Sinsay Brand Manufacturing Factories and 2025 February Labour Violations

Myanmar Labour News reported a total of 38 news articles on labour law and workers’ rights violations in February 2025, covering 35 factories and workplaces.

This number is 10 more than the 25 factories reported in January, marking a 40% increase. Additionally, the overall trend suggests a rising number of labour law violations each month since there were at least 10 other factories where violations were reported but insufficient details were provided.

Three factories—He MeT Company Limited, Honeys, and Safety Clothing Myanmar—appeared multiple times. These factories are engaged in garment manufacturing and employ between 400 to 1,000 workers.

The majority of labour law violations reported in February involved 32 CMP garment factories, one toy factory, one telecommunications business, and one agricultural chemical company.

Sinsay is a European fashion brand based in Poland. Human rights and labour rights violations have escalated in Myanmar since the military coup, leading some international brands to withdraw their production and sourcing operations from the country.

Sinsay’s production volume in the country increased after some brands exited Myanmar, with orders placed for nearly 400 factories to produce goods for the brand over the course of a year. This information was highlighted in a statement from the chairman of the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association (MGMA), as noted by Myanmar Labour News.

Myanmar Labour News has monitored the accountability and responsibility of international brands in accordance with fair trade organization’s principles but had not publicly disclosed its findings in previous years.

The purpose of analyzing a particular brand in this case is to ensure that brands operating in Myanmar adhere to ethical standards and do not neglect workers’ rights.

A factory producing garments for the Sinsay brand was found to have committed labour rights violations, according to reports published by Myanmar Labour News in February. The factory was also listed among those with the most violations.

The factories manufacturing for Sinsay and accused of labour rights violations include New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, Myanmar Jiale Fashion, and San Yu Garment Factory.

New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/new-zhong-hui-အထည်ချုပ်-တစ်လလုံး-နားရက်မပေးဘဲ-လုပ်ကိုင်ခိုင်း) employs around 600 workers, including female workers, while San Yu Garment Factory employs around 1,500 workers. New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd produces garments exclusively for Sinsay, while San Yu manufactures for Sinsay as well as ENCUENTEO and TOG 24. Myanmar Jiale Fashion employs approximately 700 workers and manufacture garments for Velilla and Sinsay.

"The employers don’t see workers as people; they treat us like machines. We haven’t had a single day off for an entire month. Even on public holidays and Sundays, we had to work normal shifts and overtime. The workload is exhausting, and our health is suffering. The employer pressures us if we refuse to work overtime. They intimidate us and hold grudges," said workers from New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd.

The same workers also stated, "The working hours are from 8 AM, with two short meal breaks at 11:30 AM and 12 PM. We have to work continuously until overtime ends at around 7:30 or 8 PM after the 12:30 PM break. There is no HR manager at the factory. The production manager, a female supervisor, controls everything and treats workers harshly. She seems she doesn’t care no matter what we complaint. She scolds us for going to the restroom, drinking water, or even talking. The factory’s toilets are so dirty that the smell reaches the dining area, making it impossible to eat."

Additionally, workers spoke about the discrimination faced by daily wage workers.

"Daily wage workers receive only 6,800 MMK, including attendance and skill allowances, while overtime pay is 1,700 MMK. Helpers receive 6,600 MMK in wages and 1,500 MMK for overtime. Helpers only get the full 6,800 MMK if they complete an 8-hour shift on Saturdays. Overtime pay is not provided on Sundays. There is clear discrimination between daily wage and salaried workers. Moreover, EC contracts are not given to workers, and there is no compensation regardless of whether they are daily or salaried employees when they are dismissed," they said.

Workers have reported instances of forced labour, mistreatment, verbal abuse, and threats At San Yu Garment Factory(https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/san-yu-အထည်ချုပ်စက်ရုံ-အလုပ်သမားများအား-အချိန်ပို-ဆဲဆိုလုပ်ကိုင်ခိုင်း ).

Myanmar Labour News has categorized the labour violations reported in February into 27 different types based on human rights violations, gender discrimination, and breaches of Myanmar’s labour laws.

The most common types of labour violations in February included wage deductions, verbal abuse, forced overtime, unfair production targets, intimidation and threats, denial of legally entitled leave, illegal dismissals, unsafe working conditions, and the employment of underage workers in violation of labour laws.

Wage Deductions

Instances of wage deductions include the withholding of attendance and skill bonuses by supervisors and assistant supervisors, deductions for absence without granting leave, reductions in agreed wages, undisclosed wage cuts, reductions in skill allowances, partial payments for workdays, non-payment of designated allowances, percentage-based wage deductions for workplace injuries, non-payment of overtime wages, unpaid weekly rest days, forced contributions for funeral funds, and failure to provide full wages to daily wage workers.

A total of 21 factories were found to have engaged in wage deduction practices, including Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/factory-bonuses-being-cut-by-leaders-supervisors-and-assistant-supervisors  ), Safety Clothing Myanmar ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/workplace-rights-severely-violated-say-workers ), S.H United (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/factory-workers-facing-verbal-abuse-and-wage-deductions ), YUHUA (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/no-changes-at-yuhua-garment-factory-as-forced-overtime-continues-allowing-only-two-days-off-per-month ), YUAN HONG GARMENT (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/workers-rights-violated-as-they-are-forced-to-work-overtime-without-rest-days ), JinKai Manufacturing (Myanmar) Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အချိန်ပိုအဓမ္မဆင်းခိုင်းပြီး-အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်နေဟုဆို ), HC Garment Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/hc-အထည်ချုပ်စက်ရုံတွင်-လုပ်ခလစာအတွက်-တောင်းဆိုမှု-ပြုလုပ်), Hang Kei Myanmar Garment Factory Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အချိန်ပိုနေ့စဉ်ခေါ်ယူပြီး-လုပ်ခလစာကို-မှန်ကန်စွာ-တွက်ချက်မပေးဟုဆို), Dong Yu (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/dong-yu-စက်ရုံ-တွင်-ည-၁၁နာရီ-အထိ-အချိန်ပိုများ-ဆက်တိုက်-ခေါ်ယူနေ), Eslite Garment (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အလုပ်သမားတွေရဲ့-ကိုယ်ရေးအ-ချက်အလက်တွေကို-မျှဝေတာမလုပ်ဖို့-အလုပ်သမားတွေပြော ), Myanmar Jiale Fashion (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/လုပ်ငန်းခွင်ဆိုင်ရာ-ချိုးဖောက်မှုတွေ-ဖြေရှင်းပေးစေလိုဟုဆို ), Sheng Da Ming Apparel Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အချိန်ပိုကြေး-မပေးဘဲ-ညည့်နက်ထိခိုင်းစေနေလို့-အလုပ်သမားတွေအခက်အခဲဖြစ်နေ ), KBL Garment (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အလုပ်နှင့်သက်ဆိုင်မှု-မရှိသည့်တာဝန်များကို-ခိုင်းစေသည့်အပြင်-အလုပ်သမားများ-ရရှိသည့်ဘောနပ်ကြေးကို-အကြောင်းမဲ့-ဖြတ်တောက်နေ ), LUCKY FORTUNE GARMENT (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/လုပ်အားခခေါင်းပုံဖြတ်မှုကို-တိုင်ကြားသော်-လည်း-စက်ရုံဘက်က-တာဝန်ယူမှုမရှိ ), Charis Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/ခွင့်ယူပါက-တနင်္ဂနွေနေ့အတွက်ပါ-လစာဖြတ်တောက်), GTIG Guohua Glory Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/လုပ်ငန်းခွင်ထိခိုက်မှုကိုတာဝန်မယူလို့-အလုပ်သမားဆေးကုသရန်ခက်ခဲနေ ), He MeT Company Limited (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/လူမှုဖူလုံရေးကြေး-ပေးသွင်းသော်လည်း-ဆေးခွင့်မရ)  Jing Wei Garment (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အလုပ်သမားတွေကို-နေ့စားအဖြစ်သာထားပြီးခိုင်းစေလို့နစ်နာမှုရှိနေ), San Yu ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/san-yu-အထည်ချုပ်စက်ရုံ-အလုပ်သမားများအား-အချိန်ပို-ဆဲဆိုလုပ်ကိုင်ခိုင်း), Opal 1 (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/opal-1-စက်ရုံလုပ်သားများအား-ပြည်ပဝန်ထမ်းက-ကြမ်းတမ်းစွာဆက်ဆံ-ခိုင်းစေ), LUCKY FORTUNE GARMENT (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/လုပ်အားခခေါင်းပုံဖြတ်မှုကို-တိုင်ကြားသော်-လည်း-စက်ရုံဘက်က-တာဝန်ယူမှုမရှိ ), and New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/new-zhong-hui-အထည်ချုပ်-တစ်လလုံး-နားရက်မပေးဘဲ-လုပ်ကိုင်ခိုင်း  ).

Factories Reported in Myanmar Labour News for February 2025

The above table is listed in Order from Most to Least Violations.

Verbal Abuse in Workplaces

A total of 20 factories were reported for incidents of verbal abuse. These factories include Beaume International Garment Mfg Limited ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/တနင်္ဂနွေပိတ်ရက်ပါမနားရဘဲ-အချိန်ပိုလုပ်ကိုင်နေရ ), CHIMEI Garment (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/chimei-အောစူပါ-ရိုင်းဆိုင်းစွာ-ဆဲဆိုပြီး-အချိန်ပို-ဆင်းခိုင်း  ), Dishang Kenny (Myanmar) Garment Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/dishang-kenny-garment-နိုင်ငံခြားသားများ-တိုက်ရိုက်အုပ်ချုပ်ပြီး-လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ-စော်ကားမှုများရှိနေ), Fitex (Myanmar) Garment Manufacturing Co., Ltd ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အချိန်ပို-ဖိအားပေးခေါ်ယူတာ-အပြင်-မိသားစုထံ-ဆက်သွယ်အသိပေးခွင့်-မပြုလို့-အခက်အခဲဖြစ် ), Hang Kei Myanmar Garment Factory Co., Ltd, LUCKY FORTUNE GARMENT, Myanmar Jiale Fashion, New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, Opal 1, S.H United, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Saiform International Garment Myanmar ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/လစဉ်ငွေကြေးဖြတ်တောက်နေမှုကြောင့်အလုပ်သမား-တွေ-အခက်တွေ့နေ ), San Yu, Sheng Da Ming Apparel Co., Ltd, Straightex Co., Ltd ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/straightex-coltd-စက်ရုံ-တနင်္ဂနွေနေ့-ရက်အစား-ခြိမ်းခြောက်-ဆင်းခိုင်း ), Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited, THA SHU (MYANMAR) Fashion Co., Ltd (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အလုပ်သမားအခွင့်အရေး-ချိုးဖောက်မှုများ-လုပ်ဆောင်ကာ-ခြိမ်းခြောက်ပြောဆိုမှုပြုလုပ်), YUAN HONG GARMENT, YUHUA, and Kyin Way Garment Factory.

Verbal abuse within workplaces is reportedly committed mainly by factory owners, along with managers, supervisors, assistant supervisors, and some team leaders. Workers are verbally abused for failing to meet production targets, pressured through harsh scolding to meet quotas, and subjected to physical mistreatment.

Forced Overtime Without Consent

Nineteen factories were reported for forcing workers to do overtime against their will. These factories include Beaume International Garment Mfg Limited, Charis Co., Ltd, CHIMEI Garment, Dishang Kenny (Myanmar) Garment Co., Ltd, Dong Yu, Fitex (Myanmar) Garment Manufacturing Co., Ltd, JinKai Manufacturing (Myanmar) Co., Ltd, KBL Garment, Myanmar Jiale Fashion, Myanmar QI Yuan Garment (Plant 2) ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/myanmar-qi-yuan-garment-forcing-overtime-work ), New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, S.H United, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Saiform International Garment Myanmar, Sheng Da Ming Apparel Co., Ltd, Straightex Co., Ltd, Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited, YUAN HONG GARMENT, and YUHUA.

Unfair Production Targets

18 factories were reported for imposing unfair production targets on workers in February. These factories include Beaume International Garment Mfg Limited, Charis Co., Ltd, Fitex (Myanmar) Garment Manufacturing Co., Ltd, Hang Kei Myanmar Garment Factory Co., Ltd, HC Garment Co., Ltd, He MeT Company Limited, JinKai Manufacturing (Myanmar) Co., Ltd, LUCKY FORTUNE GARMENT, New Plus ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/new-plus-စက်ရုံ-တွင်အနားမရဘဲ-ချုပ်လုပ်နေရ ), Opal 1, S.H United, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Saiform International Garment Myanmar, Straightex Co., Ltd, Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited, THA SHU (MYANMAR) Fashion Co., Ltd, YUAN HONG GARMENT, and Kyin Way Garment Factory.

Intimidation and Threats

Reports from workers at New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd indicate that intimidation and threats negatively impact both their physical and mental well-being. In total, 18 factories were reported for intimidating and threatening workers.

Intimidation tactics include forcing workers to sign warning letters, arbitrary dismissals, forcing workers to do overtime against their will, discrimination against those who refuse overtime, employer retaliation, threats of punishment, and illegal wage deductions.

Factories where intimidation and threats were reported include CHIMEI Garment, Dishang Kenny (Myanmar) Garment Co., Ltd, Dong Yu, Eslite Garment, Fitex (Myanmar) Garment Manufacturing Co., Ltd, HC Garment Co., Ltd, JinKai Manufacturing (Myanmar) Co., Ltd, KBL Garment, Myanmar QI Yuan Garment (Plant 2), New Plus, New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Saiform International Garment Myanmar, San Yu, Sheng Da Ming Apparel Co., Ltd, THA SHU (MYANMAR) Fashion Co., Ltd, YUAN HONG GARMENT, and YUHUA.

Denial of Legal Leave

Myanmar’s labour law on leave and public holidays was enacted in 1951, outlining the different types of leave entitlements for workers. However, violations of this law by factories have led to the loss of both health benefits and workers’ rights.

The following factories were reported for failing to grant workers their legal leave entitlements in February: CHIMEI Garment, Dong Yu, Eslite Garment, GTIG Guohua Glory Co., Ltd, Hang Kei Myanmar Garment Factory Co., Ltd, He MeT Company Limited, JinKai Manufacturing (Myanmar) Co., Ltd, KBL Garment, LUCKY FORTUNE GARMENT, Myanmar Jiale Fashion, New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, Opal 1, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Saiform International Garment Myanmar, Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited, THA SHU (MYANMAR) Fashion Co., Ltd, and YUAN HONG GARMENT.

Unlawful Dismissals

According to Myanmar’s labor law, employers must provide one month’s advance notice if they intend to terminate a worker. Additionally, unless an employee has violated company regulations, the law prohibits employers from dismissing workers without valid grounds. The law also states that after a probationary period of three months, workers must be formally employed on a permanent basis.

In February, reports revealed that some factories unlawfully dismissed daily wage workers even after they had surpassed the legal probation period without granting them permanent employment. Cases included forcing workers to resign under pressure, requiring them to sign warning letters before termination, dismissing underage workers and daily wage workers, threatening to fire workers for refusing overtime, terminating employees for taking unapproved leave, discriminatory dismissals, firing workers for making demands, dismissing injured employees, and terminating workers following incidents of physical assault.

The factories involved in these unlawful dismissals include Charis Co., Ltd, Dishang Kenny (Myanmar) Garment Co., Ltd, Golden Colour Fashion (Myanmar) (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အလုပ်သမားအား-ကိုယ်ထိလက်ရောက်-ကျူးလွန်ပြီး-အလုပ်ထုတ်မှု-အရေးယူဖို့ပျက်ကွက်နေ ), Hang Kei Myanmar Garment Factory Co., Ltd, HC Garment Co., Ltd, He MeT Company Limited, JinKai Manufacturing (Myanmar) Co., Ltd, KBL Garment, Myanmar Jiale Fashion, New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Saiform International Garment Myanmar, San Yu, Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited, THA SHU (MYANMAR) Fashion Co., Ltd, and YUAN HONG GARMENT.

Poor Working Conditions

According to the 1951 Factories Act, workplaces and factories must ensure proper lighting, humidity control, ventilation, drinking water supply, sanitation, waste management, and workplace safety programs to create a suitable working environment for employees.

Additionally, the law mandates the provision of medical care, on-site clinics, nurses, and transportation for emergencies within the workplace.

Myanmar Labour News reported that 16 factories failed to provide adequate working conditions for employees in February. These factories include Beaume International Garment Mfg Limited, Charis Co., Ltd, Dong Yu, Eslite Garment, Hang Kei Myanmar Garment Factory Co., Ltd, HC Garment Co., Ltd, LUCKY FORTUNE GARMENT, New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Saiform International Garment Myanmar, San Yu, Sheng Da Ming Apparel Co., Ltd, Straightex Co., Ltd, Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited, THA SHU (MYANMAR) Fashion Co., Ltd, and Kyin Way Garment Factory.

Employment of Underage Workers

Under the 1951 Factories Act, children aged 14 to 16 are classified as child workers, while those between 16 and 18 are considered young workers. A Myanmar citizen can legally start working at the age of 14, but underage and young workers must obtain a medical certificate from a designated doctor to confirm their ability to work.

Labour shortages have significantly increased in factories since the enactment of the military conscription law at the end of 2023, leading to widespread violations in which underage and young workers are employed illegally.

In February, Myanmar Labour News identified 10 factories that employed child and young workers in violation of labour laws. These factories include Beaume International Garment Mfg Limited, Hang Kei Myanmar Garment Factory Co., Ltd, He MeT Company Limited, JinKai Manufacturing (Myanmar) Co., Ltd, LUCKY FORTUNE GARMENT, New Zhong Hui Co., Ltd, S.H United, Safety Clothing Myanmar, Sunme (Myanmar) Industrial Limited, and Jin Wei Garment Factory.

Myanmar Labour News also found that nine factories engaged in discriminatory practices within the workplace, and nine factories violated the rights of daily wage workers. Additionally, six factories were reported for wage deductions by supervisors, five factories breached employment contract (EC) regulations, four factories violated WCC (Workplace Coordination Committee) laws, four factories failed to provide adequate break time, and four factories required workers to work for more than five consecutive hours without a break. Three factories were reported for deceiving labour inspection teams, three factories assigned workers to unrelated tasks, three factories were directly managed by foreign employers, two factories forced employees to work on their rest days, two factories violated the rights of pregnant workers, one factory failed to ensure workplace safety, and one factory was reported for sexual harassment.

Factories where wage and compensation demands were made in February include Charis Co., Ltd, HC Garment Co., Ltd, Honeys ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/honeys-အထည်ချုပ်စက်ရုံကို-နစ်နာကြေး-ကျပ်သိန်းပေါင်း-၈-သောင်းကျော်-ပြန်လည်တောင်းဆို), Mirae or New Way (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/mirae-or-new-way-အထည်ချုပ်လုပ်သားတွေ-ဒေးကြေးတိုးပေးရန်-တောင်းဆိုချက်-ပြေလည်မှုမရ  ), and Myanmar Arysta LifeScience (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/over-2670-lakhs-recovered-by-workers-from-myanmar-arysta-lifescience-agricultural-company ).

Additionally, legal action was taken against Ooredoo Myanmar Limited (https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/en/posts/unlawful-dismissal-case-against-ooredoo-myanmar-rescheduled-to-february-25  ) for alleged unlawful dismissals. Another case involved Golden Colour Fashion (Myanmar) ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အလုပ်သမားအား-ကိုယ်ထိလက်ရောက်-ကျူးလွန်ပြီး-အလုပ်ထုတ်မှု-အရေးယူဖို့ပျက်ကွက်နေ ), where a worker suffered physical assault and was dismissed without intervention from the labour office. Myanmar Labour News also reported that Eslite Garment ( https://www.myanmarlabournews.com/posts/အလုပ်သမားတွေရဲ့-ကိုယ်ရေးအ-ချက်အလက်တွေကို-မျှဝေတာမလုပ်ဖို့-အလုပ်သမားတွေပြော ) was accused of providing workers’ information for military conscription. In another case, an official from a township labour office reportedly threatened to close Charis Co., Ltd if workers continued demanding wage increases.

Myanmar Labour News conducts regular monitoring and analysis of workplace violations to expose the loss of labour rights and highlight issues affecting workers. By identifying the most affected sectors, this reporting aims to help implement corrective measures. It is intended for use by non-governmental organizations, labour unions, worker advocacy groups, and labour federations to take necessary actions.

Written by – Min Ni Kyaw
Edited by – Su Labb Phyu
Designed by – Kyaw Gyi

Report Contributors

• Su Labb Phyu
• Min Ni Kyaw
• Ma Ma
• Yoon Sett

Myanmar Labour News invites support to ensure the continued publication of monthly and annual labour rights reports with high-quality analysis.

Myanmar Labour Society 
Research Team

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