ICFTU : Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights in Burma (2001)
01-10-01
Trade unions are forbidden by law and no collective bargaining exists. Abuse of workers’ rights is rampant, especially in export-oriented industries. Any attempt to protest leads to detention and sometimes torture at the hands of the ruling military. Independent unions must work underground and their leaders, when captured, are given severe prison sentences. Forced labour has continued on a massive scale, drawing severe criticism from the ILO and the wider international community.
The law prevents independent trade union activities
A “Trade Union Act”, which exists since 1926, technically remains in effect but it makes the formation of trade unions dependant on prior government authorisation. It is, however, completely ignored in practice and no trade unions are allowed to be established or to function. The trade unions that existed before the present military regime was put in place in 1988 have been dissolved. Freedom of association is further prevented under order 2/88 issued in 1988 by the (then) State Law and Order Restoration Council (name of the junta, which was changed to State Peace and Development Committee, SPDC, in 1997). The order prohibits any activity by five persons or more, such as “gathering, walking or marching in procession … regardless of whether the act is with the intention of creating disturbances or of committing a crime or not”. This order is further strengthened by the “Unlawful Associations Act” . Under art. 17.1 of the latter, “whoever is a member of an unlawful association, or takes part in meetings of or receives or solicits contributions for such association.. .shall be punished with imprisonment of not less than two years and not more than three years”.
The ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations has called on the government for over 40 years to amend its legislation and practice in order to bring them into conformity with ILO Convention 87, which Burma has ratified. In 1999, the ILO Conference Committee on the Application of Standards, by way of special paragraph on Burma in its final report, strongly criticised the government for its persistent failure to comply with these demands.
Independent trade unions are forced to operate underground
The independent Federation of Trade Unions - Burma (FTUB) has been forced to operate clandestinely since its inception, in 1991. It maintains structures, organises migrant workers and runs workers’ training activities in countries bordering Burma. It maintains underground contacts with workers inside Burmese territory, where it actively collects evidence of violations of workers’ rights, especially forced labour. It monitors the denial of collective bargaining rights in the industrial sector. The FTUB General Secretary, Maung Maung, is regularly attacked by the junta’s media and diplomats, who present him as a fugitive criminal.
Trade union leaders in jail
Two members of the FTUB’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) have been in jail for over four years. U Myo Aung Thant, a member of the All Burma Petro-Chemical Corporation Union, was arrested with his wife and children on 13 June 1997 and sentenced to life imprisonment for “high treason” in August of the same year, on trumped-up charges of smuggling explosives into the country. His conviction rested on a confession obtained under torture; his trial was held in secret and he had no legal counsel. He also received ten additional years imprisonment on other charges. At the end of 1998 he was moved from Rangoon’s Insein prison to a remote prison in Myitkyina, Kachin State, in the far north of the country. The prison is too distant for his family to visit him. U Myo Aung Thant’s wife was sentenced in the same trial to ten years in prison as an accomplice to her husband and also remains in jail.
U Kyin Kyaw, an official of the Seafarers’ Union of Burma and FTUB CEC member, was also arrested with his wife in 1997. He had earlier been detained for trade union activities in 1993 and had been tortured in detention. The authorities have never stated the charges under which he is currently held but it is known his case is related to that of U Myo Aung Thant. He is serving a 17-year prison sentence in Thayarwaddy prison in Pegu division. His health is poor.
Trade union leader Than Naing was still in prison after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989 for playing a leading role in forming strike committees during the 1988 democracy uprising which was crushed by the military.
Workers denied elementary rights and working conditions
In September, the FTUB reported serious violations of workers’ rights in the textile sector, where 300,000 workers are employed in about 400 large, medium and small sized factories. Many of the largest ones, like Thamaing, Shwe Taung and Paleik Textile factories have been taken over by the military and are operated by army consortiums, such as the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. (UMEH). There are also several large factories belonging to joint ventures involving the army and multinational corporations, such as Daewoo, associated with UMEH. No workers’ organisations exist in these factories, nor does any collective bargaining take place. Wages are set unilaterally by management, which often cheats workers out of their earnings, for instance by refusing to pay overtime production, which is mandatory under threat of dismissal. Such is the case, for instance, at Myanmar Yes, a Korean-owned garment factory, located in Rangoon’s Hlaing-tha-ya industrial zone. Though official working hours are from 7:30 am to 4:00 p.m., overtime is compulsory from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. and occasionally stretches on into the early morning when customer demand rises. At the Taw-win garment factory, owned by Apolo Garment, a private Burmese company, overtime is compulsory every alternate day, with a sum of 1 or 2 kyat ($US 0.002 to 0.004) paid for overtime work if production reaches above the daily quota. There are only two days of closure per month at the factory.
At the Jong Lih backpack factory, owned by a Taiwanese investor, workers can be dismissed for absence caused by sickness or by a worker’s wife giving birth to a child. Use of the toilet is restricted to six minutes and each additional minute is fined. The factory only closes two days per month; on any other day than that of official closure, workers are forced to remain on the premises and forbidden to receive visitors, even when off duty.
The Myanmar Yes factory, mentioned earlier, has a range of ten lines, each composed of over 100 workers; each line receives one single access card to the toilet. No medical facilities are available. On 16 May, Ma Moe Htay, a worker on Line 6, was refused permission to rest after she was taken seriously ill on the production line. After she cried and begged, according to the FTUB, she was instructed by her supervisor to hide behind a stack of garments. Two days later, her dead body, clad in a Myanmar Yes uniform, was found in the vicinity. Although her colleagues were deeply distressed by the incident, neither the management nor the police did anything to investigate her death.
On 5 October, workers staged a collective protest after the employer retracted a promise to pay piece rates for each garment produced. The management called in the army, which sent in Military Intelligence (MI) unit 26, headed by the unit commander, Maung Maung Lay, to quell the disturbance. Thirty workers were detained, in two separate groups: the first one, comprising 20 workers, was detained at the Hlaing Tharywa police station, while another ten were taken to the Ye Kyi Ai military interrogation centre, where political prisoners are known to be tortured. Several of those arrested remained in detention for up to three months, while all those who had been arrested lost their jobs.
The FTUB-affiliated Seafarers’ Union of Burma (SUB), which is also illegal in Burma, seeks to protect Burmese seafarers sailing on foreign ships, mostly under flags of convenience (FOC). Burmese sailors typically have to pay three months' wages in advance to state-controlled or private shipping agents in Rangoon before they are allowed to take up their assignments on foreign ships. Their contracts are also subject to approval by the regime-controlled Seaman’s Employment Control Division (SECD). Once aboard, they are prohibited from complaining about their working and living conditions, which are notoriously disastrous aboard FOC ships. In particular, they are strictly forbidden to seek or accept assistance from the London-based International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), an international trade secretariat associated with the ICFTU. Burmese sailors having contacted the ITF in the past have on occasion been captured abroad by the junta's military intelligence (MI) and, once forcibly repatriated, sent to prison.
ENCADRE
Burmese sailors serving abroad run severe risks if they contact the ITF. Maung Kyaw Htin Latt was one of 10 seafarers contracted to serve aboard the "MV Devo", sailing under a Bahamian flag of convenience. Before leaving Rangoon, they each had to pay over fourteen hundred US dollars to the local shipping agent, the "Golden Eagle". When they joined the ship, in Malta, they discovered working and living conditions were appalling and the food they were served was both substandard and insufficient. Even worse, their US$ 470 monthly wages were not paid for over five months. They eventually complained to an ITF maritime inspector in the port of Veracruz, in Mexico, who succeeded in forcing the company to pay the seafarers their full back wages, as specified in their contracts. However, the ship's master indicated in their seaman's books that they had received assistance from the ITF. Upon returning to Rangoon, nine of the Burmese crew had to report to the Director General of the Department of Marine Administration (DMA), who informed them that their seaman's books were revoked and their qualifications as seamen cancelled. He unsuccessfully attempted to force them to sign an acknowledgement that they had been thus informed. At the same time, the SECD refused to issue them with a copy of their notice of dismissal and to post the order on its public notice board, as per standard practice, therefore depriving them of any formal evidence. As for Maung Kyaw Htin Latt, who had remained behind in Bangkok, he unsuccessfully sought employment with several Burmese shipping agents in Thailand: all of them refused to hire him as soon as they discovered the "ITF" mention in his seaman's book; he has remained jobless ever since.