Shutdowns from the pandemic could trigger a tsunami of job losses in Thailand especially for employees who don’t have a regular salary, low-paid workers and people without a written contract.
The Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking (JSCCIB) says that as much as 7 million workers could be out of a job by June because of shutdowns from the pandemic.
The committee said most of the layoffs will affect low-paid workers, with 6 million out of the 7 million workers losing their jobs earning less than 20,000 baht a month, according to a Bangkok Post report.
The worst-case scenario is for employees who don’t have a regular salary in the tourism industry, like people who either work on short-term contracts or even without them. This includes guides, but also employees of parking contractors, cleaners working in shops, waiters in restaurants, suppliers of vegetables, meat and flowers to the hotels among others.
Most of these workers can be fired without notice or severance : a vast majority of daily-wage earners and informal sector labourers fall into this bracket. Their pain can be seen on Twitter and television feeds showing videos of hundreds of migrant workers travelling back to their villages after Bangkok decided to shut down restaurants and bars.
An estimated 4.2 million retail and shopping mall workers will lose their jobs, along with 1 million construction workers, 978,000 hotel workers, 250,000 restaurant workers, 200,000 spa and massage workers and 200,000 garment factory workers
The Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking (JSCCIB)
The script is similar in many other services…
