By Kyaw Gyi - Mar 16, 2024
The Chinese national owned Hanfex Garment Co.,Ltd which locates at 2 street, Ngwe Pinle Industrial Zone, Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon Region doesn’t appoint workers with more than 3 months of service as permanent workers and workers are losing their legal rights and leaves, according to the workers.
The factory is manufacturing Page One Young brand jean pants and employs more than 700 workers which 70 of them are day laborers which most of them already have 3 months of service but not yet appointed as permanent stuff. Those workers are not entitled to legal leaves and rights and got dismissed for missing a single day of work. There is no trade union and workplace coordination committee which can address the labor disputes.
“Some day laborers have 3 months of service but not appointed as permanent workers but only called when fabrics are important. And they are dismissed after that. Day laborers can’t take leave for a day even for emergency because they are fired as soon as that happens,” said the worker who don’t want to be named.
It is witnessed that most garment factories in Myanmar recircuit day laborers instead of permanent ones after the coup in 2021.
“All are workers whether it is day laborers or temporary laborers. The employer hire day laborers as they don’t want to give legal rights and to be able to dismiss if they want. Actually, day laborers have to be appointed as permanent after 3 months of service,” said a labor activist.
There are 45 workers including the super in each cavity and they are assigned 35 jean pants per hour, The workers are verbally abused by the supers and pressurized although they worked extremely hard to finish the fabrics. The employer is also pressurizing them as no one dares to complain.
“The factory denies even if the social security approves our medical leaves. We are cut although we contributed for the social security,” said the worker.
The workers said that 5,000 kyats daily wages and 10,000 kyats attendance bonus are cut for missing a day of work as they are not entitled to legal leaves,” said a worker.
The workers said address more difficulties such as the foreigners (Chinese nationals) directly managing them and the restrooms are not clean and they want the factory to resolve those problems.
