Mizzima News

Chiang Mai - On May 1, International Labour Day, labour rights activists in Thailand called for equal rights and protection of the dignity of workers and to abolish all forms of discrimination based on races.

The Action Network for Migrants, a network of migrant labour organizations, based in Thailand, in a press statement on Friday said they would not accept discrimination based on race, which the government has used to suppress the rights of workers.

The statement noted that the government and the business sector have been using a divide and rule policy among workers in order to weaken the power of labourers when negotiating. The government has been dividing the workers into smaller groups such as workers in the formal sector and informal sector with different labour rights by law.  

Domestic workers have been placed in the “informal sector” and they are not included in the social welfare system.

The group noted that the government also divides workers by their nationality as Thai and migrant workers, which is an attempt to use nationalism to separate the workers.

“But in reality we all are workers,” said the group.

The group called on the stakeholders to realize the importance of workers in every sector and protect their rights, particularly in the present economic turmoil.

On May Day, several labour groups led by Thai Labour Solidarity Committee and State Enterprise Worker’s Relation Confederation, including migrant workers’ organizations gathered in Bangkok and held demonstrations outside the government house.

The group called on the government to follow up on the problems faced by labourers, which have been raised previously, such as worker’s rights protection, social welfare for workers in informal sectors, migrant worker’s protection and to provide more job opportunities for people who live with HIV/AIDs.

The group also protested the expansion of transnational companies which would rake in benefits from developing countries. The government should solve problems of corruption in government and state-enterprises which add to the economic problem.

The representatives of the labour group had a discussion with the Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva at the government house. The Thai Prime Minister accepted that currently, an estimated 15,000 entrepreneurs in Thailand have been affected due to the economic meltdown.

“However, the government will expedite the recovery of the country’s economy and try to help affected people, mainly workers,” he said, according to the Thai government website.

The Thai PM has accepted the labour representative’s appeal and would speed up things to provide more services and welfare to workers.  

According to Thailand’s Ministry of Labour, currently, about 600 companies are shut down or had partly laid off employees, while more than 50,000 workers were retrenched across the country, since the crisis started last year.

The Ministry also expected that the unemployed Thai population would reach two million, which is higher than that during the previous economic crisis in 1997-1999 at 1.5 million.