Myanmarâs Defiant Garment Workers Demand That Fashion Pay Attention
Female garment industry union leaders are emerging at the forefront of the deadly anti-military protests, and asking global brands to take their side.
Members of the Federation of Garment Workers Myanmar â most of them women â have been prominent in the protest movement since the countryâs military coup on Feb. 1.Credit.FGWM
Published March 12, 2021Updated April 6, 2021
Ma Moe Sandar Myint is the leader of one of Myanmarâs largest garment worker unions. Until recently, the 37-year-old mother of three and former sewing machine operator would spend her days representing workers with labor complaints and helping members of the Federation of Garment Workers Myanmar unionize their factories.
Myanmar’s Protests Are Growing, Defying Threats and Snipers
A general strike on Monday made clear that the fatal shooting of two protesters over the weekend, and the fear of a further bloody crackdown, would not halt opposition to the return of military rule.
Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, on Monday. A general strike proceeded peacefully in hundreds of cities and towns.Credit.The New York Times
Published Feb. 22, 2021Updated March 14, 2021
The strikers poured onto the streets of Myanmar on Monday knowing that they might die. But they gathered by the millions anyway, in the largest rallies since a military coup three weeks ago. Their only protection came from hard hats, holy amulets and the collective power of a newly called general strike.
âWe Can Bring Down the Regimeâ: Myanmarâs Protesting Workers Are Unbowed
Two weeks after the military took power in a coup, growing work stoppages are undermining the ruling generalsâ attempt to assert authority over an angry population.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Yangon, Myanmar, on Monday.Credit.The New York Times
Published Feb. 15, 2021Updated Feb. 22, 2021
Myanmarâs coup leaders have called on hundreds of thousands of government employees â doctors, garbage collectors, electricity workers â to set their âemotionâ aside, abandon their protests against the military and return to work.
But on Monday, even after the army had put armored vehicles in the street in a nighttime show of power, the workers displayed little interest in returning to their jobs.
The New Yorker’s union employees did not go to work on Thursday.
The more than 100 employees represented by The New Yorker Union, which includes fact checkers, web producers and some other editorial employees, decided on the daylong walkout after recent rounds of negotiations with management failed, said Natalie Meade, the union chair.
The issue is pay. Ms. Meade, who is a fact checker at the magazine, said the union wanted to raise the salary minimum to $65,000. In the recent negotiations, managers at The New Yorker did not hit that number, she said, instead offering wage increases that she called “insulting.”