Roughly half of the 500,000 to 600,000 members of hill tribes are not registered citizens and therefore cannot vote or own land, have difficulty in obtaining social services, and are not protected by labor laws. Thailand has for years sheltered hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian refugees, currently including some 125,000 Burmese. The government generally provides first asylum to Burmese fleeing fighting, but often bars Burmese seeking asylum on broader grounds of persecution. Authorities frequently arbitrarily arrested and detained Burmese refugees and asylum seekers outside refugee camps as illegal aliens. In 1998 and 1999, the government deported tens of thousands of Burmese migrant workers in the context of the regional financial crisis, without screening the deportees to indentify genuine asylum seekers.
Unions are independent.
The lack of antidiscrimination legislation hampers organizing. Collective bargaining is legal in the private sector, but in practice employers maintain considerable leverage and generally set wages unilaterally. State workers can only join associations, which cannot negotiate wages or hold strikes. The International Labor Organization has criticized seldom-used legislation permitting the government to restrict private sector strikes on national security or public welfare grounds or in essential services. Child labor is common.