By Min Ni Kyaw - Oct 10, 2024
#Letter
We are workers from ETERNAL FASHION CO.LTD garment factory.
The factory calls overtime until 12:00 am starting today (October 7th) and until October 16th for Thadingyut holidays. There will be no overtimes if we don’t work those overtimes.
It has been 5 months we were working overtime once in two days until 12:00 am. It has been a month we were called every day like that until October 4th.
We have our dinner at 8:30 pm and it’s the only break time we have. We work non-stop since Lunch.
Workers work from Monday to Friday from 8:00 am to 8:10 pm. We don’t get break time except the lunch time.
We only get Sunday day off once in a month for 5 months. It has been only two weeks we don’t work like that and it is because of an investigation.
We finished working at 5:10 pm on Saturdays and 6:10 pm on Sundays.
We suffered from health issues due to working all night overtime nearly every day. The supervisors intimidate with our employment stability if we don’t work overtime. You can check the factory if you doubt what I am saying. The township Labour office visited the factory on October 3.
The inspection took place on HR office. The workers had to answer the inspectors as they were taught by the HR. They can’t tell them the truth. The inspectors didn’t visit the production lines.
I don’t know if they missed or didn’t dare to warn the factory but we are being called late night overtime again.
The factory’s unpurified water cause the drinkers to suffer diarrhea. Workers are only allowed to drink from pipe lines. Only the office stuffs are allowed to drink water from drinking water bottle.
Those who don’t work overtime are treated with malice and held grudges. Those who don’t work on Sunday are not allowed to sew big point fabrics. Therefore, we have to work overtime without consents.
We are cut for vernation to supervisors and managers. Each worker is scut 15,000 – 20,000 kyats.
The manager ordered to cut and the all super implemented. They cut immediately as soon as after the pay day (October 5th). It is a big amount for the workers and most of us don’t want to pay.
The manager Daw – of line 1,2,3,4,5,6 verbally abuses and cut the workers rapidly.
We rapidly complaint to township labour office and there are no changes from the factory. There is a workplace coordination committee but they do nothing for us.
Information – ETERNAL FASHION CO.LTD factory locates at Anawrahta Industrial Zone (West of the Township labour office) , Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon. The factory is 3 floors and hires around 10,000 workers. The owner is a Chinese national and the factory manufactures balabala, SEMIR, CN: L, EUR:M,US:M, EST.1990, MADE INCHINA and mini brand garments.
The factory use TikTok platform to recruit workers and uploads videos of workers getting paid well but the working hours and overtime were not mentioned.
