Field Note Jafar

8/14/2019 Field Note Jafar

1/6

Field Notes

Witnessing Thai Labor in Protest

Be careful! Dont do something stupid so, youll not get arrested, warned a Thai friend

after I told him that I might join a workers rally on the next day, March 8 in

commemorating the International Womens Day. He added by informing me that a day

earlier, on March 6, the police visited the office of Prachatai , an online daily newspaper,

with an arrest warrant for its coordinator on allegation of violating the Computer Crime

Act. Noting that the charge could easily changed into an accusation of lse-majest laws.

He expressed apprehension that if I join the rally, the authorities can expel me, a

foreigner, from the country -- which happened a month ago to an Australian novelist.

I ignored his warnings and invited other foreign friends to the workers rally, to join in as

part of our localization process. To my surprise, I received a completely different

reaction. A Japanese feminist friend who had stayed for almost two years in Bangkok,

replied with a bored look that Demonstration is our staple, we can get across it everyday

no excitement anymore. When I challenged her feminism, she retorted: There are

many other important things to do in advancing women workers rights in Thailand than

just joining a rally. I could not get myself to disagree with her, having learned a similar

lesson in my home country, Indonesia, on how the public developed contrary opinions

regarding daily mass demonstrations in Jakarta since the fall of Soeharto in 1998.

The March 8 Demonstration

The March 8 demonstration provided a window to the dynamics of the Thai labor

movement. There were at least three groups of workers that organized their own

demonstrations independent of each other. Each group had its own slogans, banners,

songs, demands and political agenda to uphold.


2/6

Picture 1. Self-documenting: Members of state enterprise unions are posing a picture of the rally.

The largest group consisted of union members affiliated with the State Enterprises

Workers Relations Confederation (SERC). Easily recognized by their orange t-shirts and

triangular boy scouts-like scarves, they came to the meeting point - in front of the UN

building at Rachadamnoen, by buses at around 8.30 am. Joining the SERC were the

unions and labor groups affiliated with the Public Service International (PSI), the

International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) and the International Federation of

Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions (ICEM). The Bangkok-based

Women Workers Unity Group (WWUG) and the Thai Labour Solidarity Committee

(TLSC) were also part of the group, although the close have ties with the Friedrich EbertStiftung (FES) Bangkok office and other foreign funding organizations. This large group

prepared banners in English that demanded the ratification of International Labor

Organizations Core Conventions Nos. 87 and 98 on the Freedom of Association. With

their banners held high, the group marched along Rachadamnoen road up to the

Parliament House, where they stopped and occupied the road.

As the rally was a conceived as a normal safe demonstration, workers were on ease,

sharing laughter and jokes among their brothers and sisters. More like a routine thing, the

rally was neatly organized, realizing no armed-police or tear gas attack would come on

their way workers were enjoying the rally as a fun thing to do on their Sunday break,

a get together with friends.


3/6

Picture 2. Sunday picnic: In a relatively safe and peace conditions like this one,demonstrations provide workers a social arena for small chit-chats, getting know eachothers and span network of friends (some end up as lovers, too).

After about 2 hours, the crowd was visited by Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva who gave a 20

minute speech with most of the workers taking photos of the PM with their digital

cameras.

Picture 3. Getting Updated: Joining this rally, I can see him (the PM) with my own eyes normally only on TV, said a worker


4/6

Picture 4. Sharing the fun: workers are taking mobile-pictures and spreading the news of seeing the PM.

Another group consisted of small independent local unions from outside of Bangkok (for

example, about thirty female workers came from Saraburi province by renting a 5,000

bath bus which they shared the cost). Their main concern was about the vulnerable

conditions of contract and sub-contract workers, and their lack of the legal protection.

Some of these workers were having their first time to visit Bangkok dressed up with

tight pants, high heels and fashionable cosmetics; demonstration is more like providing a

chance for them to have a trip. Knowing in a big-mass yet fragmented demonstration like

this one their voices would likely not get any attention, they planned this trip in a

similar fashion like a high-school study tour. It was meant to experience Bangkok, the big

city and its important buildings they have never seen before, yet to learn something of it,

and after the demonstration was over in 2 hours, they visited the office of Prachatai to

get the latest news about the arrest.

During the demonstration, t his small group was joined in by a college student groupwhose members distributed statement demanding lse-majest laws to be repealed. The

students were also selling the newsletters of the People Coalition Party (PCP) - an

opposition party whose founder, Giles Jiles Ungpakorn, was forced to leave the country

to avoid being charged for lse-majest. Some of the group members made strong

speeches after knowing that the PM only visited the other group but not theirs. Their


5/6

speeches were mostly on the political issues, less about the workers. Radical they might

be, yet with little contact to the workers group to take the workers actual economic

anxieties as the foundation of their political dissents to instigate the mass. They

performed an art of funeral procession of a stuffed doll in shape of a corpse with the

PMs printed face on it and once finished, threw it inside the Government House.

A smaller group was a labor union of the Metropolitan Electricity Authority with about

20 workers went demonstrating in front of the Government House. They had their own

agenda and demands separated from the SERC group. This union had been fighting

against the privatization of the company since 2003. Leaders of this union had managed

to get inside the Government House for delivering a letter concerning their own case.

Picture 5. Taking a rest: A groups of demonstrating workers along the Phitsanulok roadnearby the Government House.

Facing New Challenges

The fraction inside the Thai labor movement which spans in line to political linkages,

unfortunately, has weaken the power of the labor unions in providing fast responses totheir rank-and-files actual problems. Under the conditions created by the global

economic forces, workers everywhere are facing new challenges and in a serious need of

a new kind of organization that can maintain their democratic control over how the

economy should be structured. In the context of global economic downturn, the


6/6

flexibilization of work- arrangement into outsourcing and contract-based, and

informalization of the Thai economy today, low wage workers are unable to bargain

collectively against degrading working conditions as union leaders are drawn inside the

political rent-seeking game instead of advancing ways to foster their members economic

interests. Although those in their privileged status as a permanent worker realized how

the economic situations have created hardship they shared together with their brothers

and sisters who are in contract and subcontract employment status, given the limited

space they have, only sporadic and time-bound contributions are the best they can

manage. 1 To add to this tip of the iceberg, is the problems of the Burmese migrant

workers which have been long ignored by the labor unions.

Jafar SuryomenggoloGraduate Student of ASAFAS, Kyoto University.March 29, 2009.

1 Interview with Araya Kaewpradap, Women Committee of the Labor Union of GovernmentPharmaceutical Organization (GPO), Bangkok.

Field Note Jafar

Documents

Transcript of Field Note Jafar