Mikasa Sports

ILO violation 87 : Mikasa Sports, the athletic equipment manufacturer, intensified its systematic anti-union campaign at its factory at the Eastern Seaboard industrial estate. Supervisors intensively monitored and penalised union leaders through discriminatory transfers and disciplinary procedures for trumped up infractions. Union committee members were prevented from working overtime, compelled to take unpaid leave, separated from their fellow workers, and publicly humiliated by senior managers, in one case destroying their work then ordering them to fix it. When three union committee members publicly protested against the factory’s actions against workers, the management sued them in court for defamation. When a union committee member who was pregnant miscarried during her day shift at the factory, she requested the factory to send her to a local hospital. Management refused, and instead sent her to the medical room at the factory, where she was forced to wait until the evening when a friend from another factory came and took her to hospital for treatment. Through the combination of intimidation and disciplinary procedures based on fabricated infractions of company rules, factory management succeeded in either firing or forcing the resignation of the entire union committee except the union president. By the end of the year, the union president remained isolated and under constant harassment, and the union had been effectively destroyed in the factory.: Thailand