By Kyaw Phone Kyaw | Friday, 05 June 2015
More than 150 fired workers from a Yangon garment factory
have threatened to petition the Union Supreme Court to get their jobs
back, after the national Arbitration Council overturned a decision by
the Yangon council ordering their former employer to take them back.
The
158 workers from the Costec garment factory in Yangon’s Shwe Pyi Thar
Industrial Zone were fired after going on strike for a K1000-a-day pay
rise in January.
They submitted their case to Yangon Region
Arbitration Council, which ordered Costec to rehire them. The factory
appealed the ruling, however, and on May 28 the national Arbitration
Council ruled against the workers because they had been given the
opportunity to return to work between February 4 and 6 but turned the
offer down.
As a result, the employer does not have a
responsibility to rehire them, the council said. It also cited financial
problems at the factory as another reason.
The workers say they
will ask the council to reconsider the case and if it refuses they will
submit a writ of certiorari to the Union Supreme Court in Nay Pyi Taw in
order to have the decision reviewed.
Worker Ma Kyal Sin said the
workers believed that the council had been unfairly influenced by their
employer to overturn the decision by the Yangon council.
She said they did not think the council would overturn its decision, but wanted to avoid a lengthy court case.
“Some
of us are facing difficulties with living costs so we want to get back
our job at the factory as quick as possible,” Ma Kyal Sin said.
Ko
Ye Naing Win, a labour representative on the Arbitration Council, said
he was “sad” about the decision but it could not be reversed by the
council.
“If they are confused about our decision they can ask questions or they can appeal to the Supreme Court,” he said.
He said that it would be the first time workers had submitted such a writ to the country’s highest legal institution.
A legal adviser to the workers, Ko Saw Kyaw Kyaw Min, said he was working to build a case to support the writ.
Costec
factory manager Ma Saw Yu May declined to comment yesterday, saying
that the official with the authority to speak to the media was “very
busy”.
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