By Min Ni Kyaw - Apr 05, 2025
#WorkerTestimony
This is about Jing Mei factory, located in Manxi City, China.
The factory initially said workers would only have to work overtime until 9 PM on alternating days. But now, we’re working overtime until 9 PM every single day.
Even on the day of the earthquake, we had to work until 9:30 PM.
They are also demanding excessive production targets. It was only two days, the production lines are reformed, yet they’re demanding 65 to 70 pieces per hour.
The supervisor forces us to sign a warning letter if we don’t work overtim,. And honestly, there are many workers who have already been forced to sign. Since we’re working in another country, switching jobs isn’t easy—this makes us very upset.
After the earthquake, workers who couldn’t come in were threatened with being sent back to Myanmar. Two workers who couldn’t show up the next day were fired. Working until 9:30 PM every day is too much, and now I’m sleeping outside the factory.
Because we can’t meet the production targets, we’re not even able to get proper sleep. We're starting to worry about the toll it's taking on our health.
Let’s not even talk about the food situation—it's already bad. Even washing our hands properly is difficult. HR said they’ll deduct 20 yuan if we wash up where we’re not supposed to while having no proper sink.
We're scared to report anything to the labor office because we might be fired.
We lose our meal allowance, housing fee, base pay, and grade bonuses if we miss a day due to illness. We can’t take time off even when we’re sick.
Supervisors say we can get better rooms if we hit our production targets. But 65–70 pieces per hour is very difficult. And in the middle of all this, we’re constantly being yelled at.
They force us to sign that we voluntarily agree to work until 9:30 PM. But the truth is we don’t have a choice.
They’ve made it clear that overtime is mandatory. Sundays used to be off, but not anymore. Now, they force us to work even if we meet or don’t meet the targets.
Even though we’re working long hours, we don’t receive overtime pay. We’re made to sign warning letters the next morning during the meeting if we don’t do overtime.
We start work at 7:45 AM. Lunch is at 12 PM. We used to have 45 minutes for lunch, but now it’s down to just one hour.
The base wage is 1,440 yuan. We get around only 800 yuan if we don’t meet the production targets. Some workers make up to 1,700 yuan. There deductions for travel expenses to Muse are made from our salaries.
Other fees depend on the broker, so they vary. As for me, I haven’t finished paying off my debt yet.
Working overtime every single day is impacting everyone’s health. Since we don’t get paid for the overtime we work, we can only send about 700,000 MMK back home each month.
