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Topic: Global development, Rights and freedom
Sub-title: Daw Myo Aye, labour organiser and a leader of civil disobedience protests, dragged from office by army
Topic: Global development, Rights and freedom
Description: "One of Myanmar’s leading trade union leaders has been arrested as part of escalating attacks on pro-democracy figures by the military junta. Daw Myo Aye, director of Solidarity Trade Union of Myanmar (STUM), one of Myanmar’s largest independent unions, is a central figure in the movement for workers’ rights. She has been one of the most prominent union leaders in the civil disobedience movement, which has been organising national strikes and protests since the military seized power from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February. Myo Aye was dragged from her office by the army last Thursday and taken to a police station where she has been charged and detained. According to the union, she is due to be transferred to a prison in Yangon. “We lost our pillar,” said a member of staff at STUM. “But … we are going to operate with the remaining staff. We operate within the law and we provide assistance to workers in accordance with the labour law. Our organisation will not collapse because she is not here.” Thousands of people have been arrested and hundreds killed since protests against the military junta began. According to the latest figures from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), 737 people have been killed by the military, and 3,229 individuals are detained or have been sentenced. Chue Thwel, Daw Myo Aye’s daughter, said: “Since the beginning of the coup on 1 February, I thought they would come for her … I feel they arrested her to set an example.” A spokesperson for the Worker Rights Consortium, a labour rights monitoring organisation, said: “With many labour leaders already in hiding or exile, the military’s arrest of Daw Myo Aye poses a serious challenge to the vital role of the Myanmar labour movement in the struggle to restore democracy.”..."
Source/publisher: "The Guardian" (UK)
2021-04-19
Date of entry/update: 2021-04-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 112.1 KB
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Sub-title: The pandemic has laid bare a broken system
Description: "This edited article by Thammachart Kri-aksorn is from Prachatai, an independent news site in Thailand, and is republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. The Thai Ministry of Labour has invoked an Emergency Decree to prohibit labor strikes and lockouts during the COVID-19 outbreak. Any labour disputes will be now be transferred to the Labour Relations Committee appointed by Chatumongol Sonakul, the Minister of Labour. The order entered force on May 6. Under normal circumstances, Thai law allows strikes and lockouts for irreconcilable disputes, except in essential infrastructure industries. The government can intervene only when the country is under martial law or an emergency decree, or when the Minister of Labour rules that labor disputes may affect the economy or public order, such as is the case at the moment. The order was issued in an attempt to mitigate surging unemployment resulting from government measures taken to control COVID-19. On May 13 the Department of Labour Protection and Welfare called for business owners to consider labour relations principles before laying off employees, including alternative cost-cutting and improved human resources management..."
Source/publisher: "Global Voices"
2020-05-22
Date of entry/update: 2020-05-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: Thousands of workers in Yangon on Sunday took to the streets to demand an increase in the minimum wage to K9800 ($6.66) ahead of the review of the country’s new minimum wage law.
Description: "Ko Thwin Aung, chair of Myan Mhu garment workers union, said the current minimum wage of 4800 is below the cost of living in the country. “The current rate set by the government is not enough for a family of four,” he said. “Commodity prices, as well as hostel charges, are rapidly rising up. So, we will ask for reasonable wage. For a family of four, if three do not work and depend on only one, it is impossible to cope with the current rate. So, we will demand K9800." He explained the amount was reached after consulting 1200 garment workers in Hlaing Tharyar Township starting from October 2019. Nearly 10000 garment workers from 20 labour organisations marched in Hlaing Tharyar to dramatise their demand. According to section 5(h) of Minimum Wages Law, that rate is to be defined every two year, but in the second time rate specification, it took two years and eight months before the minimum was set. "Back in 2018, the minimum wage was set at 4800, but prices of rice are going up now,” said Ma Malar, another labour union leader who joined the protest. “I want the government to take consideration of the welfare of the workers when they set the minimum wage.”..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Myanmar Times" (Myanmar)
2020-01-19
Date of entry/update: 2020-01-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "LABOUR organisations look set on proposing an increase of the minimum wage in Myanmar when it is up for a review by May. This followed a study by the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar (CTUM) in Yangon, Bago, Mandalay, Magwe and Sagaing regions, as well as the Shan and Kayin states, according to The Myanmar Times. Central committee member U Win Zaw said they were inclined to propose 7200 kyats for eight hours of work, or 900 kyats per hour work, to the National Committee for Minimum Wage. Currently, the minimum wage is set at 4800 kyats for eight hours of work and was last reviewed in May 2018. “We have received recommendations from CTUM, labour activists and other federations that the minimum wage should be raised,” said Win Zaw. The National Committee for Minimum Wage includes 27 representatives from the government, workers and employers. The committee is tasked with reviewing the country’s minimum wage every two years. General secretary of the Myanmar Industries Craft and Services Trade Unions Federation, U Thet Hnin Aung, said they were conducting a similar survey and would reveal its findings once completed..."
Source/publisher: "New Straits Times" (Malaysia)
2020-01-10
Date of entry/update: 2020-01-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "The fishing industry has been a significant driver of Myanmar?s economic growth in the last decade. However, Myanmar?s fishing industry has simultaneously been associated with alleged child labour issues. Human Rights Now (HRN), a Tokyobased international human rights NGO, sent a fact-finding mission in July 2017 to investigate the alleged child labour situation in the Myanmar fishing industry. Over the course of five visits from 6 July 2017 to 25 July 2017, the fact-finding mission conducted interviews with labourers at San Pya market, one of the largest wholesale fish markets in Yangon, as well as at two villages across the Yangon River, Aye and Ba Done Nyunt villages. The fact-finding team conducted interviews with 19 people, including 12 child labourers1. While acknowledging the limited scope of the fact-finding mission, HRN uncovered abject working conditions and the use of child labour in the fishing sector in Myanmar. Child participation in the Myanmar labour force is widespread due to poverty, little knowledge about the issue, shortcomings in the country?s education system and a lack of services aimed at poor children and families.2 Furthermore, Myanmar lacks a coherent legal framework against the practice of child labour and, simultaneously, for the protection of young workers..."
Source/publisher: Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business via "Human Right Now"
2018-10-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-10-26
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 961.01 KB
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Description: "This report is a fruit of a one year?s research work by a team of researchers, project staff and volunteers at Action Labor Rights (ALR), led by Thurein Aung (ALR), and with advice from Tin Maung Htwe (Data Analysis) and Carol Ransley. Action Labor Rights (ALR) had its beginnings in 2002 when young members of the National League for Democracy were working with the ILO to advocate for freedom of association and to abolish forced and child labour. In May 2007, six ALR members and more than 80 workers from Hlaingthaya, Shwepyitha and Dagon industrial zones were arrested after taking part in Labour Day celebrations at the US Embassy in Yangon. After their release from prison in January 2012, the activists decided to continue their activities as an organization, and formally established ALR in February 2012. Its activities include training workers on their rights and on labour laws, monitoring the practices of international sourcing companies, research and advocacy, and focusing on the rights of women workers. The research was made possible with support from the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB) as part of their commitment to build capacity of Myanmar civil society working on business and human rights issues and to create knowledge for raising public awareness. However, the report?s findings and recommendations belong to ALR alone..." Action Labour Rights က ရေးသားသည့် ဤအစီရင်ခံစာသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် တည်ရှိသည့် အထည်ချုပ်စက်ရုံများအနက် ကိုရီးယားနိုင်ငံသားများ အပြည့်အဝပိုင်ဆိုင်သည့် စက်ရုံများနှင့် ကိုရီးယားကုမ္ပဏီများနှင့် ဖက်စပ်လုပ်ကိုင်သည့် စက်ရုံများမှ အလုပ်သမားများနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်သည့်အခြေအနေများကို ဆန်းစစ်ထားခြင်းဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ကုမ္ပဏီအများစုသည် ရန်ကုန်နှင့် ပဲခုူးဝန်းကျင်ရှိ စက်မှုဇုန်များတွင် တည်ရှိပါသည်။ ယခု အစီရင်ခံစာသည် ၂ဝ၁၅ ဧပြီလမှ ဇွန်လအတွင်း ကွင်းဆင်းလေ့လာသူ ဆယ်ယောက်ပါဝင်သော အဖွဲ့ဖြင့် စက်ရုံလုပ်ငန်းခွင် ၃၉ ခုမှ ဝန်ထမ်းပေါင်း ၁၂ဝဝ ကို အရည်အသွေးအရရော အရေအတွက်အရပါအခြေခံသည့် မေးခွန်းများကို မေးမြန်း၍ ရရှိလာသည့် အချက်အလက်များကို အခြေခံ၍ ရေးသားထား ခြင်းဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ထို့အတူ အခြားသူများပြုလုပ်ထားခဲ့သည့်၊ ရေးသားသည့် အကြောင်းအရာ အချက်အလက်များမှ ပြန်လည်ကောက်နှုတ်ထားသည့် တစ်ဆင့်ခံ အချက်အလက်များလဲ ပါဝင်ပါသည်။ ကိုယ်တိုင် မေးမြန်းမှုများ ပြုလုပ်ရာတွင်လည်း အရေးပါသောသူများဖြစ်သည့် မန်နေဂျာများနှင့် ဝန်ထမ်းများအား အဖွ့ဲလိုက် ဆွေးနွေးစေမှုများလည်း ပါဝင်ပါသည်။ 본 ?노동기본권행동연대(Action Labor Rights)?가 작성한 이 보고서는 미얀마에서 한국인이 경영하거나 현지 자본과 조인트벤처 형태로 운영하는 일부 의복공장들의 노동환경을 다루고 있습니다. 조사 대상의 대부분은 양곤지역이나 바고의 공단에 위치한 회사들로서, 지난해 4 월부터 6 월까지, 이들 지역 서른아홉개 공장 1 천 2 백명의 노동자들로부터 수집한 질적, 양적 자료를 토대로 결론을 도출했습니다. 이번 조사에는 저희 단체 소속 10 명의 연구원들이 현장투입돼, 공장 매니저들을 포함한 제보자와 중점 조사대상 그룹을 집중 인터뷰하고, 관련 자료도 넘겨받아 보고서를 작성했습니다.
Source/publisher: Action Labor Rights (ALR)
2016-03-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-04-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ), Korean
Format : pdf pdf pdf
Size: 1.96 MB 1.48 MB 1.56 MB
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Description: "Two labour activists are currently on trial for providing striking garment workers in Myanmar advice on their rights. Two other union leaders have already been sentenced to two years and six months in prison for their role in leading and supporting the workers. All four are prisoners of conscience who must be released immediately and unconditionally."
Source/publisher: Amnesty International
2015-09-28
Date of entry/update: 2015-09-29
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 143.26 KB
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Description: "The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military regime continued to totally disregard all human and labour rights. Military agents tortured and imprisoned labour leaders, maintained bans on the Federation of Trade Unions ? Burma (FTUB) and other labour organisations, and continued the house arrest of opposition leader and Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Despite interventions by the ILO, forced labour continued to be used systematically by the regime."
Source/publisher: International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC CSI IGB)
2007-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-01-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English (also available in German, French and Spanish)
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Description: "A major citizens uprising in September against the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military government was led by Buddhist monks and supported by workers, students and citizen activists. Popularly known as the "Saffron Revolution", the movement was crushed by military force on September 26-27, with hundreds injured and killed, and thousands arrested. Harsh repression against all forms of trade union activity remained in place, and the ITUC associated FTUB was still considered an illegal organization..."
Source/publisher: International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC CSI IGB)
2008-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-01-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English (also available in German, French and Spanish)
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Description: "The Ayeyarwady Delta and southern Rangoon Division were devastated on 2-3 May by Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than140,000 persons, making it Burma?s worst natural disaster in history. The suffering of the tens of thousands of survivors was immensely compounded by refusals by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military government to immediately allow international teams of humanitarian experts and supplies into the storm-struck areas. A major reason was the priority placed by the SPDC on proceeding with a 10 May national referendum on a new, military-drafted constitution. Claims by the ruling military generals that the referendum received more than a 92% "yes" vote ignored widespread electoral irregularities and abuses that were roundly condemned by the international community. Harsh repression against all forms of trade union activity remained in place, dozens of trade unionists languished in jail, and the ITUC associated Federation of Trade Unions Burma (FTUB) was still considered an illegal organisation..."
Source/publisher: International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC CSI IGB)
2009-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-01-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English (also available in German, French and Spanish)
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Description: "Numerous strikes occurred with workers demanding better working conditions and wage increases. Labour activists unsuccessfully attempted to register a trade union with the military regime, in a country where establishment of a trade union is still prohibited. Workers? rights are not respected and forced labour remains a significant issue."
Source/publisher: International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC CSI IGB)
2011-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-01-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English (also available in German, French and Spanish)
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Description: Originally published in the "Legal Issues on Burma Journal", Volume No. 19 December 2004 (p. 66-75). [The exact date of publication of the TLJ is not given. The document was last modified on 31 March 2007, so we have given it the date of April 2007]
Creator/author: Jason Douglas Hoge
Source/publisher: Burma Lawyers? Council via Thailand Law Journal 2007 Spring Issue 1 Volume 10
2007-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-01-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: in "Amnesty International?s Concerns at the 89th International Labour Conference 5-21 June 2001, Geneva"
Source/publisher: Amnesty International
2001-05-01
Date of entry/update: 2010-11-21
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English and Spanish
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Description: GENEVA (ILO News) - The International Labour Conference today wrapped up its 87 th session which heard addresses by three heads of state and a Nobel laureate, and reached a unanimous decision to adopt a Convention and Recommendation banning the worst forms of child labour.
1999-06-17
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: Surveys, analyzes, and summarizes the major allegations US concerning labor practices in Burma. Addresses allegations of child labor practices, workers? rights, the forced relocation of laborers, and the use of forced labor to support the tourism industry and construction of the Yadana gas pipeline........
Source/publisher: US Bureau of International Labor Affairs
1998-09-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Source/publisher: US Dept. of Labor
2000-02-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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