Lynn Walsh: Tigers Fight Back

[Socialism Today, No. 16, March 1997, p. 7]

Workers in the unregulated, low-wage industries of the Asian Tigers are beginning to fight back. Alarm bells began to ring in the boardrooms of the big Japanese and other multi-nationals at the end of last year, when enraged workers at the Sanyo Universal Electric Company in Bangkok burned down the company’s headquarters and warehouse.

They were protesting that the end-of-year bonus offered by the company was only the equivalent of three month’s wages, compared with a bonus of 5.75 months paid last year. Average monthly wages in private-sector manufacturing in Thailand are about £118, but Thai workers rely heavily on bonuses, overtime and other ‚perks‘ to supplement their extremely low basic pay.

When the Sanyo bosses refused to improve their offer, about 2,000 workers demonstrated and began to burn down the company’s eight-storey office building and four-storey warehouse, containing refrigerators, televisions, and other electrical equipment. Police were unable to prevent the action, and the government’s offer to make up the difference to last year’s bonus level came too late.

The next day, 2,000 workers of the state-owned Krung Thai Bank demonstrated outside the bank’s Bangkok headquarters, demanding the same bonus as the previous year (5.5 months instead of the four month’s salary on offer). The workers only dispersed when government officials agreed to supplement the company’s bonus offer.

„The swift reaction this week of workers to a cut in bonuses,“ commented the Financial Times, „may destroy the stereotype of Thai labour as docile.“

Until now, strikes and other forms of workers‘ actions have been extremely rare in Thailand, and these two bonus payment protests shocked the bosses and the government. „The swift reaction this week of workers to a cut in bonuses,“ commented the Financial Times (19 December), „may destroy the stereotype of Thai labour as docile.“

In neighbouring Cambodia, there were also strikes in December in the country’s rapidly expanding textile industry. More than 3,000 workers, recently organised into a newly-formed trade union, were locked out of the country’s largest garment factory, Cambodia Garments Limited, after they demanded better working conditions. The interior minister threatened repressive action against the new union, the Free Trade Union of Khmer Workers, but one of the union’s leaders told the press that the factory owners had agreed to small concessions, including a pay rise from $35 to $37 a month, an eight-hour day, and more pay for overtime.

The government is worried that Cambodia will lose out on new investment from manufacturers based in Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc., who are now searching for areas with even cheaper labour. Garment manufacturing has grown rapidly in the last few years, with 34 factories currently employing more than 16,000 workers. With this development, the workers are beginning to come together as a class, organise themselves, and fight for their interests.