Labour activism in Thailand

Abstract

Trade unions have had legal status in Thailand for almost forty years. Yet the ideologies and practices that define trade unionism remain unknown to large swathes of the working class, and private-sector trade unions have limited capacity to represent worker interests in the workplace, at industry level or in national political arenas. The situation is better in state enterprises where a lengthy tradition of trade union organizing and activism survives. But here too unions are hardly thriving, as their energies and resources have been consumed in battles against privatization. In response to these circumstances, labour activism has been redirected through the spaces of civil society via organizational networks and forms other than trade unions. This civil society-based labour organizing has, to some extent, addressed the restrictions associated with state-sanctioned trade unionism, generating new strategies, organizational vehicles and domestic and transnational alliances. However, the capacity of these non-union organizing efforts to inject working class voices and interests into processes of workplace change and broader conflicts over the nature and direction of Thailand's social and political development has also been limited.