Posted on 10/14/2011 1:43:17 PM PDT by AfricanChristian
Workers in Burma will be allowed to form unions and go on strike under a new law signed this week by the president, officials say.
The law permits unions with a minimum of 30 members to be formed and allows strikes if a notice period is given.
Unions have not been allowed to operate in Burma since 1962.
The law appears to be the latest in a series of changes being introduced by Burma's new military-backed, civilian-led government.
Signed on Tuesday, it also sets out penalties for both employers and employees who do not abide by its terms.
"Clearly the introduction of legislation which legalises worker representation is an extremely positive step," the International Labour Organisation's representative in Burma, Steve Marshall, told the BBC.
Burmese authorities consulted with ILO specialists over the law, he said, and while he had not yet seen the final official text of the legislation, if unchanged from the draft the law would be "pretty sound".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Didn’t they learn the first time??
What do they call you when you do the same thing again, and expect a different result???
Hey Burma, look at our union activity, especially on Wall Street right now. Would you like to have these people? Cheap.
I suspect you haven’t lived in a dictatorship. Burma has been run as a particularly nasty dictatorship since 1962.
This announcement has more to do with freedom of association than the American experience with unions.
Lech Walesa was a union leader at Gdansk and both the Soviets and the Chinese weren’t very keen on unions.
This is a very welcome development.
I suspect you haven’t lived in a dictatorship. Burma has been run as a particularly nasty dictatorship since 1962.
This announcement has more to do with freedom of association than the American experience with unions.
Lech Walesa was a union leader at Gdansk and both the Soviets and the Chinese weren’t very keen on unions.
This is a very welcome development.
“...This is a very welcome development...”
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Yes, probably for the short term. So were unions in America at one time. Unionization, if it last in Burma, will be exploited from both sides, as it is especially now in America. I am sure Burma has its “community organizers”.
I don’t see unions as inherently evil. The trade union movement in America has turned into something else, but in the early days, trade unions were instrumental to fighting for workers rights.
China, for example, could do with a robust trade union movement. This will guard against exploitation of workers by manufacturers like Apple, Nike and Gucci.
“...China, for example, could do with a robust trade union movement. This will guard against exploitation of workers by manufacturers like Apple, Nike and Gucci.”
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It probably could, as long as they don’t get shot for not doing what they are told to do by the communist government. The only exploitation that will take place in China is by the government which is in most everything, especially in larger industry. Nothing guards against anything that the government wants to do to the people in China.
Unions, if coupled with right-to-work legislation so union membership is voluntary rather than forced, can do a lot of good. The fact that today unions are mostly causing problems says a lot about the fact that their success a century ago has caused them to outlive their usefulness.
Change the terms “right to strike” and “right to organize” to the terms “right to quit your job” and “right to free association” and unions are quite compatible with American constitutional principles of free enterprise. We are so far removed from dictatorship and serfdom in the United States that we may not fully understand that modern dictatorships, as well as classical feudal societies, fascism, and communism, all seek to impose social stability by telling people where they will work and making it very difficult or impossible to leave their jobs.
A free market society depends on the right of workers to leave their jobs and strike their own bargain for the price paid for their work. A democratic society depends on the right of citizens to freely associate with each other in groups. When those freedoms are threatened, unions can provide an important counterweight that individuals may be unable to exercise on their own.
Unions today are often a major problem in America. That's not necessarily the case elsewhere.
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