Labor
Development and assistance for labor rights and labor unions
Govt compensating private sector workers laid off during pandemic
Employees who are members of their business’s social insurance scheme are eligible to receive financial assistance for temporary unemployment or loss of workdays during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, only members of business-related social insurance schemes will be able to receive compensation from the National Social Security ...
Phetphoxay Sengpaseuth
A crisis for workers
Venue closure, curfew and state policies enforced to contain the spread of Covid-19 are affecting the labour force severely. Workers experience the impact in different magnitudes, with some getting less pay and seeing their working hours reduced. Others manage to work from home. Some lose ...
MELALIN MAHAVONGTRAKUL
Royal water project to reinvigorate farming
Pid Thong Lang Phra, a foundation dedicated to promoting the sufficiency economy vision of King Bhumibol Adulyadej The Great, has launched water-development schemes to address the scourge of mass unemployment caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Karan Supakitvilekakarn, director-general of the Royal Initiative Discovery Institute under Pid ...
CHATRUDEE THEPARAT & PENCHAN CHAROENSUTHIPAN
EU provides €5 million emergency cash for Myanmar garment workers
The European Union (EU) said it will provide €5 million (K7.9 billion) in cash to support garment workers in Myanmar who have been affected by COVID-19. The Myan Ku (Quick Assistance) emergency cash fund will go directly to cut, make, pack (CMP) workers who have lost ...
The plight of human trafficking survivors: Back from hell but to what?
Nguyen Thi Bien cannot speak Vietnamese properly since she was trafficked to China 28 years ago and virtually lost her mother tongue. She returned to Vietnam in August after Chinese authorities raided and deported undocumented immigrants. More about how she returned later. Cut to the present. In a countryside ...
Sen, Phan Duong
CLMTV highlights protection of workers’ rights
Laos will continue to cooperate with regional and development partners to protect migrant workers’ rights, a conference in Siem Reap, Cambodia was told last week. Conducted under the theme ‘Toward the Protection of Migrant Workers in CLMTV Countries: Cooperation in Social Security’, the opening of the ...
Phetphoxay Sengpaseuth
Wages first, productivity later?
The January 2 decision by the National Committee for Designating Minimum Wage to increase the minimum wage has left many dissatisfied, particularly within the garment sector. []In Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, the garment sectors are about six times more productive than in Myanmar, while Cambodia and ...
ANDREW THOMSON
Lao Factory Owners Say Proposed Wage Hike Will Shutter Businesses
Owners of garment factories and other businesses in Laos are rejecting a proposal to raise the minimum wage by as much as one-third, saying the increase in expenses would force them to shut down operations, despite reports of workers seeking opportunities elsewhere due to low ...
Radio Free Asia
Nearly one billion Asians in vulnerable jobs, says ILO
Despite decades of world-beating economic growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into middle class life, around 900 million more Asian workers remain in what the International Labour Organization deems “vulnerable” employment.Keep reading ...
SIMON ROUGHNEEN
Over 1,000 Myanmar migrant workers return from Thailand in single day
About 1,137 Myanmar migrant workers returned home from Thailand on Tuesday, a day after Christmas, according to the Home Affairs Ministry Wednesday.[]The law, which was originally aimed at tackling human trafficking concerns and regulating foreign workers in Thailand, sparked panic and prompted more than 60,000 ...
Yurou