After coming to power partly on promises of raising the country’s minimum wage, Thailand’s new prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is under growing pressure to hike the price of a day’s work to at least 300 baht (US $10). However, even if she does go through with her plan, it is unlikely that migrant workers—most of [...]
A Malaysia-based Japanese multinational is lining up a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against a lawyer who is defending a group of Burmese workers threatened with deportation. Electrical components’ company Asahi Kosei has denied allegations lodged by lawyer Charles Hector that it attempted to deport two workers back to Burma. The two men are among 31 [...]
The Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration has refused to accept Rp 15 million ($1,700) in cash that was raised by a migrant workers’ advocacy group to help repatriate hundreds of Indonesian workers who are in trapped in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, saying the money was delivered to the wrong government body. “They sent it to the [...]
For nearly 100 Vietnamese women workers of the Maxter Glove Co in Klang City in the central Malaysian state of Selanggor, home is not a cozy and comfortable place to hang out; they live on the back of old container trucks. Each container, which measures less than 15 square metres wide and 2.5 metres high, [...]
The Building and Wood Workers International is outraged to hear of the treatment of Charlie Tiyu, a Burmese migrant worker working in Thailand’s construction industry. Charlie’s hip was broken and his intestine burst from his stomach in a workplace accident on January 9 at Charoen Pokphand’s food processing plant in Pathum Thani’s Lat Lum Kaeo [...]
Malaysia’s economic boom has been driven by the exploitation of cheap migrant labour, from Burma and Thailand. Underpaid and with no rights, this is their story from The Guardian, UK. They were not illegal, nor criminals, not protesting nor agitating. For 900 Malaysian ringgits (around $290) a month they had travelled, through a broker, to [...]
The workers from V & K Pineapple Canning Factory, Ratchaburi, returned to work after 700 Burmese workers in the factory went out on strike on 24th January to protest the violence against two of the Burmese workers and the poor conditions in the factory. A senior manager met with seven of the leaders in the evening to negotiate. The [...]
Police and troops have been brought in to help resolve a “tense” dispute between hundreds of Burmese workers and bosses of a pineapple canning factory west of Bangkok accused of mistreatment, underpayment and beating workers’ representatives. Non-government groups that advocate for migrant workers voiced concern yesterday for the safety of 700 Burmese at V&K Pineapple [...]
Three Burmese migrant workers in Malaysia havebeen departed and an additional two have gone missing after requesting that their employers uphold contractual obligations over payment. Thirty-five Burmese in total had been detained last week in Johor in Southern Malaysia after complaining that the owners of the Sinometal Techonology company had paid them only 640 Malaysian [...]
Malaysia has a total of 1.9 million registered migrant workers, constituting approximately 21 per cent of the workforce, making Malaysia the largest importer of labour in Asia. Despite the large presence of migrant workers in the economy, the policies and laws regulating in-migration are chaotic. Policies built on the concept of a short-term remedy for [...]
