Episode #239: Broken Dreams in the Land of Smiles
“One of the things I've been passionate about and worked on and have done research about is the plight of migrant workers who have come to Thailand from Myanmar, and also from Cambodia, from Laos, and increasingly now from Vietnam.” Today’s guest is Phil Robertson, the longtime former Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch and currently the Director at Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates. He discusses how Burmese migrants fleeing to Thailand to escape the conflict have been faring.
A country with a rapidly aging population, Thailand has long relied on migrant labor to work in trades that locals avoid; Robertson estimates that of the nearly 5 million migrants in Thailand, over 2 million are from Myanmar, a number expected to rise sharply due to the junta’s recent conscription laws.
Although Thai law requires fair pay and safe working conditions for migrants, the reality is far from that. “It is a system that exists in law and regulations,” he says. “But the real idea is that there is impunity to violate the rights of and abuse migrant workers, and that is what we consistently see.” Robertson cites an incident where a Burmese migrant worker was assaulted in the presence of an inspector from the Ministry of Labor, highlighting the stark lack of effective support for migrant workers. “It is quite clear that the Ministry of Labor in Thailand systematically fails to effectively enforce just about any of the major labor laws,” he says. “The law may exist somewhere, but the reality is what the boss says and what the foreman says and what the police outside the gate say.”
The Thai Labor Relations Act bans foreign workers from participating in labor unions, a measure that the International Labor Organization has consistently criticized, though they can advocate for them. However, Robertson paints a dim overall picture of workers’ rights in Thailand. Thai labor unions are pretty toothless, often too weak to effectively advocate for the workers' rights of Thai nationals., let alone migrant workers. and in some cases they are completely powerless. So even that avenue for organizing and the redress of grievances is closed for Burmese workers. However, Robertson notes that Thai industries producing goods for export have faced increasing scrutiny from Western countries, which are now taking greater care to limit imports produced under sub-optimal working conditions. While there has been some progress in the United States, Robertson advocates for more substantial attention to these issues within EU states. “People in the European Union need to be demanding that the European Union lay down some clear markers that there has to be labor law reform and human rights reforms in Thailand if they expect to do business. It’s not possible to look the other way anymore.”
Burmese workers who enter legally and are employed by Thai companies find the situation not much better than those who illegally cross the border. They are effectively bound to their employers in a restrictive and exploitative situation without the freedom to change jobs; if their employers are abusive, foreign workers cannot quit without jeopardizing their legal status. Moreover, that status is often purchased with hefty brokerage fees, so if one leaves the job, all that money goes to waste. And if one can’t afford those fees up front, they have to go into debt for it, so quitting leaves one in a lot of debt with no way to repay it.
Robertson describes the Thai system as viewing migrant workers through a national security lens, treating them as potential threats rather than as individuals with rights, leading to a system where the employer is responsible for keeping tabs on and tight control over all its workers. He notes that in some cases, a bribe can be paid allowing one to go to a new place of employment, but the bribe the company extorts in return may well be the equivalent of one or even two months’ salary. And the authorities exert significant control and influence over the process, too: to become legally authorized to work, migrants must get a passport with a visa stamp, a work permit, and health insurance coverage, a process that is highly bureaucratic and profitable for the Thai Ministry of Labor, specifically the Department of Employment, due to the convoluted nature of the registration and compliance processes. And in the most severe cases, this state control extends to the confiscation of passports (despite being illegal under Thai law). Factories with many migrant workers often must also hire brokers to facilitate the process by paying bribes to expedite approvals, a system Robertson criticizes as "pay to play." Finally, the Myanmar embassy is now requiring migrant workers to pay high fees for document processing, which are then used in its continued oppression of the Burmese people. This, of course, is problematic for those who do not wish to support the Myanmar military regime in any way. “A lot of people are going to fall out of status, in part to avoid these unjust, arbitrary ‘taxes’ that are now being pushed onto the migrant workers by increasingly desperate military junta that needs to get money anyway can,” he says.
In this grim situation, few migrants expect support from Thai authorities, and things can even more horribly wrong when they file a complaint. “It's a dark underside of the Thai economy,” he says. “It's the hidden exploitation that runs through much of the economy when you're talking four to five million migrant workers who experience it on a day-to-day basis.” Robertson makes reference to one case where an employer stabbed a worker, and another when the employer pulled out a gun, both in responses to workers demanding their rights. “It is the Wild West. It is really a situation where the employers can do what they want.” In many cases, the authorities are just as dangerous as one’s actual employer. “The police view these migrant workers as essentially walking ATMs,” he says. “And if you're an attractive Burmese migrant woman, you have got to be careful here, it's not safe. Others told me that attractive women were being detained by the police, and told they had to pay bribes. If they didn't have the bribe then they said, ‘Well, you can work it off at the local hotel.’”
As Mae Sot is the common border crossing for Burmese entering Thailand, this is also where the more egregious exploitation takes place. “The number one destination where all the immigration officers want to get to is Mae Sot, because the takings are so rich, from extortion from migrant workers and from employers,” he says. Robertson describes the behavior of the Thai police as “predatory,” explaining that if an officer is in need of some quick money, craves excitement, or is simply drunk and wants to let off steam, migrant workers are the target; they are ripe for exploitation and extortion, and there are rarely consequences for their actions, however outrageous. “Even if they aren't undocumented, it doesn't matter, they'll just make something up. You don't have to have grounds to arrest and extort a migrant worker, you can just show up, the fact that you have your uniform is enough. No one's going to stand up for migrant workers. That's their assumption.” This is what Robertson has his sights set on changing; the hope that these oppressors will begin to see that they cannot count on getting away with anything they do with near total impunity. “What you do is you have to chip away at it, you have to create doubt in the back of the minds of the police and the immigration officers and the employers that, ‘If I do this, I might be held accountable, I might have a problem.’” This is what motivates Robertson to keep up the fight. “We cannot allow cynicism to rule the day, we cannot allow impunity to continue unchecked. But there's a lot of hard work to get at this.”
At the end of the day, Robertson also wants Thailand to know that the conflict in Myanmar will not go on forever, and that many of the country’s future leaders are among those presently being persecuted by Thai authorities. “I would hope that there would be an effort to somehow impress upon the Thais that eventually there's going to be peace, and eventually there's going to be a representative democratic government in Myanmar, and the people who run that government are going to be looking at how Thailand treated them and their compatriots during their hard times. Unless Thailand takes some corrective action, then Thai-Myanmar relations are going to suffer in the future because of these kinds of abuses against ordinary people.”