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Article

28 Jan 2020

Author:
Worker Rights Consortium

Myanmar: Adidas secures back pay for dismissed union leaders, compensation for blacklisted union president & severance for workers after factory closes

"Challenging the Status Quo: Helping Workers Protect their Associational Rights in Myanmar", 15 January 2020

... Factory management around the world often... illegally terminat[e] union leaders, and... employ... violence to quell union organizing. Buyers... generally fail to detect such violations or take meaningful action... But a recent investigation by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) in a Burmese factory documented an exception to this general rule, setting an important precedent...

In 2019, the WRC undertook an investigation into Myanmar Infochamp... and found that management had violated its employees’ associational rights... [through retaliatory firings of] four union leaders, including the union president [who was blacklisted]... 

The WRC... engaged with [buyer] adidas to secure the workers’ reinstatement and win compensation for the blacklisted union president. Adidas agreed to reach out to Myanmar Infochamp... [who] informed adidas that the factory would close...

WRC, ALR and the CCC engaged adidas to ensure both that the union leaders, for whom reinstatement was no longer an option, would receive back pay dating from their firing... severance pay... adidas was successful in making sure workers received severance and, in the case of the wrongfully fired union leaders, back pay... [and] an additional payment—the equivalent of seven months’ pay...