Days before Myanmar’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party was deposed in a coup last month, Jacobin conducted an interview with the head of the Federation of General Workers Myanmar (FGWM), Ma Moe Sandra Myint. At the time, we didn’t yet know the role the young female garment workers that Moe organizes would play in the anti-coup resistance.

But in the following days, as work stoppages, walkouts, and marches rocked the streets, garment workers proved crucial to the movement against military rule. On February 22, the growing momentum culminated in a nationwide general strike with garment workers at the center. They demanded the reinstatement of the government of Aung San Suu Kyi (who, despite enabling the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, remains popular among Burmese workers for ending military rule and expanding labor rights).

Myanmar’s garment industry is massive, having swelled to six hundred thousand workers in the last decade, and in recent years it has been hit by wildcat strikes and militant labor organizing. Now, workers are applying the know-how they acquired from years of labor organizing to the struggle against a return to military rule.