General Motors Thailand has laid off over 800 labour union members after almost a year of fruitless talks to solve disputes between them.

On 3 Oct, while the General Motors (Thailand) Labour Union was holding its annual meeting, representatives of the company showed up to present a letter announcing the termination of employment of those who are members of the union, taking effect from 4 p.m. on 5 Oct,.

According to the letter, the labour union has demanded changes in the conditions of employment since 21 Oct 2008, and the company has also made demands of the labour union since 4 Nov 2008. With mediation by the authorities already exhausted, both sides have been unable to reach any agreement. The company cites the 1975 Labour Relations Act to terminate employment.

There was a series of 11 meetings in total between the union and the company over almost one year, with the last one on 2 Oct.

GM claimed the impact of the economic crisis as its reason for resisting the union’s demands. However, the union claimed to have checked the company’s financial report with the Ministry of Commerce, and found that the company had a net profit of over Bt1,300 million in 2008.

The union’s Secretary-General Suriya Phochailert said that the company wanted to get rid of the union. In February this year, the company laid off over half of the workforce on the production line, claiming a decrease in orders as the reason and reducing the production rate from 22 cars per hour to 16. But not long after the layoff, GM increased the rate to 20 cars per hour, and recently to 22. As a result, the workers have greater workloads.

He expected that the company would employ subcontracted labour to replace the union members.