By Hsu Latt Phyu - Feb 12, 2024

The workers from SOLO brand backpack manufacturing MYAM BAG factory said that their labor rights are being violated and asked excessive fabric outputs.

The workers said that a cavity with 60 male and female workers are asked 200 bags per hour which is an equivalent of 3 backpacks per worker an hour.

According to these demands, a worker have to sew 24 backpacks per 8 hours and get paid only 5,600 kyats a day.

There is no trade union in the factory and the workers are not entitled to legal casual, medical and seniority leaves.

The Chinese national owned factory is located in Depayin WunHtauk U Myae Street, Industrial Zone (1), Industrial Zone (1), Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon region.

“We are not entitled to leave during health issues or emergency cases. We are cut 5,800 kyats daily wages and 20,000 kyats attendance bonus for missing a day of work. This cause the workers to lose many things. Fabric outputs are also asked excessively such as 200 backpacks for a cavity with 60 people. Those fabrics are difficult to sew and we have to work very hard to meet their demands. Supers and all supers verbally abuse us while asking the fabric targets. They take advantage of our hard work by increasing the demands the next day if we could finish their excessive demand today,” the worker said.

“They don’t even need to call overtime due to their benefits from asking excessive outputs. So they don’t call no more overtime because they had already asked it in the normal working hours and the workers who sew this are not even earning enough to eat,” the worker continued.

The workers said that they want to request to give legal casual and seniority leaves, to ask only the possible fabric output and no to verbally abuse while asking.