A year before the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar, striking workers from the Tai Yi shoe factory protested in front of their workplace to demand an increase in their daily wages. To raise their spirits, the workers sang the revolutionary anthem, ‘Thway Thitsar’.
In Myanmar’s Spring Revolution, the mass movement against the 2021 coup, ‘Thway Thitsar’ could be heard all over the country. “The present is critical, brothers and sisters. We must have solidarity.” A regular feature of workers’ protests, the anthem had now become part of the revolutionary movement. I say this not to highlight the song itself, but to call attention to the history of worker organising and struggle in Myanmar – a history that laid the groundwork for the Spring Revolution. Simply put, had workers not previously organised unions inside their factories, the protests that catalysed the Spring Revolution would not have happened. The February 6 protests ignited the anger of people across the country and led to nation-wide protests in the days that followed.
A history of worker organising
In 2011, as part of a wider reform process, trade unions were legalised in Myanmar after close to 50 years of being prohibited. Labour rights organisations and union federations sought to inform workers of their legal right to association. But it was workers themselves who organised unions in their workplaces. In most cases, this occurred following a workplace dispute that coalesced into a collective struggle to better wages or working conditions. With support, at times, from outside activists, hundreds of thousands of workers in the industrial zones around Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, established workplace unions in just 10 years.
