Tuna processing factory agrees to pay staff compensation for labour abuses as Thailand faces threat of import bans from EU and US

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A Thai tuna processing factory has agreed to pay staff $1.3m compensation for labour abuses, an official said on Tuesday, in a rare victory for migrant workers in the country’s scandal-stricken seafood industry.

Hundreds of Myanmar labourers at Golden Prize Tuna Canning, a processing plant in Samut Sakhon that sells fish to markets around the globe, have spent months seeking compensation for exploitative working conditions.

Thailand is the world’s third-largest seafood exporter, but the industry is plagued with rights abuses and fuelled by trafficked labour from neighbouring Myanmar and Cambodia.

Slavery and trafficking continue in Thai fishing industry, claim activists Read more

The sector has come under heightened scrutiny from foreign governments over the past year, with the EU weighing an all-out ban on Thai fishing products.

The US passed a bill last week that will close loopholes in legislation outlawing goods produced by forced labour. This could see Thailand targeted with import bans.

Rights groups say Golden Prize workers had long been subject to unlawfully low salaries, supervisor abuse and a lack of compensation for machine accidents on the 25-acre processing sites.

Following a strike by more than 1,000 workers last week, company representatives joined negotiations with military officers, government officials and migrant worker leaders, reaching an agreement on Monday.

“The company began paying 1,100 workers last night involving money of 48 million baht ($1.3m),” said Boonlue Sartpetch, the head of the province’s labour department. Seven hundred workers have already been paid, with the rest expected to receive compensation on Tuesday.

Golden Prize Tuna Canning, whose 2,000 workers are mostly from Myanmar, declined to comment.

The junta that seized power in Thailand in a 2014 coup has struggled to revive the flagging economy and is desperate to avoid any costly sanctions on the multi-billion dollar seafood sector.

In the US, federal officials are preparing to enforce an 86-year-old ban on importing goods made by children or slaves under new provisions of a law signed by the president last week.

The Tariff Act of 1930, which gave Customs and Border Protection the authority to seize shipments where forced labour was suspected and block further imports, was last used in 2000 and has been used only 39 times in all, largely because of two words: “consumptive demand” – if there was not sufficient supply to meet domestic demand, imports were allowed regardless of how they were produced.



The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act signed by Barack Obama eliminated that language, allowing stiffer enforcement.

Thai officials say they have cleaned up the industry with new laws and crackdowns on traffickers and fish factories. This month Thai police said they arrested more than 100 people on trafficking charges linked to the fishing industry.

Authorities have also registered nearly half of an estimated 200,000 undocumented foreign workers in the seafood sector, officials said.

Andy Hall, a British labour activist who has been assisting the Myanmar workers at Golden Prize, said he suspects the spectre of costly trade bans was finally forcing the government to act.

“To get a dispute like this that involves so much money and actually have it settled is very unprecedented,” he said. But he accused both the company and local labour department of dodging the worker’s complaints for nearly a year.

In the past some Thai factories have responded to rights abuse allegations with defamation lawsuits; Hall faces a suit for alleging exploitation at a Thai fruit company.