" This month’s ILO Conference in Geneva heard testimony from workers from a range of Asian countries, underlining the challenges workers have to overcome in the face of increased repression from governments and employers in the region.
This month’s ILO Conference in Geneva heard testimony from workers from a range of Asian countries, underlining the challenges workers have to overcome in the face of increased repression from governments and employers in the region.
Indonesian representatives testified about violent attacks on workers by police and armed thugs. When workers were shut out of wage-setting mechanisms and took to the streets in 2015 to protest, the authorities reacted by arresting more than 20 demonstrators and banning assemblies in key parts of the capital Jakarta.
Workers from the Philippines reported an alarming rise in violence against union leaders, including extrajudicial executions, as well as legal manoeuvers such as the intentional misclassification of workers to remove them from the protection of the labour law. The election of President Duterte has heightened concerns, given his authoritarian style, violent rhetoric and links to death squads responsible for hundreds of murders.
Cambodian workers explained how recent labour legislation was actually a major step backwards and that they too had been the victims of anti-union violence and harassment via lawsuits.
Bangladeshi, workers at the ILO Conference explained that while some steps had been taken to make factories safer, the government had done little to support freedom of association. Unions are still banned in the country’s export processing zones and nothing is being done to sanction employers who have busted unions. Having failed to implement ILO recommendations for several years, this year the ILO Conference Standards Committee put the country on its “black-list” – known in ILO parlance as a “special paragraph”.
Malaysia also faced scrutiny over its laws on collective bargaining. A member of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement, Malaysia also expected to implement wide-ranging changes to its labour laws to comply with the Agreement’s labour chapter."
Advice from ITUC http://www.ituc-csi.org/asian-supply-chain-countries-under
