Burmese Migrant Workers in Thailand

Mizzima News (www.mizzim.com): After two years of passively accepting her
employer's orders, Khin Wa finally found the courage to be defiant. She refused to give into his latest demand - work a 14-hour shift after completing a gruelling 28-hour one that she had just completed a while ago.


But she was not alone. There were others who were moved likewise, over 70 of
her colleagues, all Burmese migrants, employed at a garment factory in this town in Tak province, close to the Thai-Burma border.
The 23-year-old Wa knew the risk she was taking for this display of solidarity on a recent Monday in September. ''We can be fired any day for doing this,'' said the thin, mild-mannered Burmese at the entrance to the factory, Siriwat Garments.
Her worry is not misplaced in this factory -- which produces clothes bearing
internationally known names such as Dockers, a brand that belongs to the U.S.-based clothing giant Levi Strauss & Co.
A room adjacent to the factory floor has on display dressing gowns in shades of dark blue and black with labels on the collar that read, 'Dockers Sleepwear Collection, 100 percent cotton, Made in Thailand'. But the hostility that Wa and her colleagues had to endure -- including threats of deportation by the factory owner - is only the latest in a growing list of labour rights violations prevalent in Mae Sot.
The past 12 months have seen incidents ranging from a knitting factory owner
refusing to pay 131 Burmese migrants two months wages, owners getting the
police to raid factories to arrest undocumented migrant workers in order to
evade having to pay them, and workers being dismissed from their factory and
subsequently beaten for protesting this.
On top of that, those crusading for the rights of migrant workers like Moe Swe have catalogued other abuses commonly found in most of the 210 factories - often set behind high walls and steel gates and with at times one or two buildings shaped like warehouses -- located in this town.
Workers are not given adequate equipment like masks for protection, some work in crowded environments and some factories have bad ventilation, says
Swe of Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association, a Mae Sot-based group of Burmese
migrants.
The workers have very little time even to go to the toilet. Most are expected to sit at wooden benches and work for stretches that often last 14 hours daily from Monday through Saturday and nine hours on Sundays, adds Swe.
''The workers only get a day off once a month after they get paid,'' he reveals. ''And it is very difficult to get sick leave.''
But for Swe, whose crusade on behalf of the Burmese workers has angered local authorities and led to intelligence officials monitoring his office, the violation that troubles the workers most is that of being underpaid.
''Under Thai labour law the workers should get the minimum wage, 133 baht
(3.25 U.S. dollars) a day, but that is not happening,'' says Pranom Somwong
of the Migrant Action Programme (MAP), a group lobbying for migrants' rights. ''The factories are only paying them 50 baht (1.25 dollars) to 80 baht (two dollars) a day.''
Consequently, the factories in Mae Sot have gained notoriety as sweat shops
or, even worse, as places forcing the Burmese migrants into what critics call ''slave-labour like conditions''.
''Mae Sot is the cesspool of labour rights of Thailand. All labour laws are violated,'' says Phil Robertson, head of the Thai office of the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, a Washington D.C.-based international non-governmental organisation. ''You find the most systemic oppression of workers in Thailand.''
For the likes of Robertson, this vicious combination of low pay and rampant abuse is the outgrowth of factory owners' exploitation of migrant workers, who, be they legal or undocumented, are in a vulnerable position in Thailand.
The migrants' predicament is reflected also in the reports of hundreds of Burmese workers who are deported daily by Thai authorities.
Currently, there are over an estimated one million migrant workers from Burma, majority of whom have no documents granting them permission to work. Of that number, close to 80,000 live and work in Mae Sot, of which only about 30,000 have work permits.
The flow of migrant workers to Mae Sot gained pace in the mid-1990s, when this town known for being a trading outpost between Thailand and Burma was converted into a production centre for garment factories.
All those who come are Burmese fleeing the deteriorating political and economic conditions in their country.
Most of the jobs they are driven to are shunned by Thai workers and are described as ''dangerous and dirty'' by labour rights activists - ranging from work on farms, on construction sites, fishing and in garment factories.
Yet there is little dispute that they have been a major boost to Mae Sot's factories and to this country's economy.
In April, the Federation of the Tak Industrialists Chapter, a body that includes the factory owners in Mae Sot, declared in a report that the region had earned nearly five billion baht (125 million dollars) during the preceding 12 months.
Besides the Dockers label, other labels on clothes produced here that have helped rake in such income are those that often fill the shops in glamorous
boutiques or fancy shopping malls in cities across Asia, Europe and the United States.
They include the rugged outdoor garments bearing the Camel adventure wear
label, one for 'The Blue Revolution since 1960, Jack and Jean's Macanna, U.S.A,' and Abercombie and Fitch.
For its part, however, Levis Strauss & Co., which sells the Dockers line of clothing, declares on its website that it does not support the abuse or exploitation of labour in the production of its clothes.
''In 1991, we became the first worldwide company to establish a comprehensive ethical code of conduct for manufacturing and finishing contractors working with the company,'' it said.
But that appears to be of little consolation to migrant workers like Wa, who, together with her colleagues, lodged a complaint with labour protection officials following the long hours they were forced to work to meet the
factory's new production orders.
''There is little else they can do,'' says migrant labour rights activist Swe. ''That is why they always feel like victims.''