By Myo Thein - Sep 05, 2025
#LETTER
We, the workers from Sudey Garment Factory in Bago, are writing to share the difficulties we are facing when trying to collect our wages.
It's not just me—many workers face issues when trying to get paid after leaving the factory. Anyone who doesn’t manage to collect their salary by the 10th of the month goes through this kind of hardship. I left the factory recently due to personal reasons.
If a worker can’t go in person to collect their wages, they must send a family member with a household registration list, ID card, and a recommendation letter from a ward official.
If that family member isn’t listed on the household registration, they must provide an extra letter of authorization for each person.
This month on the 10th, I sent a family member to collect my wages on my behalf. They were denied the payment because there was no official transfer letter. The wages weren’t released.
Previously, we could collect someone’s wages with just the household registration, ID cards, and a letter of recommendation. Other factories also allow wage collection on behalf of someone else without asking for a transfer letter or additional documents. It wasn’t a problem even if we left the factory without notice.
We had all the necessary documents—household registration, IDs, recommendation letters—but they refused to give the wages just because we didn’t have the transfer letter.
Due to pressure and harsh treatment in the factory, hundreds of workers leave each month. Some of them are owed hundreds of thousands of kyats in unpaid wages.
Some workers don’t even want to go back to ask for their wages anymore because of the harsh treatment. And if they don’t collect their wages within three months, they say it won’t be paid anymore. The factory is clearly profiting from workers’ unpaid salaries.
We’ve reported the difficulties with the factory shuttle and wage issues to the HR department before. But nothing has been done—no solutions were given.
We’d also like to report how the HR department discriminates against us. The company issued a rule that workers are not allowed to choose fixed seats in the shuttle bus.
But there’s a woman from the HR team who always sits in the same spot and tells others to move. One morning, a young girl thought the HR woman wouldn’t be coming, so she sat in her usual spot. The HR woman made her get up.
The worker didn’t move because she wasn’t intentionally taking anyone’s place. She’s a worker, and so is the HR person.
But the HR woman told the driver: “That’s my seat. Don’t let anyone else sit there. And if people are boarding from that gate, don’t let them ride the shuttle.”
We’ve been told that if we’re already sitting, we should stand up and give our seat to HR staff out of respect. When we said no such official rule was posted, they told us, “If you don’t like it, call whoever you want. We don’t care. We won’t do anything even if the entire factory complains,” according to the senior HR manager. That’s how arrogant they are.
One woman worker from Line 19 of Factory B had stomach cramps from early in the morning and asked for gate leave. She wasn’t allowed to leave until 3 PM, only when her family came to pick her up. She had to go to the hospital and was later fired because she had only been employed for two months.
Another female worker slipped and fell in the restroom and needed eight stitches in her leg. But she was not allowed to take sick leave. Instead, they pressured her to return to work immediately.
A QC worker from Factory B injured her leg at work. She was taken to the infirmary. But the driver and the HR official said: “What happened to you isn’t serious. We’re too busy. This is a waste of money.”
A worker who died from a ruptured stomach was not provided any compensation or support because she was new and hadn’t been employed long.
It was the supervisors and fellow line workers who pooled together money out of goodwill to help.
These are the kinds of things happening in the factory. We kindly request that the relevant authorities be informed.
Respectfully,
The Workers
