By Hsu Latt Phyu - Dec 15, 2023
At the K SENG Garment Factory, which was opened in Tha Dhu Kan Industrial Zone, Shwe Pyi Thar Township, Yangon Region, international brands such as Beisie / Orsay / CLIQUE are being manufactured and exported with a workforce of about 1,500 workers.
A worker at the factory said that it is a factory owned by Chinese nationals, and the workers are losing their rights because of being called in for excessive overtime, not giving the permission to form a labor union or a workplace coordination committee.
Although the law stipulates that workers’ consent must be asked for overtime in the workplace, the factory is not doing so, forcing, intimidating them, cutting overtime wages, and not giving them the benefits in accordance with the labor law, the dissatisfied worker said.
Workers were forced to work overtime without their will, and have to travel to the work with their own plan as they are not provided a ferry and the factory is pressurizing on the workers who cannot work overtime.
"We don't get legal rights. Only workers who have good relationships with supers and all supers have rights, but the rest don't. This is discrimination. And we are not given social security cards. Pregnant workers and those who take welfare and social security leaves are labeled as absent," said the worker, who did not want to be named.
In the factory where more than 1,500 workers are working, they have to drink the piped water as there is no provident for drinking water, and when the workplace inspections come, the factory officials buy bottles of water and display it to lie them.
In addition, toilets, which are matters of health, is not properly kept according to the number of workers. The worker have to work in hot and humid conditions as there is no air conditioners installed and an imbalance temperature affects their health.
According to the workers, they want the factory officials to resolve the issues such as not permitting to form WCC, a workplace coordination committee that helps improve employer-employee relations in the workplace, calling all night and all light overtime without workers’ consents, cutting overtime wages, not allowing them to enjoy legal benefits, not providing purified water, not providing sufficient medicines in the medic-clinic, not arranging temperature balance within the workplace, not providing clean and sufficient toilets and the ferries the factory provide not having sufficient place for the workers and all supers and supers discriminating to the workers who ask to take leave and when they don’t meet the fabric records.
