Over 500 Thai textile workers defied the military junta’s ban on public protests to demonstrate in a dispute at their factory.
Workers from the Gina Form Bra Company marched to the US embassy in Bangkok to protest at plans by the company’s owner, Hong Kong’s Clover Group International, to shut their factory at the end of October and relocate to China. The workers manufacture lingerie for Victoria’s Secret, The Gap and other American companies. The factory employs 1,600 workers, 95% of them women.
Workers marched behind a handmade banner made of bras strung together. Many held sticks with oversized bras and placards with slogans such as: “Victoria’s Secret: Stop Exploitation!”
The Gina Relation Worker Union said the factory’s owners were unwilling to pay six months severance pay as compensation, as required by Thai labour law.
The company have now apparently said that they would pay the severance money.
