The family of a worker who was killed when a ceiling collapsed at Kompong Spue province footwear factory lasts week has accepted 9,000 in compensation, and in return has agreed not file a complaint against the company, the deceased’s wife said yesterday. …
Rim Sarouen, 22, was one of two workers who were crushed to death in the ceiling collapse at the Taiwanese-owned Wing Star Shoes Co Ltd., on May 16. Authorities said the collapse was due to construction work that had been illegally contracted. …
Korn Vet, the father of the second victim, Sim Srey Touch, 22, said …“We would demand more than $20,000. If they pay us, we won’t file a complaint against them. …
Dave Welsh, country head of the Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based organisation advocating for worker rights, said a proper of compensation should be based on the workers’ salary, years of service lost and damages-which would bring it to 97,000. …
“Paying off a poor grief-stricken family with $9,000 sets a terrible precedent, not just in the garment industry, but for any worker in the industry,” he [Dave Welsh] said.
Mr. Wesh said the government should prosecute Wing Star.
About 5,000 garment workers from a factory in Kompong Speu province, which manufactures clothing for U.S sports giant Nike, yesterday blocked National Road 4 demanding additional allowances, such as transport and maternity bonuses, a union representative said.
The protest at Sabrina (Cambodia) Garment MFG Corp., in Samroing Tong district, has been going since Tuesday, said Sun Vanny, a Free Trade Union representative at the factory. …
Sabrina has previously come under media scrutiny for repeated incidents of mass fainting. In 2012, the Free Trade Union recorded that Sabrina had four separate incidents of faintings, affecting 340 workers. …
The Arbitration Council, an independent body that resolves labor disputes in Cambodia’s garment sector, celebrated its 10th anniversary yesterday, though officials expressed concern that funding for the body was due to run out in March next year.
Oum Mean, secretary of state at the Ministry of Labor, said the Arbitration Council currently receives all its funding from the World Bank’s good governance project and that more funds are needed to ensure the body–which has resolved nearly 1,500 industrial disputes, survives. …
Speaking after the conference, Mr. Mean said it was not the responsibility of the government to fund the body but that of the Arbitration Council itself. …
In the 10 years since funding for the International Labor Organization helped establish the Arbitration Council, it has resolved nearly 1,500 industrial disputes involving more than 600,00 workers. It also claims an 80 percent success rate in preventing strikes during negotiations.
More than 20 people fainted yesterday at the Wing Star Shoes factory in Kampong Speu province, where two workers were crushed to death in a ceiling collapse last Thursday.
Workers and union officials said an electrical short-circuit scared workers returning for the first time since the tragedy.
Hong Seng Lim, president of the Development Movement Union of Cambodia Labour at Wing Star, said 21 workers were taken to hospital, but their conditions weren’t serious.
“An electric short-circuit made a loud noise, scaring workers and causing them to run out of the factory.”
Wing Star, a supplier to Japanese brand Asics, allowed its 7,000 workers the rest of the day off, Seng Lim said. …
The dining hall of a garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district that supplies clothes to U.S. brand Gap collapsed into a pond Monday, injuring more than 20 workers who were eating lunch, workers and officials said.
The hall, which is part of Top World Garment (Cambodia) Ltd. in Kbal Koh commune but outside the main building, collapsed at 11:40 a.m., according to commune police chief Mao Rith. …
The accident comes only five days after another factory in Kompong Speu province experienced a ceiling collapse that left two workers dead. Government and factory officials yesterday said the Taiwanese-owned Wing Star Shoes Co. Ltd. was safe enough for staff to go back to work.
“Tomorrow, the workers will return to work so that the production chain will not be affected,” said Oum Mean, secretary of state at the Ministry of Labor. …
Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) election candidate Mu Sochua… said the CNRP is demanding a transparent inspection of Wing Star Shoes, as well as all the other factories in the country.
She also called for the prosecution of all the individuals who were involved in the oversight of the building’s illegal construction. …
Employees at a Taiwanese-owned shoe factory in Kompong Speu province where two workers were killed when one of the building’s floors collapsed on Thursday have been ordered back to work today, despite ongoing concerns from labor activists about the building’s safety.
While conceding that some parts of the building—including the section that collapsed—had been built without a permit and were potentially unstable, an official for the provincial department of land management said Sunday that workers could safely return to work as “warning signs” would be erected to avert employees from parts of the factory still deemed unsafe.
“There are two illegal extensions to the building, which have to be removed,” said Mam Narey, bureau chief of the provincial construction department. “We cannot keep them because it is very dangerous for the workers.” …
The mezzanine level of the Wing Star Shoes Co. Ltd. in Kong Pisei district collapsed on Thursday morning, crushing workers who were arriving at the factory. According to the authorities, steel beams holding up the concrete flooring buckled under the weight of boxes of shoes due to shoddy construction done without a permit. …
“Safe and ethical working conditions are of paramount importance to ASICS. We have launched our own investigation into the cause of the incident in full cooperation with the relevant authorities. In addition to our ASICS staff already on site, two representatives plus related people from ASICS corporation headquarters will travel to Phnom Penh and personally evaluate progress of investigations,” said Katsumi Funakoshi, general manager of public relations department for ASICS.
“The decision to re-open or continue to work with this factory would be considered after the result of investigation by ourselves, by the third party and by the government,” he added. …
“Just like in a house, when you build a small roof for the dog, and if that small roof collapses, you will not suggest that the whole house is going to collapse,” [ Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia chairman] Mr. [Van] Sou Leng said. …
He also said that the paying of money to families of the dead and injured over the weekend was “insulting.”
“There’s the criminal aspect of an illegal construction that resulted in the death of workers,” Mr. Welsh said. “To think that they are offering money to families over the weekend to prevent the criminal suit is ludicrous and frankly should not stand.”
According to Ms. Hour, the factory representative, nine of the injured workers who went to Calmette Hospital had received $1,700 each. Victims with minor injuries at the district referral hospital received $550 each, she said.
“For each dead victim, the factory donated $6,500 to each family to hold the funeral,” Ms. Hour said. “We wanted to negotiate compensation with them but right now, they don’t want to talk. They need time.” …
Cambodia has dispatched 4,779 workers to Thailand, South Korea and Japan in the first three months of this year, according to a report from the Ministry of Labor on Friday.
During the January-March period this year, the country sent 4, 100 workers to Thailand, 678 workers to South Korea, and one worker to Japan, the report said.
Cambodian laborers work in industries and construction in Thailand, in the fields of manufacture, agriculture, construction and fishing in South Korea, and in small-sized industries in Japan. …
Currently, about 125,000 Cambodian laborers are working legally in Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan. Those migrant workers have sent home about 200 million US dollars a year, the Ministry of Labor said. …
Labor rights activists and a government official accused the International Labor Organization’s Better Factories Cambodia program of ineffectiveness in its monitoring of factory conditions following a deadly ceiling collapse on Thursday at a shoe factory in Kompong Speu province.
Moeun Tola, labor program head of the Community Legal Education Center, a labor rights group, said that Better Factories Cambodia had failed workers by not disclosing the names of factories that flout the country’s laws on factory health and safety. …
In February, a team of Stanford University Law School researchers published a report titled Monitoring in the Dark, charging that the lack of transparency in the Better Factories program had actually set back garment industry standards for Cambodian workers, compared to their counterparts in China, Indonesia and Vietnam.
The researchers also said that the ILO’s “confidential reporting practice” reduces incentives for factory owners and international brands to improve working conditions in Cambodian factories. …
Authorities yesterday said the ceiling collapse in the Wing Star Factory-which produces running shoes for the Japanese spots brand Asics-was due to dangerous building practices. …
Jill Tucker, technical adviser for Better Factories Cambodia, said her program did not monitor the Wing Star factory “in any capacity,” as the monitoring of footwear factories by the ILO program only started last year. …
Regarding the ILO’s decision not to name factories that flout safety regulations, Ms. Tucker defended the way the program operates.
“We are in the process [of] taking programmatic steps toward publicly releasing some non-compliance information and the name of the factory it is connected to,” she said.
The Better Factories program also does not monitor factory construction standards, although Ms. Tucker said that issues such as electrical wiring, overloading on platforms and pathway obstructions are recorded. …
Reporting that the country had achieved better than expected economic growth last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday targeted a rapid expansion of the country’s rubber industry and predicted that almost 1 in 10 Cambodians would soon be working in rubber. …
“Agriculture continues to play a crucial role in boosting our gross domestic product, employment, and contributing to rural poverty reduction,” Mr. Hun Sen said. …
According to figures provided by Mr. Hun Sen, rubber plantations now account for 1.2 million hectares of the 1.5 hectares of land the government awarded to private companies under its controversial economic land concessions.
Human rights groups, however, have estimated that far more land, at least 2 million hectares, has been distributed by the government as private concessions. …
Manufacturers and unions aligned with the ruling CPP yesterday said the current labor shortage inside the garment industry would act as an incentive for employers to increase salaries, and that there was no need for the government to impose a new minimum wage.
During a meeting at the Social Affairs Ministry on Monday, the government ordered garment manufacturers to increase the $61 per month minimum wage, but insisted that unions – whose demands range from a new minimum wage of $93 to $150 per month – come to a unified amount first. …
Inside a gleaming white-and-blue garment factory in Cambodia stand rows of second-hand Singers — weathered sewing machines transported from a plant in China that closed last year.
The Hong Kong-headquartered Top Form, which has 700 workers at the plant, is one of many businesses that have moved to Cambodia, mostly from China, in the past year or so to take advantage of its lower wages, which are roughly a third of those in China. …
Angie Lau, chief executive of bramaker Clover in Hong Kong, says that her company has found operating in Cambodia easier than in India, where it also operates a plant, and that productivity at the Cambodian plant is rising fast toward levels seen in its Chinese factories. …
Japanese Investment in Cambodia is steadily increasing as a result of sharply rising wages in China and other Southeast Asian nations. But experts warned this week that for sustained investment growth and to avoid driving Japanese companies to other attractive investment destinations such as Burma the government must address the country’s skilled labor shortage and reduce electricity costs.
Japanese investment in Cambodia reached $75 million last year, up from about $35 million in 2010 and about $15 million in 2009, according to the Japanese Embassy. …
Activist groups are planning to hold two separate forums this week in Phnom Penh to call attention to human rights issues and other problems in Asean countries as a meeting of regional and world leaders begin in the city. …
The assembly will meet ahead of the Asean and East Asia summits and include the topic “food security and sovereignty, trade and investment, labor, natural resources, and human rights and democracy,” said Ly Piseth, an activist at Social Action for Change (SAC), another of the groups involved. …
Growing calls in Sweden for multinational clothing giant H&M to increase wages for Cambodian garment workers have taken a royal twist.
Cambodia’s Prince Charin Norodom, 38, who has lived in Sweden for more than 30 years, told the Post yesterday that he had been working behind the scenes in the Scandinavian country – the home of H&M – to push for better pay in Cambodian garment factories. …
The issue of a living wage, which labor rights coalition Asia Floor Wage Alliance says equates to $281 per month for Cambodian workers, has dominated headlines in Sweden in the past week, the prince said. …
H&M has defended the treatment of workers in factories from which it sources, including M&V, in Kampong Chhnang province, where hundreds fainted in August last year. …
Tae Young factory workers have ended their strike demanding the reinstatement of 16 fired workers after the factory last week agreed to drop its legal complaints against eight of the 16 in return for the entire group’s official resignations.
About 600 protesters began the strike at the beginning of the month after the Kandal province factory refused to rehire the workers, who were fired in June for allegedly inciting an illegal strike.
The factory at the time also refused to drop a court case demanding that eight of the fired union members a pay the factory $60,000 each in compensation.
The American Center for International Labor Solidarity has set its sights on the Herculean task of unionizing Cambodia’s civil service, a move that, were it successful, could have profound implications for the country’s political landscape.
The term civil service in Cambodia has unusually broad application, referring to bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, police and nurses – professions that are, at least officially, all rewarded with remuneration that makes garment workers look positively well-off.
Their wages are virtually unlivable though skilled professionals, civil servants, excluding soldiers, earn an average of $48 a month along with a small supplementary living allowance and possible overtime, opposition Sam Rainsy Party financial data shows. …
In 2010, the government cancelled a program that allowed international donors to pay performance-based salary supplements to civil servants, arguing it had been terminated because the program could jeopardize attempts at broader civil service reforms. …
The mother of a domestic maid allegedly stranded in Malaysia has become the latest Cambodian claimant to file an official complaint to the Ministry of Interior over labor abuse in the country.
Em Sokhum said her 24-year-old daughter Chher Sophorn left to pursue work in Malaysia more than two years ago, with recruitment agency Philimore. …
Moeun Tola, head of CLEC’s Labour Program, said its Malaysian partner would intervene if they found she was forced to work. It is not the first complaint against the agency, he said.
Cambodia is in negotiations with Malaysia over a memorandum of understanding to protect emigrant workers. …
A new made-service company that claims to be the only one of its kind in Cambodia is offering an alternative employment option for the country’s many domestic workers who face insecure, and often abusive, workplace conditions overseas.
Ming Hour Home Service, which opened in July, employs 300 women between 18 and 45 years old who work mostly as maids, but also as cooks, nannies, waitresses, and saleswomen, company owner Chhour Chhunhour said yesterday.
Mr. Chhunhour said that because prospective clients must sign a contract prior to hiring staff, his employees are guaranteed a minimum wage-$65 per month- and protection in case of violence or sexual abuse against them. …
Some 285 million workers will migrate for employment when ASEAN countries open their borders to each other in 2015, Prime Minister Hun Sen predicted yesterday, as he urged speedier regional legislative action to ensure they could travel safely.
At an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Council meeting, the premier warned that some countries’ legislative barriers could prevent ASEAN from producing the necessary legal frameworks by the 2015 deadline. …
Hun Sen banned Cambodian recruitment firms from sending domestic workers to Malaysia last October following a raft of abuses there including deaths, alleged rapes and beatings. …
The only country with whom Cambodia has signed an MOU to curtail such exploitation is Thailand, where approximately 36,500 workers had migrated since 2006, Mean [a secretary of state at the Ministry of Labor] said. …
The owner of a labor firm repeatedly accused of human trafficking, who is also the sister of one of the country’s top police officials, has been appointed head of the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA).
Grave concerns have been expressed by rights groups over the appointment of Ung Seang Rithy, owner of the firm Ung Rithy Group, a firm they say police are reluctant to investigate, despite long-observed abuses because her brother is deputy, national police chief Sok Phal. …
According to information that rights group Licadho say they received from the Ministry of Interior, 16 under-age recruits were rescued from an Ung Rithy Group training center in 2010. …
