence’ and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Free trade agreements (FTA) are often falsely associated with improved labour conditions, more jobs, and better pay, but the reality is often far removed from this promise.
There are between 1.5 and 2 million migrant workers in Thailand, roughly 80 percent are Burmese. This article highlights legal and social factors which contribute to the gross exploitation of migrant workers in Thailand, with a particular focus on Burmese workers in Mae Sot, Tak province, which is host to some 100,000 Burmese workers employed primarily in textile and garment factories, other manufacturing sectors, and agricultural work. Mae Sot is situated on the Thai side of the Thai-Burma border.
Following are a few typical situations that courageous Thai workers frequently face when attempting to organise a union, challenging the national and international legal frameworks.
• The Hong Kong-based May Choeng Toy Products company owns Master Toy Company in Thailand, which produces Maisto brand toys. In December 2000 Master Toy dismissed 173 workers because they were members of a union. The workers protested for half a year before achieving justice.
A man working next door to the factory when the fire broke out said, “I was upstairs in our work-room when one of the employees who happened to be looking out of the window cried that there was a fire around the corner. I rushed downstairs, and when I reached the sidewalk the girls were already jumping from the windows. None of them moved after they struck the sidewalk … Bodies were falling all around us … They stood on the windowsills tearing their hair out in the handfuls and then they jumped.”
The Thais have risen twice in recent memory against military dictatorships, in 1973 and 1992. The labour movement was at the centre of both uprisings, and has been integrally involved in the movement to democratise Thailand. However, the movement has failed to translate this prominence into union density and collective bargaining gains. It has scant influence on wage levels and wage patterns in the burgeoning economy.
This book is more than a review of labour law, it is the only comprehensive review available of labour law in the Asia Pacific region. It investigates the impact of labour law on workers in 30 countries. It analyses trade union and labour activists’ responses to changes in labour law, and examines what labour law means for workers’ daily lives. Each chapter representing a country can be downloaded country wise for download below.
By Miriam Joffe-Block,recently on a Fulbright research study on Labour Organising in Thailand where she worked with the Thai Labour Campaign and CLIST; Miriam has also been active in the USAS anti-sweatshop movement.
10 May 1993 saw the world’s worst ever factory fire in Thailand. The fire in the Kader Toy Factory on the outskirts of Bangkok killed 188 workers and seriously injured 469. The workers, who were mostly women, were locked inside the factory in order to prevent them from stealing toys. Locked exits meant many of the workers had to jump out of third and fourth floor windows to escape from flames and fumes resulting in broken limbs and associated injuries.
Every year, according to the International Labour Organisation’s [ILO] estimates. over 220,000 workers die in workplace accidents. This trend is being exacerbated by the globalisation of the world’s economy. The ILO recently concluded that the “acceleration of globalisation and liberalisation in Asia had positive repercussions on the volume of jobs but not the quality.”