By Min Ni Kyaw - Dec 22, 2024
Line 9 supervisor of the Chinese-owned Myanmar York Factory, forced workers to work on Sundays without providing overtime wages and resorted to exploitation, workers reported. On December 2, workers who worked overtime received no pay, and on December 10, only partial wages were paid, they explained.
"They made us work overtime on Sundays claiming the production targets weren’t met. They said we had to work for free. But Sunday is supposed to count as double pay for wages. Not a single kyat of overtime pay was given. Yet, the line supervisor and two UOs (unit officers) got paid. On that day, more than 10 workers worked overtime, but none of us got paid," one worker said.
Workers stated that their overtime work was not paid under the excuse of unmet production targets. Despite being aware of this issue, the factory manager denied responsibility, according to the workers.
"Other departments got paid, but only Line 9 workers didn’t. It’s exploitation. The manager knows about this issue, but she denied it, saying she didn’t know. If she didn’t know, why were the line supervisor and UOs paid? We’re the ones who worked, but they got paid for doing nothing. We had to work overtime for free because they said production targets weren’t met. Then on December 10, they made us work overtime again. That day, they only gave us 11,000 kyats for the whole day—still not full pay. They won’t accept it if we say we can’t work overtime. They forced us to sign and made us work overtime but they paid the leaders, and yet didn’t pay us," another worker explained.
The law stipulates that employees must receive double pay for working on rest days in a week.
Workers also stated that the factory did not arrange transportation on day offs when they were made to work overtime. As a result, workers had to make their own arrangements to come to work, another Myanmar York garment worker said.
The Myanmar York Factory, located in Kyansitthar Road, Industrial Zone (4), Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon and employs over 1,600 workers and manufactures LINE N BLEND, JDY, and Bestseller brands.
