20 | International Union Rights | 27/4 FOCUS | TRADE UNION RIGHTS IN ASIA Labour Unity Against Global Capitalism: Create a New Society and People’s Democracy Thailand is one of the ASEAN countries, with an area of approximately 530,000 square kilometers, and a population of around 67 million, that adopts a democratic regime of government with the King as Head of the State and the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand BE 2560 as the supreme law of the State. All Thai citizens are under the Constitution. Economy Thailand implements liberal capitalism as a guideline for country policy, strategy, direction, and action plan, and has National Economic and Social Development Plans (NESD Plan) as the strategic development plans of the country. Each sequence of the NESD plan covers a period of 5 years. The first National Economic and Social Development Plan started in 1961 and now we are implementing the 12th NESD Plan (2016-2021). At the beginning, the series of previous NESD Plan was guided by the World Bank opinions; but, recently, opinions were gathered from various sectors such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Thai Industries, Thai Banker’s Association, university academics, independent scholars appointed by the government, including government agencies from various Ministries. Yet, the plans were written without the full participation of Thai citizens. The people’s opinions were partially gathered through public hearings and an online questionnaire, but with some difficulty for the public to reach and provide opinions. As the result of NESD implementation with long period of times, Thailand has prominently been the most inequitable country in the world, leading to the national situation, which is ‘wealthy in a few clusters, but poverty all over the place’. This shows that liberal capitalism and the NESD plans are inconsistent with the real problem solving for Thai society. Recently, the Thai government writes a national strategic plan for country development within the next 20 years, called ‘the 20-Year National Strategic Plan’; yet a liberal economy is still an important concept of the plan. Such economic system results in the high-level of terrifying corruptions among elites, politicians and high-ranking government officials. Moreover, the Thai economy stability is mainly derived from foreign dependence, including goods export, foreign fund for investment, and tourism. Therefore, when the world economy crashes, it causes serious and enormous impacts on the Thai economy. The Thai economy system was not designed for a balanced growth economy and selfdependence system. Today, Thai citizens still have low incomes. Personal and household debts are very high, and most people have no savings. Social welfare is partially covered for certain aspects, such as public health or medical care; but other aspects were rarely supported by the government and they required people to mutually pay the expenses themselves. Management of the state-owned universities are also changed into businesses in that the government would only regulate the operation and provide policy, but they need to run the business to get enough income to cover their own expenses. This situation means that only a few students from rich families are able to get access to university studies. The budget for research and technological innovation is very low, even as the world is entering the 4th industrial revolution period (the Industry 4.0 era). This causes Thailand not to be able to keep up with the changing world, especially the digital technology. Currently, the Thai economy is very volatile, due to trade war, natural disaster, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which affect the operation of capital markets and the money market, as well as businesses, especially export and tourism, which have collapsed. Many industrial factories are closed, and their workers are laid off. Such problems cannot be solved by the stimulation of domestic consumption because people lack income. The government, therefore, solved the problem by borrowing money from the financial institute, and then gives it away to the people. It is unpredictable of how long this situation will be last, and If there would exist the second-round of COVID-19 pandemic, and new lock-down, how the government would be able to manage to solve the problems. It is afraid that the situation would...