The varying degrees of triumph

You wouldn't think much could come of a girl who grew up in Suphan Buri, moved to Samut Prakan at age 15 and spent four decades toiling in a clothing factory, but Jittra Kotchadej's destiny is bigger than that.

Jittra turned into a tenacious defender of workers' rights and, while she has plenty of admirers, she's earned a lot of enemies too.

Rude and vicious comments abound on Internet forums, thanks primarily to her audacious decision to publicly criticise the practice at cinemas of standing up during the Royal Anthem.

The 37-year-old also faces arrest for causing disruptions at Government House during a protest on behalf of dismissed co-workers.

Jittra's long-time employer, Triumph International (Thailand), sacked her on July 29 last year and the Labour Court subsequently agreed it had the right to do so.

She led the workers' union at the factory, whose parent company is best known for making women's undergarments.

Her firing followed an appearance on television for an interview. She wore a T-shirt with a message that referred to rising for the anthem before movies are shown. It said, "Not standing up is not criminal, and thinking differently does not constitute a crime."

In the same interview she also shared her views on abortion.

Jittra was seen as having defamed Triumph, and, more to the point, at a time when the country was deeply divided between red and yellow ideologies.

"I went through the worst time of my life during the trial," she says. "I had no chance to speak for myself, to tell others that the allegations weren't true.

"At one point I considered running away. I just wanted to leave Thailand and find a new place to live. But then the truth hit me - that I didn't have the resources to spend my life overseas."

Jittra believes her firing was a deliberate attempt to weaken the Triumph union.

The company's decision was widely praised in online chat rooms, but Jittra's co-workers hailed her dedication to securing them more rights and benefits and staged a strike to get her reinstated.

After 45 days, however, they returned to their jobs, fearful they might lose them. Jittra was nevertheless assured of a modest living as a consultant to the union.

"They were in financial trouble because they had no income during the strike," Jittra says, "but they went back to work vowing to keep me in the union with their own money.

"It was great to see thousands of people fighting for me. They understood that my dismissal was a blow against the union."

In her advisory capacity, Jittra continues to attend protests. After Triumph let 1,959 workers go in June, the staff battled for re-employment.

Under Jittra's guidance, the union received Midnight University's Charoen Wat-aksorn Medal this year in recognition of its "success".

"We are strong," Jittra affirmed upon accepting the medal on August 23. "Nothing can bring us down."

Four days later she led more than 300 workers to Government House with a petition asking Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to investigate what they called Triumph's "unfair" dismissal of many employees.

When they were stopped from handing the petition directly to Abhisit, the workers shut down the road outside.

Police responded, without warning, by blasting the protesters for nearly an hour with long-range sound-generating devices intended to disturb them and drive them off.

Jittra and two other protest leaders were threatened with arrest for causing inconvenience.

"It's unfair," she lamented. "We're asking for justice, but the authorities treat us like this."

She's adamant that the union tries to avoid causing further problems in these politically unbalanced times, but because of the circumstances of her firing, Jittra has been caught up in the political wrangling.

Triumph employees around the world staged simultaneous rallies on August 26 to seek better terms, but those in Thailand waited until the next day because there was a red-shirt protest in Bangkok on the 26th, and they didn't want to be seen as supporting the anti-government red movement.

The political skirmishing here often requires such precautions, Jittra says.

Does she find any appeal in the red cause? Jittra insists she's fighting only for workers' rights.

"We are ready to work with either the reds or the yellows if they want to help us, as long as they don't try to drag us into politics."