Labor

Seventeen laborers from Cambodia have returned home after they were trafficked to work in Thailand’s logging industry and had their pay withheld, forcing them to walk back to the border, a rights group said on 2 September. The 17 had been lured into Thailand with promises ...

The Ministry of Labour announced on 1 September that all employees must be under an official contract. The announcement was made on the same day the country’s first minimum wage went into effect, a landmark many workers expected would result in massive layoffs as factories attempted ...

In what it deemed an “inspiring trend” for Cambodia’s labour relations, the Arbitration Council reported that the number of cases it registered involving strike action – as well as the total number of cases themselves – declined in the first half of this year. Keep reading ...

The government will continue to coordinate with the Thai Embassy in Laos to provide assistance and repatriate Lao workers who were found enslaved and kept in cages on a farm in Thailand.  Keep reading ...

According to statistics from Vietnam’s Lao Cai province’s department of labor, invalids and social affairs, every year about 4,000 laborers leave the province for China. Quang Van Tinh, who lives in Muong Ang district’s Bung Lao commune, still feels angry when recalling his time in China. After ...

After almost two years of arguments and negotiations, Myanmar has set its first minimum wage at K3600 (US$2.80) per day. The milestone was met with ambivalence by factory owners, and trepidation by garment workers, who fear many jobs will be axed to afford the move. The ...

A raft of additional labourers is needed as construction of the Thai-Myanmar Special Economic Zone in Mae Sot kicks off, Tak province, project leaders say. Keep reading ...

Thailand has been transitioning to a service-based economy, which accounts for just over half of GDP, and universities are being urged to enhance the capacity of new graduates to meet changing market demand.  Bangkok University has noted this changing trend and is grooming students to serve ...

Aiming to one day become a major manufacturing base in Cambodia, Sihanoukville faces an uphill battle in attracting workers, provincial officials have said. Yow Khemara, director of the Department of Labour and Vocational Training at Preah Sihanouk province, said Sihanoukville currently lacks about 4,000 workers in ...

British rights activist Andy Hall has been charged with criminal defamation in Thailand after he researched a report that alleged labour abuses at the Natural Fruit Company, a large Thai pineapple wholesaler that supplies the EU. The Bangkok south criminal court decided on 24 August to indict the ...