Unions cry foul on temp contracts
Union leaders gathered in the capital yesterday to discuss strategies to curb the garment industry’s widespread use of temporary contracts for hiring workers, saying employers were using them to discourage unions and ensure their workforce remained docile and easy to exploit. They also accused employers of flouting the Labour Law by keeping staff on fixed contracts for longer than two years, and said that officials at the labour ministry were tolerating this despite a July, 2003 ruling by the Arbitration Council saying it was illegal. Short-term contracts were also being used to weed out pregnant workers to avoid paying maternity leave, and coerce staff to work overtime, said Bent Gehrt, the Southeast Asia field director of the Worker Rights Consortium…
