American Center for International Labor Solidarity/Thailand
Kasemkij Building, Suite 402, 120 Silom Road, Bangkok 10500, THAILAND
Tel: (66-2) 632-7159, 238-5335, 267-0366 Fax: (66-2) 234-5809
Email: acilsth@loxinfo.co.th

March 20, 2003

Khun Apai Chandanachulaka
Permanent Secretary
Ministry of Labour
Mit Maitree Road, Din Daeng district
Bangkok, 10400

PSR-34/2003

Dear Khun Apai,

I would like to thank you for your time last month to meet with me and my colleague, Phillip A. Fishman, the Assistant Director of International Affairs for the AFL-CIO. We greatly appreciated your time and interest, and I hope that you found the meeting to be productive. ACILS has had a long history of working closely and productively with the Ministry of Labor, and we certainly look forward to continuing that relationship under your leadership.

I respectfully write today to submit for your consideration our views regarding the case of the Gina Form Bra Company, where there has been a serious labor dispute between management and the union for at least two years. Most recently, there has been concern about the efforts of the employer to push through an agreement between the management and some employees which was signed on August 22, 2002. It is my understanding that the Department of Labor Protection and Welfare (DLPW) has refused to register this agreement because of a number of irregularities. We have now been told by the Gina Relations Union that Gina management has appealed this decision by the DLPW to you, and that you are likely to make a decision on this matter before March 28.

On behalf of ACILS and the AFL-CIO, we respectfully express our strong support for the correct decision of the DLPW not to register the August 22, 2002 agreement. The original decision of the DLPW is correct, and we submit, should be maintained.

We have been informed that between August 21-26, 2002, the Gina management required all the executive committee (EC) members of the Gina Relations Union to take mandatory leave, with full pay. Then on August 22, the employer claimed that a group of employees put forward a set of collective bargaining demands, and on the same day, an agreement was reached. In fact, I have been informed that it was the Gina management that unilaterally wrote the agreement, with the connivance of a group of supervisory employees who were not real representatives of the workers. I have been informed that the workers were not informed in advance about the collective bargaining demands, nor were they given the opportunity to select their bargaining representatives. According to Gina management, the demands were allegedly signed by 900 workers who were told that it was better than the previous agreement. However, some of the workers were also allegedly threatened by management representatives, and told that if they failed to sign as instructed by the employer, they could be fired. Such an arrangement is clearly contrary to the provisions of the ILO Convention 98, freedom to collectively bargain, and is a clear labor rights abuse.

When they returned from their mandatory leave after August 26, 2002, the EC members of the Gina Relations Union were faced with this situation. However, the union tells me that they immediately mobilized against the employer's unilateral agreement, and raised several important objections:

(1) The supervisors were not officially appointed worker representatives, because they were not appointed by the union, nor were they nominated by any consultative process of the workers. The collective bargaining demands were not seen or guaranteed by the workers in advance. As you are well aware, Thai labor law requires that collective bargaining demands must be seen and signed by workers (in the case of putting forward demands by signature of 15% of the employees or more) or have a union's approval (as reflected by a majority vote in the union's annual meeting). Neither occurred in this case.

(2) Some of the workers allege they were forced to sign, under threat of losing their jobs if they didn't sign. A number of these workers later withdrew their signatures, saying that they had been forced to sign and had done so against their will.

(3) Legally, the binding arbitration agreement of November 21, 2001 (as determined by the tripartite Labor Relations Committee, following the order of the Minister of Labor using article 24 power in the Labor Relations Act of 1975) was still in force, and therefore, a new CBA could not be concluded before the previous agreement had expired.

For all these reasons, we respectfully submit that the DLPW has correctly refused to register the August 22, 2002 agreement put forward by management. Therefore, we would request that you to support the DLPW decision, and refuse Gina management's appeal to overturn the DLPW decision and register the agreement.

I look forward to your reply about this important matter.

With assurances of my highest respect,

Philip S. Robertson Jr.
Country Director

Cc: Ambassador Daryl Johnson, U.S. Embassy
Mr. Phillip A. Fishman, AFL-CIO
Mr. Timothy J. Ryan, Asia Coordinator, ACILS -- Washington
Khun Thappabutr Jamasevi, Director-General, DLPW
Khun Kanjai Kaewchoo, President, Textile & Garment Workers Federation of Thailand (TWFT)
Khun Surat Dtoomjib, President, Gina Relation Worker Union