(570) Burmese migrant workers walked out of Tipco Foods pineapple factory in Muang District, Prachuab Kirikan Province in Thailand following attacks by Thai workers at the factory and unsatisfactory negotiations with factory management following the incident.

The incident began at 9PM, 2 Jan 2012, in the worker’s quarters in the Tipco factory compound, when four young Burmese workers were beaten by Thai workers while they were having dinner in their room. Other Burmese migrant workers fought off the attack and in the resulting melee three Thai workers were injured.

“We agreed to pay compensation of THB10,000 to each of the three injured  Thai workers, a sum arrived at by factory representatives, because we don’t want problems with Thai workers in the future. But some Thai workers felt that the judgement did not go far enough and they demanded that seventeen Burmese workers be ejected from the factory compound. It was an unacceptable demand and we didn’t agree to it. So we decided to leave the factory,” said Mr. Maung, a migrant worker representative at the factory.

“If we allowed the seventeen migrants who were involved in the incident to be removed from the factory compound, they might be killed by the local Thai mafia. The night of the incident, a group of local Thai people came to the migrant’s rooms and several shots were fired into the rooms and no one is taking any action on this matter,” he recounted fearfully.

Tipco factory representatives and factory security guards evidently have decided to pay an undisclosed sum to the local mafia as a monthly “protection fee”. Migrants are also said to have to bribe local police in order to be allowed to use motor bikes in the factory locale. It was following on the heels of the initial violence, the unsatisfactory settlement of the matter, and subsequent threats from locals that the Burmese workers decided to stage the walkout.

Mr. Htoo Chit, Executive Director of the Foundation for Education and Development (FED), who was called in to negotiate between the migrants and factory management said, “I have been contacted by one of my Norwegian friends who is very close with one of the company’s managers. Tipco is surprised by the resignation of almost all migrant workers from the factory and they wanted to know the real situation on the ground. I consulted with migrant representatives and I am preparing a report. These kinds of terrible situations happen all too often in Thailand and this is not first time it has occurred at this factory. Burmese migrants face these problems every day everywhere in Thailand.”

The 570 Burmese migrant workers who resigned from the factory include 400 women. All of them hold temporary passports, working permits, and registration cards.

According to the Tipco Foods Public Company Ltd. website (found at http://www.tipco.net/investor/english/index.asp) the company produces and exports canned pineapple, pineapple juice concentrate, and canned mixed fruits. Consolidated net profit for the company in 2009 amounted to THB206.7 million. The factory is located in Tambon Aou Noi, Muang District, Prachuab Kirikan Province, Thailand.