Seventy-two Myanmar workers at a chicken processing plant in Thailand’s Suphan Buri Province have filed a complaint against their employer for threatening them and refusing to pay their wages.
Workers say they only received partial wages for October and none for November and December, with each owed between 25,000 and 28,000 baht. In total, their employer owes them approximately 1.8 million baht.
When they protested, the employer threatened them with deportation.
On Jan. 16 the workers sought help from the labor charity Aid Alliance Committee (AAC), which helped them file a complaint with the Thai Labor Protection Office, according to AAC director U Khaing Gyi.
“Their employer reportedly said only workers who continue to work will be allowed to stay in factory accommodation, and that if they don’t he will report them to the police and get them deported,” he said.
A female worker said: “For several months the employer sometimes gave us our wages and sometimes not. We haven’t been paid for more than two months and are also being threatened by the employer.”
Activists helping Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand receive daily complaints about workers being forced to do different jobs than specified in their contracts, having their salaries cut, or being fired at random.
Ninety-nine migrant workers who arrived earlier this month in Sa Kaeo Province in eastern Thailand for a two-year contract at a chicken processing plant were terminated only a few days into the job. Twenty-five others who recently arrived in Prachin Buri found themselves sent to a different factory from the one their contract specified, according to labor rights activists who received their complaints from them.
