Many state workers 'sacked unfairly'

Tens of thousands of government officials and contract employees have been unfairly terminated and poorly compensated under a bureacratic reform plan, a government labour-law expert said yesterday.

Suphoj Phongsuphat, who is working on the setup of government workers' union, said senior Labour Ministry officials were lobbying junior officials or employees to withdraw their name from a list of 3,000 names in order that their joint complaint calling for an investigation into a series of unfair termination became invalid.

Speaking at his rally at the ministry yesterday, Suphoj, a C-9 official with expertise in the labour law and career security, was campaigning for the setup of the union and cited statistics over the years that government offcials in general and those working under the ministry themselves had not regularly been laid off fairly and suficiently compensated.

Waranont Pitiwan, a senior Department of Labour Protection and Welfare, said Suphoj was entitled to a disciplinary action for his lawsuit lodged to the Central Administration Court asking it to nullify a department order to lay off 174 officials based in Bangkok and 339 elsewhere. "Although he has been acting as a member of the prospective union, he is a government official," he added.