Sexual harassments inside the workplace – 2024 MARCH violations
Min Ni Kyaw
Readers may notice that Myanmar Labour News emphasized the letters of the workers in 2024. It was since 2021, Myanmar Labor News invited workers to send letters. This section has been promoted more this year because we want to emphasize the practical suffering of the workers.
In March, sexual harassment, an incident which had never been reported in the past 3 years was revealed in the mail section. Sexual harassment which in general the workers never speak out to the public have been hunting the Burmese ladies as a joke or taking advantage of the friendship for many years. That's why women's and human rights activists have done a lot of awareness campaigns about sexual harassment in Myanmar. But activities were weak after the coup.
Sexual abuse is not a case of physical abuse. Verbally harassing women is also defined as sexual assault. There are also cases that can be prosecuted according to the laws of Myanmar due to emotional and physical harm to the person who was insulted.
These events are can happen in various places such as outside of the home, workplace and classrooms. Myanmar Labor News believes that it took 3 years to exposed these news because of many challenges to speak out sexual harassments among Burmese women in the workplace.
In March, women in the workplace were sexually assaulted by a male supervisor, as well as a factory where women were humiliated women, and another factory where women were hurt psychologically.
The first news occurred in Tianjin Fashion Milestone garment factory and readers can read the details here. Verbal abuses at Tianjin Fashion Milestone (myanmarlabournews.com)
Female workers from Tianjin Fashion Milestone garment factory said that the mechanic man is verbally sexual harassing the female workers although they treated him with courtesy according to the information Myanmar Labour News have received.
“The mechanic Ko ---- shouted against us and verbally sexual assault sometimes if we go to him for machines issues. The factory didn’t address our recommendation letter. But we victims were embarrassed so much,” a worker said.
The all super of the factory also verbally abused the workers rudely. They have worked at the factories for around or more than 5 years and we may not know how many workers would have been psychologically hurt by them.
The another factory which is reported for psychologically abusing the female workers is Myanto Industrial Co,.Ltd which locates at Khattar Street, Mya Sein Yaung Industrial Zone, Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon Region which hires around 600 workers. Emotional abuses in the workplace (myanmarlabournews.com)
“The lines that sew shirts have to give 40 fabrics per hour and they don’t count the absent workers in the cavity. How can we finish if the workforce and the workloads are not balance. Some fabrics are difficult to sew. The all super and the Chinese manager woman verbally abuse as and told us to leave if we can’t finish. The all super of line 5, 7 and 8 told us to work at entertainment works if we can’t finish those fabrics. It is emotionally abusing on the workers,” a worker said.
According to this conversation, it is obivious that discriminations and psychological abuses are happening in the workplace. Slander is a section of the law punishable by imprisonment. In addition, sexual harassment is also a punishable offense under the law. Surveys show that verbal abusing in the workplace destroys workplace happiness and lowers productivity.
In March, there were up to 14 factory workplaces that had verbally abused the workers.
There are many interests for the entrepreneur if the number of products is large. For this reason, the workplace supervisors put pressure on the subordinates. Verbally abusing and ignoring the difficulties is always happening. Verbal abuse-related violations include pressuring workers, asking for a unfair fabric outputs and discriminating.
Myanmar Labor News published 37 news stories about 35 factories in March. In addition, we exposed 8 news articles on expatriate Burmese workers, 5 articles on the social life of workers. 2 review articles, 1 general article; total of 53 labor news articles are mentioned. Factories and products are listed in the table.
There were 14 factories reported for verbal abuse and most of them are garment factories, 19 factories which cut the workers’ benefits in March, 16 factories which demands the fabric outputs far beyond than the workers’ productivity, 15 factories which force the workers to work overtime and 14 factories which don’t care about safety measures and not allowing leave and gate passes.
In addition, there were 8 factories which layoff the workers, 6 factories which violate the day laborers’ rights, 5 factories which violate the EC contract, 4 factories which force to work continuously for 5 hours, 4 factories which force to work substitute days for public holidays, 4 factories which force the workers to lie the inspectors, 3 factories which don’t grant full breaks, 3 factories which let the foreigners to manage directly, 2 factories which mobilize the workers to departments they don’t have the consent to work at and 1 factories each which sexually harass, violate the pregnant workers, closed down and let the all super to cut the workers’ benefits.
Myanto Industrial Co. Ltd factory committed 9 types of violations against workers, and it was found to be the factory with the most violations in March. Emotional abuses in the workplace (myanmarlabournews.com)
After this, Tianjin Fashion Milestone Garment Factory and Lat War Garment 1 Garment Factory take the second place, each with 8 types of violations. Verbal abuses at Tianjin Fashion Milestone (myanmarlabournews.com)
4 factories that violated 7 types of violations against workers are Eastar Garment, Hanfex Garment Co., Ltd and WHN Garment Hanboom (Myanmar) Co., Ltd factories. Violation reports are listed in order of links. Workers lost their rights at Hanfex Garment factory which have more than 700 workforce (myanmarlabournews.com) Cutting the allowance of workers who don’t even get up to 100,000 kyats fabric fee (myanmarlabournews.com)
And we can see further information of the labor right abusing factories in the chart as well.
Among the violations within March, factory officials and supervisors are involving in actions stepping to human trafficking, incidents miscarriages in the workplace due to not being given leave and gate pass. In addition, Myanmar Labor News noticed that the endless verbal abuses has a great impact on the workers during the current political circumstances.
But the most directly involved in violations and incidents are lower-level supervisors and factory officials. We also like to expose that the workers in the workplace are mentally, emotionally suffered because the factory officials show favoritism to the supervisors just to enhance their productivity.
Myanmar Labor News analyzed and reported that such events can be avoided if the factories can govern in a fair, sympathetic, orderly and educated manner.