Saturday, 21 August 2010 01:38 Mizzima News
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Burmese migrant workers held a demonstration this morning at a prawn-processing plant to the south of Bangkok, Thailand over changes in their overtime-pay arrangements. One of the protesters said Thai police detained eight strikers.
About 300 migrant workers from Asian Seafood in Maha Chaing, south of Bangkok, staged the strike at about 10 a.m. Thai authorities reached the factory in the evening and took eight of them away in a prison van.
“The agreed payment is 205 baht (US$5) for an eight-hour shift. The overtime payment for each hour over eight hours should be 38 baht,” San Aye, who has worked at this factory for about 10 years, said.
“But then they [managers] changed this agreement and said that they could pay by the kilogram instead of the agreed hourly basis. They told us to take it or leave it so we went on strike,” he said.
The arrested workers were reportedly taken to Tha Chalone police station and Thai authorities forced them to sign a statement in Thai that the workers could not understand, Tin Ko Thet, close to the strike, said.
Asian Seafood was deliberating with officials from the Ministry of Labour and it was unlikely they would change the terms, protester San Aye said.
Near the coast south of Bangkok, the many fish- and shrimp-processing plants of Maha Chaing employed up to 300,000 migrant workers, National Coalition Government of Union of Burma migrant workers’ department head Thet Khaing said.
More than 2.5 million Burmese migrants work in Thailand, whose National Security Council is now considering giving permanent-resident status to those who have been working in Thailand for more than 20 years..
Friday, September 3, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Subscribe to email feed
