General Motors Thailand has allegedly violated labour rights by pressuring its unwanted workers to resign, said a labour activist.
On 25 March 2018, Bunyuen Sukmai, Secretary-General of the Eastern Region Labour Union Association, told the media that over 20 members of the GM Thailand trade union will stage a march to the UN Office in Bangkok tomorrow. They wish to submit a report of labour abuses committed by the company to the UN’s Working Group on Business and Human Rights, which is currently on a mission to Thailand.
According to Bunyuen, the five-year-long labour dispute began in February 2013 after the company’s lockout of over a hundred union members who filed a petition urging the employers to improve workers’ welfare. Although the union later withdrew the request, the lockout remains.
The unionists filed a petition to the Labour Relations Committee of the Labour Ministry, and in November 2017, the Committee ordered GM Thailand to rehire 66 workers and compensate them. However, the full compensation has not been paid and those who were reemployed received less pay and were moved to a warehouse in Nakhon Si Ayutthaya which is too far from their hometowns. Eventually, only nine of them were able to continue working at the new place, and their jobs were changed from car assembling to unskilled labour, like painting warehouses.
Bunyuen added that GM Thailand is forcing the workers to resign, which is an obvious labour rights violation, so over 20 unionists will submit a report to the UN tomorrow.
A GM Thailand union’s strike
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