By Min Ni Kyaw - May 14, 2024
Workers from Gainway International Garment factory said that the factory intimidate and scold the workers who don’t work additional overtime after the mandatory 2 hours one. The factory is manufacturing Elam and MCW brands currently.
“Workers are being forced to sign to work overtime without their consents and have to work additional 2 hours every day. They don’t inform in advance and calling on Sundays as wells,” the workers said.
Department of Labor’s instruction upon the factories said that they must inform to the Department of Labor in advance with a certificate of consent from the workers to call overtime.
The Gainway International (Myanmar) Garment Co.,Ltd garment factory failed to inform in advance but the supervisors are intimidating the workers for not working the overtime.
“The super got angry upon the 6 workers who didn’t work the additional overtime. They left at 6:00 pm instead of 8:00 pm. The supervisors told the workers to leave at 4:00 pm if they can’t work all overtimes. We are working 2 hours of overtime daily as the expenses are not covered without overtime, the employers are intimidating other employers regarding job,” said a worker.
Workers said that the working hours are from 7:30 am to 6:00 pm but they have to work continuously until the 6:00 pm since they finished the lunch.
“They don’t give a break time until 6:00 pm overtime. They neither provide any snacks, They give some snacks if we work until 8:00 pm but have to eat while working only if the Chinese experts aren’t around,” said the worker.
The workers said that the factory is discriminating the fabric bonus among the workers making their salaries different from each other,
Workers demanded for raise in the factory at 2023 and there were around 900 workers at that time but only around 500 workers left for now.
“We don’t have consents due to their pressures. We want to resign but only tolerating because of the livelihoods. We are continuing with the rest of workforce since many others resigned, we have to ignore the fact that they are discriminating against us in the salary issues,” a worker said.
The factory didn’t reinforce the workforce but assign the current workforce for the tasks that were done by much more workers. And there is no heat and cold balance adjusting in the factory whereas there are some departments where the workers have to work under the heavy sunlight all day.
“The workplace is too hot. We already asked for the air conditioner but the factory didn’t give us but kept measuring the room temperature every day. The temperature is always around 37, 38 and 39 degrees Celsius. But they lied in the documents saying it’s just 34 degrees Celsius. The clinic only provide one mineral soft drink per two people and sometimes we don’t even get it,” the worker explained the working condition under the high temperature,
The factory is located at the Thar Du Kan Industrial Zone, Shwe Pyi Thar Township, Yangon and owned by a Chinese national. The factory have a workplace coordination committee but they don’t address and resolve the workplace disputes according to the workers.
