By Hsu Latt Phyu - Jan 11, 2024

The rights of day laborers were violated at the Mirae or New Way garment factory owned by a Korean national, which locates at U Tayoke Gyi Street, Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon Region. The workers said that they are having a hard time as the interpreter is making a loan business by lending money to the workers at 20 multiples and taking a cut in advance before issuing the salaries.

" They didn’t openly do like this when there were unions in the past. Now there are no more unions. We do have a WCC only. The workers who have financial issues loan the money, and it is deducted from the salary at the office as soon as the salary is issued. They extort the salary envelopes. It gets worse month by month, and no action is taken from the manager," said the unsatisfied worker.

The worker said that it is difficult for them they sometimes extort the salary envelope to get back the loans.

In addition, more than 100 of the more than 400 workers in the workplace are day laborers, and although they have been working for 3 to 7 months, they are working at the rate of 5,200 per day, and do not receive wages on their off days as they are not entitled to day off benefit.

"More than 100 are day laborers among the 400 workers, so they do not get the benefits of permanent employment. This is a lot of harm to them. The labor law does not distinguish that. Thet are acting as if the day laborers can be fired whenever they want," the worker said.

The workers said that they want to appeal to resolve the lack of medic clinic and safety management and broken toilets, to take action upon the illegal loan business within the workplace, to appoint the day laborers as permanent ones after they have 3 months of service, to calculate with back date wages for the cut Saturday overtime and Sunday daily wages of the workers.

It is reported that the factory is manufacturing ziben brand Korean clothes and exporting them to Korea.