Labour union drags Thailand to the ILO

THAILAND is facing a fresh complaint about abuse of its workers, which emerged this week just as the country is preparing to welcome next week an inspection team from the European Union.
Government Spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd yesterday insisted that the complaint was not true.
On Tuesday, a global labour union with 50 million members filed the complaint against Thailand.
The complaint by the IndustriALL Global Union was filed at the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, with details of 18 alleged cases of worker and labour abuses. It also accused the Thai government of failing to protect its workforce of 39 million people.
Sansern was quick to defend Thailand’s labour record.
“The Thai government has always given importance to the country’s workforce. We’ve organised the foreign and local workforce to ensure equal rights so that there are no abuses,” Sansern said.
“The complaint by IndustriALL is not true,” he added. “This government is very serious about ensuring there is no abuse of the workforce, especially in the fisheries industry.”
IndustriALL was instrumental in helping create the landmark Accord on Fire and Building Safety after Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza garment-factory complex collapsed in April 2013, killing at least 1,130 people. The legally binding accord, signed by more than 150 apparel companies and trade unions, requires factories to have independent safety inspections with the results made public.
Thailand, the world’s third-largest supplier of seafood, was issued a so-called yellow card by the European Union in April. The EU extended the deadline to make a final decision on Thailand’s illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing status from October to December.
During the past many months, Thai authorities have been enforcing various measures in a bid to tackle IUU fishing.
For instance, thousands of fishing trawlers have been barred from going out to the sea when they were found not to have all the necessary documents for fishing operations. Some fisheries operators have complained that some of the government’s measures are unfair.
An informed source disclosed yesterday that a steering committee of the military’s ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) was preparing to ask the Cabinet to approve a Bt228-million budget to compensate the owners of about 4,500 fishing trawlers who had been required to stay ashore.
Efforts against IUU fishing in Thailand have continued. Yesterday, more than 100 soldiers, policemen and Department of Marine and Coastal Resources officials scoured Pak Phanang Bay in Nakhon Si Thammarat province to crack down on illegal fishing. The operation managed to remove about 500 fish traps.
However, labour abuses in the Thai fishing industry are well documented.
Since 2014, the United States has put Thailand on the bottom-ranked Tier 3 in its annual “Trafficking in Persons” (TIP) report.
The US State Department said in its 2015 TIP report that some Thai and migrant workers were subjected to forced labour on Thai fishing boats, with some remaining at sea for several years, or paid very little, or threatened or beaten.
The environmental group Greenpeace on Monday urged Thai Union Group, the world’s largest producer of canned tuna, to rid its supply chains of destructive fishing practices.
More than 200 people submitted a letter to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha outside his Bangkok offices yesterday demanding stricter labour laws and better compensation.