The ongoing Triumph struggle, was taken a notch higher with a protest march organized by the Triumph workers union in Thailand. On the 24th of July, the Triumph union in Thailand decided to hold a march from the World Trade centre in the Chidlom district to the swiss embassy in the wireless road.
On the 24th at around 9:00 am about 1500 workers and other activists for many other organizations joined the march. All workers were wearing triumph lingere, and had their mouths covered with a mask which said no to union busting. In addition they held placards and so on.
The distance between the start of the march and the swiss embassy was not long, just about a kilometer, this however, is one of the busiest sections of Bangkok. On normal days the traffic here is bad, the havoc that 1500 chanting protestors created can only be imagined. They were chanting slogans, and creeping along, blocking about 2 lanes of traffic, enough to create a log jam of vehicles thoughout the central business district of Bangkok.
At the Embassy, the workers demanded to speak to Ambassador Rodolphe Samuel Imhoof, but were met with his first secretary instead. Three representatives of the workers were allowed to enter the embassy to talk with the secretary.
The talk yielded hardly any results as the embassy said it had to check whether Triumph International was registered in Switzerland, and it was not sure whether it could bring the employee to the table.
The embassy refused to come out to receive the workers’ petition, but asked the workers to send their representatives to submit the petition inside the premises.
So the workers decided to read the letter in Thai and English through a megaphone, and burned the petition in protest. They finally left for their protest site in front of the Triumph factory in Bang Phli, Samut Prakan.
The workers are demanding that the Body Fashion Company cancel its plan to lay off 1,959 workers, disclose information in accordance with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, consult the labour union regarding policies which would affect the welfare of the workers, and adhere to the Triumph conglomerate’s own Code of Conduct which recognizes the importance of human rights protection.
A meeting between the Triumph labour union and Body Fashion is set to take place soon at the Office of Labour Protection and Welfare in Samut Prakan.
from ; http://www.globalcorpforum.org/en/node/134
