At a garment factory on the outskirts of Myanmar’s biggest city, Zin Mar Htun has been working through the night — doing unpaid overtime in a desperate attempt to keep her job.
Myanmar’s clothing factories have cut more than 250,000 jobs since the military seized power in a Feb. 1 coup, unleashing economic turmoil and triggering sanctions against the ruling generals that anti-junta protesters want to see extended.
Trade unions, which have been at the fore of protests since the coup, are urging foreign fashion firms and governments to sever trade ties to pressure the military, though many low-paid garment workers like Zin Mar Htun fear they would pay the price.
Photo: AP
“It is possible to live and eat only because there are factories,” Zin Mar Htun said during a rare day off from sewing clothes at a plant that supplies European fashion labels.
“Without this job, I would become a beggar. I know nothing but sewing,” she said, adding that her monthly salary had dropped to 180,000 kyat, about US$100, since bosses stopped paying for overtime.
A survey of 400 workers — 290 from garment and shoe factories, some of them already unemployed — found 97 percent did not support the unions’ campaign for broader sanctions, according to the Workers’ Solidarity League of Burma, a nonprofit.
Photo: AP
Heeding the demands of unions and rights groups for tougher action, the European Parliament called in October for a swift review of EU trade benefits that helped Myanmar’s garment exports skyrocket over the last decade.
Aided by the bloc’s Everything But Arms (EBA) trade scheme, which allows tax-free exports from developing countries, the sector made up 30 percent of all exports in 2019, worth US$6.5 billion, and up from less than US$1 billion in 2011, UN data shows.
Critics say EBA status, which is granted to countries committed to protecting human rights, no longer applies to Myanmar following the death of an estimated 1,200 civilians since Feb. 1 and worsening labor conditions.
“The coup reversed the progress made during the democratization process, thereby undermining the conditions for granting EBA references,” the EU Parliament said in an Oct. 7 resolution.
RIGHTS ROLLBACK
Before the military deposed Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was jailed last week on charges of incitement and breaching COVID-19 rules, Myanmar’s garment factories employed some 700,000 people — mostly young women supporting rural families.
Since the coup, union leaders from the sector have used established networks to mobilise workers in strikes and protests.
In a sector already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, factory zones have been placed under martial law and attacked by arsonists, and unionists have been targeted as 10 years of hard-won labor rights are rolled back, labor campaigners said.
More than 250,000 jobs were lost in the first half of this year and hours were slashed by more than half for those who remained, according to the UN’s labor agency, the International Labour Organization (ILO).
In the economic and political chaos, the interests of some factory bosses and the military have aligned, campaigners said, citing reports of them collaborating to root out union leaders and other organizers.
“(Workers are) being dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night to be arrested and those in military or police custody are being brutally tortured even to the point of death,” global union IndustriALL wrote to the European Commission.
The military junta could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Geneva-based union federation has also backed a campaign by more than 180 Myanmar unions and civil society groups for foreign governments and companies to cut all economic ties with the country.
One of the campaign’s leaders, Khaing Zar Aung, president of the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar, said the potential for mass job losses was outweighed by the millions of people who were already “starving” due to the coup’s economic impact.
In April, the UN warned that up to 12 million people could be pushed into poverty by next year — levels not seen since 2005 — with Myanmar “on the brink of economic collapse.”
Khaing Zar Aung, also a central committee member of the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar, which she said voted unanimously in support of sanctions, dismissed the survey of 400 workers who were almost all against the measures.
“I can get 4,000 or 40,000 signatures of workers who agreed,” she said by phone from Germany, outlining plans to collect donations to support those put out of work if tougher sanctions come into force. “We are doing what we believe.”
’RACE TO THE BOTTOM’
But critics say deeper economic sanctions could do irreversible damage to the sector and put workers at further risk.
Fashion labels that have helped drive improvements in labor conditions would likely be among the first to pull out, said Richard Horsey, a former ILO representative in Myanmar. “Those brands that have higher standards would be stripped out of the market and it would become a race to the bottom,” he said.
Producers with less concern for labor rights would likely fill the vacuum, as Western labels shift production to competitors such as China, Cambodia or Bangladesh — a potential death knell for the industry, he said.
European labels H&M, Marks & Spencer and Primark said they were committed to Myanmar workers, as the Ethical Trade Initiative, a UK-based supply chain watchdog, conducts an assessment of current conditions in the country The report is due to be completed early next year.
“In the meantime, we remain committed to all orders and our current suppliers,” a Primark spokesperson said.
At the Roo Win factory in Yangon, which also supplies European fashion labels, lunch breaks have been slashed to 15 minutes, said Nyo Nyo Tan, a machine operator.
Staff are threatened and harassed if they fail to meet rising production targets, and union leaders and other dissenters had been fired by factory bosses, she added.
But she said working under deteriorating conditions was better than not working at all.
“We rely on (business from) other countries,” she said, adding that she was not aware of the sanctions campaign. “I would like to request that brands do not leave.”
Anyone who has been to Alishan (阿里山) is familiar with the railroad there: one line comes up from Chiayi City past the sacred tree site, while another line goes up to the sunrise viewing platform at Zhushan (祝山). Of course, as a center of logging operations for over 60 years, Alishan did have more rail lines in the past. Are any of these still around? Are they easily accessible? Are they worth visiting? The answer to all three of these questions is emphatically: Yes! One of these lines ran from Alishan all the way up to the base of Jade Mountain. Its
The entire saga involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to produce plot twists at such a rapid pace that fiction publishers would throw it out for being ridiculously improbable. This past week was particularly bizarre, but surprisingly the press has almost entirely ignored a big story that could have serious national security implications and instead focused on a series of salacious bombshell allegations. Ko is currently being held incommunicado by prosecutors while several criminal investigations are ongoing on allegations of bribery and stealing campaign funds. This last week for reasons unknown Ko completely shaved
The only geopolitical certainty is that massive change is coming. Three macro trends are only just starting to accelerate, forming a very disruptive background to an already unsettled future. One is that technological transformations exponentially more consequential and rapid than anything prior are in their infancy, and will play out like several simultaneous industrial revolutions. ROBOT REVOLUTION It is still early days, but impacts are starting to be felt. Just yesterday, this line appeared in an article: “To meet demands at Foxconn, factory planners are building physical AI-powered robotic factories with Omniverse and NVIDIA AI.” In other words, they used AI
The rhythms of bustling, working-class Mumbai are brought to vivid life in All We Imagine as Light. The stunning narrative debut of filmmaker Payal Kapadia explores the lives of three women in the city whose existence is mostly transit and work. Even that isn’t always enough to get by and pay the rent. One of the women, a widow, recently retired from working her whole life at a city hospital, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), is even facing eviction. The other two, roommates and co-workers in the maternity ward are in different parts of life. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) has a husband from an
RSS