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[Harold]

"On the ground floor of the Ministry of Labour, amid campaign banners and luggage scattered around, groups of women are engaged in activities. When night falls, mosquito nets of various colours occupy the place. These are members of the Triumph Labour Union, which has been active since 1980, and is reputedly one of the most enduring.

1,960 union members were laid off in late June due to, the company claimed, a fall in orders and restructuring. However, the company has set up a new factory and hired temporary labour in Nakhon Sawan instead. The workers have since staged protests and rallies demanding the company reinstate them, or at least pay fair compensation.

It has been over a hundred days already. Many of them have moved from their protest site in front of the factory in Bang Phli, Samut Prakan, to the Ministry of Labour in Bangkok. Now they are in the process of producing a prototype of their own brand of panties called ‘Try Arm’. Using jargon incomprehensible to those outside their profession, they have been discussing about how to make it to the same, or almost the same, standards as the products they made for the world class brand. They have smuggled four ‘unadjusted’ sewing machines from their homes to the ministry building.

Nearly 200 workers at the ministry work in different sections, on very specific tasks, as in the factory. They more or less represent all sections in the production line. ‘The negotiations have been going nowhere. Being here with nothing to do, we see many people walking up and down. So we’ve come up with the idea of making panties for sale,’ says Jitra Kotchadej, former Chair of the union, who was the first to be dismissed by the company. . .

This is in the hope of bringing in some revenue to support their struggle. For months, they have relied on their dwindling ‘strike fund’ which the union collected from members. After a strike and the company’s subsequent lock-out for 42 days in 1999, they set up the fund in 2000, collecting 10 baht a month from each union member."

http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2009/10/26266