Happy Pride month! Let’s celebrate the time of diversity, equality and solidarity. Even in Pride month, the situation of LGBTQ+ workers is still at risk.
Here are the latest updates on our work to support workers and promote labor justice that we don’t want you to miss.
Important Day
International Domestic Workers Day : We do the job that society doesn’t want to pay
16th June is International Domestic Workers Day. Domestic workers are an integral part of the global labor force. Whether hired locally or internationally, they are employed for a household to perform work such as cleaning, cooking, washing, personal care or even pet care, which are vital for the wider economy.
Platform-based domestic workers have to bear all the costs by themselves (but still required to share profits or commission fees with the platform company), risk to discrimination and sexual harassment, work in rush and unsafe conditions and, after all of these, they have to go back to their home and do their own care work again without getting paid.
On this day, we celebrate the contributions of domestic workers and pay attention to their needs. It’s time to realize the value of reproduction work and the contributions of domestic workers.
Events
Visit local partners in Chiang Mai : Preparing for the upcoming Project
JELI visited a riders group in Chiang Mai, who has partnered to collect survey questionnaires in the GLP–POWER program. The findings will elucidate situations of the platform workers community and help create a website and application for riders to learn about their labor rights.
Visit Empower Foundation : Fight for all workers’ rights. Sex work is WORK!
JELI visited Empower Foundation, the organization who campaigns for sex workers’rights in Chiang Mai. Empower is another research partner that supports JELIin collecting survey questionnaires with platform-based sex workers in the GLP–POWER program.
Visit the riders’ partner in Chonburi : build a strong community for a better society
JELI visited the riders’ partner in Chonburi to collect survey questionnaires in the GLP–POWER program. With several famous tourist towns, Chonburi is populated with service workers and thus one of the important research sites.
Visit the riders’ partner in the Southern Thailand : Overcoming distance and differences through collaboration
JELI visited the Southern Rider Association (SRA) team in Pattani, Narathiwat and Nakorn Sri Thammarat. SRA is a group formed by food delivery and ride hailing riders in the southern part of Thailand to fight against the platform companies’ precarious working conditions. Containing 12 out of 14 provinces in the South, SRA is considered one of the strongest rider groups with over 1,000 members.
Seminars
Labor Network For People’s Rights : Closing the pilot project
JELI and Labor Network For People’s Rights joined together to conclude the project “Empowered the Labor Network and expand democratic allies”. This project has been implemented since 2021 and hopefully to continue in the future.
Labor Network For People Rights
Chonthita Kraisrikul, Knowledge Management Officer at JELI, participated in the panel discussion ‘Women, Work and the Gig Economy :Will platformization Improve Women Labor Force participation?’ with other worldwide researchers in New Delhi, India organized by International Development Research Center (IDRC) and JustJobs Network. In this event,Chonthita presented the JELI’s research “Centering the Agency of Women in Thailand’s Platform-based Care Economy“, which is funded by IDRC.
This research centers experiences and agency of domestic workers and massage therapists in the emerging platform-based care economy
Workshops And Trainings
Workshop for Women Platform-Based Workers:
On 2nd June, JELI, together with a labor activist Aranya Pakapath and Usa Lerdsrisantad from Foundation for Women (FFW), organized the workshop “Labor Rights and Collective Bargaining Power for Platform-Based Women Worker” with over 60 participants from food delivery, domestic cleaning, and massage platforms attending.