Myanmar garment workers. Photo on Flickr by IndustriALL (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

This article by Zung Ring was originally published on May 27, 2025, on The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar that has been exiled in Thailand since the military coup in 2021. An edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.

Workers from the Tsang Yih Shoe Factory in Yangon, which produces Adidas-branded footwear, began a sit-in strike on May 14 to demand better wages.

The workers, mostly young women, risked not only their jobs but their personal safety to demand a modest increase in daily wages from MMK 6,700 (USD 2) to MMK 12,000 (USD 5)

After a weeklong protest, the employer agreed to meet their demand for a daily wage of MMK 12,000 for an eight-hour workday. However, only MMK 600 was actually added to their basic pay, which rose from MMK 5,200 to 5,800, while the rest is billed as “allowances.”

While this outcome is not ideal, the workers at least secured the amount they had been fighting for. On paper, this may seem like a small demand. In reality, it is a desperate bid for survival.

Living wage?

What can someone buy with this new daily wage of 12,000 kyats (MMK)? To understand the scale of the crisis, consider that a regular cup of cappuccino at Yangon International Airport costs MMK 8,000 (USD 3). A kilo of pork now goes for MMK 35,000 (USD 16), meaning that even with two full working days, a worker still cannot afford this basic protein source. This isn’t just economic hardship. It’s systemic deprivation.

A few days ago, I visited a popular shopping mall in Yangon at around 10 a.m. On the elevator down from the second floor, I noticed three teenage girls seated on the floor behind their beauty accessories counter, quietly sharing a meager meal: one small box of instant noodles, a small box of plain rice, and a small container of “ngapi,” a fermented shrimp or fish paste commonly used in traditional Burmese dishes. This was seemingly breakfast for them.

It was both a pitiful and admirable scene. I stopped by and had a small chat and learned that two are from Ayeyarwady and one from Bago, and they work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. These young girls likely earn no more than MMK 300,000 a month, or around USD 68.45. Yet they try to save whatever they can, often by eating less, just so they can send a portion of their wages back to their parents in their home villages. As someone who also came from a rural area to Yangon in search of work, I sympathize deeply with their situation.

The stories of these workers are not isolated. They reflect a broader economic collapse that continues to suffocate everyday life in Myanmar. Inflation is out of control. The currency has plummeted, with the current market exchange rate at MMK 4,380 to the dollar. For workers paid in kyats, this makes every imported item — fuel, medicine, even basic food — astronomically expensive.

Cold-hearted employers?

The demand for a daily wage of 12,000 kyats is not a luxury. It’s barely a lifeline. It is the cost of dignity in a collapsing economy. And when a country’s economy no longer serves its people, especially its most vulnerable, it is not the workers making demands who are unreasonable — it is the employers who fail to consider the well-being of their own workers.

The CEOs, managers, and investors who fly in and out of Yangon International Airport, often sipping their MMK 8,000 cappuccinos in the departure lounges, surely pass through the same shops and supermarkets as the rest of us. They visit City Mart or Market Place, and they see the same price tags on basic groceries. As they are involved in import and export, they surely understand how much the kyat has devalued against all neighboring currencies.

It makes me wonder — do they ever pause to ask themselves whether the wages they pay their workers can actually support a life? Have they ever done the math? More importantly, have they ever questioned their own conscience whether they are acting as responsible employers or simply exploiting desperation under the guise of job creation?

Perhaps they are too busy counting the wealth they have accumulated through exploitation to bother examining their conscience.

Manipulative calculation of wages

The calculation of wages for factory workers in Myanmar is often manipulative and intentionally confusing. Take, for example, the wage structure at Tsang Yih factory. The daily wage there is made up of several components: basic pay, service pay calculated based on a worker’s length of service at the factory, regular allowance mandated by the state, additional allowance, and extra allowance. These categories of allowances are often arbitrary and can be created or adjusted as the management or factory owner sees fit.

In practice, before the strike on May 14, a typical daily wage for an eight-hour shift was nearer MMK 8,500, which broke down as follows: 5,200 basic pay, 2,000 regular allowance, 400 other allowance — some reports said “for food” — and 900 in extra allowance.

When workers demand a raise, their primary goal is to increase the basic pay, because that directly affects other entitlements, most notably, overtime pay. If the basic pay rises, so does the overtime rate, which results in an overall increase in monthly income.

That is why factory owners or their representatives tend to avoid raising the basic pay. Instead, they prefer to make small increases in various allowances that are not legally binding. This is crucial because when a worker resigns or is terminated, the company is only obliged to provide compensation based on basic pay.

This deliberately complicates the wage composition issue in Myanmar, apparently in a bid for profit maximization. On the surface, giving out different types of allowances might seem like the company is being generous. In reality, it is a calculated strategy to reduce long-term labor costs and avoid financial obligations.

Workers deserve better

The retail price of Adidas shoes in Finland, for instance, ranges from EUR 45 to 230 euros. With the new daily wage of MMK 12,000, a factory worker in Myanmar who manufactures these shoes would have to save more than a month’s wages to buy a pair priced at 100 euros.

Each worker on the production line reportedly manufactures over 150 pairs of shoes per day. Suppose a worker produces 150 pairs each worth EUR 100 in an eight-hour workday; she earns the company EUR 15,000. Meanwhile, the worker’s daily wage is EUR 2.40 or 0.016 percent of the retail price.

Have these employers lost all sense of compassion, kindness, and basic human decency? Have they become so consumed by greed that they have abandoned even common sense? If lifeless machines require regular maintenance to function well, don’t human workers, who drive the entire production, deserve at least a fair living wage as a form of basic care?