News

A workshop was held in Thailand on 19-20 November,by the Paper and Printing Network of Thailand (PPNT), on labor laws, related laws and membership recruitment, with the participation of 46  participants (34 men and 12 women).

5 unions participated in the workshop: Kimberly Clark Workers Unions (KCWU), Labour  Union of Printed Packaging Industrial (UPI), AMCORWUR,  AMCORWU2, Thepwatana Paper Workers Union (TPWU) and  SIGWU participated in this function.  

Participants stated that they would like to gain knowledge on Labor Relation Law, Labor Protection Law, especially on working hour, compensation for overtime assignments and unfair laid off.  Moreover, some of them stated that they wanted to create unity among PPNT and worked together in order to increase UNI, UNI Apro members in Thailand. 

Sister Amnuay Iemraksa, KCWU President, thanked UNI, UNI Apro, and UNI Graphical and Packaging who supported this seminar workshop. She thanked Brother Javier Carles for supporting this workshop and Brother Somboon Subsarn, UNIDOC Thailand Office Director, who coordinated this event.  After that, Brother Niporn Komduang, SIGWU president talked about the situation of PPNT and that he would like all members to work closely together and assist each other.  He said unions all over the world faced difficulty in term of finance and  the unions in Thailand were no exception.  He would like to ask PPNT to organize activities to learn and exchange ideas. 

The speakers spoke on union administration and plan union activities.  Participants were divided into four different groups to discuss their issues and problems.  All unions faced the decrease of union members and increase of subcontract and outsource workers in their workplaces.  Afterward, they were discussing how to solve the problems.  All of them agreed that they must try to recruit new members into the unions.  They needed to strengthen their relationship with their managements, how they could work with their managements as partners, and not acting like they were enemies. All unions also discussed whether they needed to request some fund from UNI, UNI Apro and UNI Graphical & Packaging to campaign in order to increase union members.

At the end, the participants evaluated the seminar workshop which all of them said that the workshop provided them with a lot of experience and knowledge in order for them to bring back to improve their union situations. They learnt how to cope with their daily situation and how to handle industrial relation. All unions especially, UPI, AMCORWU, KCWU and SIGWU supported the idea of requesting fund support from UNI G&P to recruit new members. They will hold a union meeting in December to discuss and decide. Brother Somboon asked them to answer by the end of December 2016.  TPWU promised to recruit 80 new members by the end of April.

In conclusion, the seminar workshop was very successful.  All participants participated fully and no one was absent from the event.  They would like to organized more seminar workshops similar to this one.  The participants said they were happy to be with the UNI family.