By Yoon Satt - Feb 12, 2024
KSENG (Myanmar) Apparel garment factory which locates at No (-), Survey No (51), Thar Du Kan Industrial Zone, Shwe Pyi Thar Township is abusing labor rights including the unfair overtime recruitment.
The factory is a Chinese national owned which is manufacturing Mataland , Clique , springfield , FB sister , GEM brands with around 900 workers.
The factory workers are asked to sew more than they could and supers are verbally abusing them if they can’t finish. Therefore, workers have to work without going to toilet and without taking a water break. And the overtime are called without the workers’ consents and EC contracts are not given. And the workers are having difficult to go to social security clinic for workplace injury as they are not provided a social security card. The workers address these as labor right violations.
The factory sign EC contract with the workers but do not handed the social security payment document to the workers that makes even the workers with more than 3 years of service become cardless.
And workers are not entitled to legal leaves and the HR treating badly to the elderly janitorial workers for taking leaves. The workers said that they seek for workplace disputes resolvents as the WCC is formed by the employer’s consent and do not address the workers’ problem.
The workers said that they are called overtime until 20:00 for the whole January and some workers called all night until 23:00 without a break time, snack and transportation. All night overtime working workers have to sleep in the factory and went back to home at 5:00 am just to come back to work at 7:30 a.m. which is causing bad effects to their health.
The factory locates near Thar Du Kan Industrial Zone and the workers who live around War Ta Yar are having difficulties on way back home due to lack of transportation provident after late overtime recruitment.
The factory does not provide snack for the workers and does not allow to take their own snacks which makes them difficult in the factory.
The workers are also forced to work on Sundays if the important fabric orders arrived but the Sunday overtime and normal overtimes are not showed in the salary paper but paid separately.
The workers are not allowed to use phones in the workplace and the clerks are confiscating the workers’ phones with a case and hand to the HR. The workers can take it back only after working and no responsibilities are taken for property loss.
‘It is ok to not allow using phones in the workplace but confiscating our phones make us un-notify even if our family contact us for emergency issues. A girl from a cavity left her child with her mother as her husband leaves her. Her mother is taking care of her baby with a baby bottle. Her mother called her to came back as her baby is feeling sick seriously. Her phone is just a key pad phone and she was forced to sign a warning for using her phone. We would not know even if our families call us for emergency cases.
We are working as it is difficult to find a job these days and the HR doesn’t show sympathy on us. They can punish for using phones in working hours but they should not confiscate our phones,” said a worker from the factory.
The workers said that they have requested to give them the copy of EC contract, to form a WCC which can address the workers’ workplace disputes, to provide social security cards, to survey their consents for calling overtime, to consider their break time, to provide snacks for them if they are recircuited for important orders and to provide a meal if they recircuited until 20:00, to provide transportation, to allow access to use phone for emergency issues, to give legal leaves and the factory’s officials and the labor office officials to address the workplace disputes.
