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. …
Unions representing more than 15,000 members have called for justice for three women ahead of round two of legal action against their alleged shooter, deposed Bavet town governor Chhouk Bandith.
Bandith, who is accused of shooting the three workers during a protest at a factory in Svay Rieng province in February last year, will face the provincial court once again tomorrow on charges of causing “unintentional violence”.
The Cambodian Labour Confederation and the Cambodian Confederation of Unions issued a statement on Friday urging the court to convict Bandith, send him to prison and make him pay compensation. …
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. …
India’s ambassador to Cambodia, Dinesh Patnaik, said yesterday that his government will pay outstanding benefits to about 30 restoration workers who lost their jobs at Siem Reap province’s Ta Prohm temple in February – but will not reinstate them.
The entire restoration team – more than 100 workers – protested in February, claiming that workers, some of them union representatives, had been unfairly dismissed and replaced with about 25 other workers. …
Dave Welsh, American Center for International Labor Solidarity country manager, said the ambassador had told him during a recent meeting that Indian authorities would meet their financial obligations. …
Welsh said ASI had previously believed it had not entered into an employer/employee relationship and was not subject to the Kingdom’s Labor Law. …
More than 500 workers from Phnom Penh’s NagaWorld Casino demonstrated on Monday, in what was their fourth straight day of strike action in front of the casino over wages and the firing of four staff members
Sok Narith, deputy secretary general of the Cambodian Tourism and Service Workers Federation, said the workers had been on strike since Friday after four NagaWorld employees in the food and beverage section of the casino were fired. …
The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia program (BFC) must employ more transparency in their monitoring of Cambodia’s factories in order to effectively bring change to the country’s working and wage conditions, a report launched yesterday says. …
According to “Monitoring in the Dark” a new report by researchers from Stanford Law School, wages and basic job security have actually declined for Cambodian garment workers in the past decade, and during the time the BFC has been in operation. …
The Kandal Provincial Court issued an injunction yesterday against Yung Wah Industrial Co. Ltd., preventing the company from selling assets at its two garment factories in Takhmao City where thousands of workers have been protesting the past two days over unpaid wages. …
Thousands of employees of two Singaporean-owned Yung Wah Industrial (Cambodia) Co.Ltd. factories, which produce shirts for Gap Inc. among other international brands, went on strike yesterday in Kandal province, claiming that they were not paid their salaries for last month.
“Normally, salaries are paid between the 5th to the 10th of each month, but so far nobody has received their salaries,” said Chan Dany, deputy leader of the Coalition of Cambodia Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (CCAWDU) at the Yung Wah II factory. …
More than 5,000 workers from across seven factories in Svay Rieng province protested yesterday, demanding a doubling of the current minimum wage, a provincial labor official said yesterday. …
The country’s minimum wage sits at $61, and is supplemented by a $5 health benefit and a $7 allowance for housing and transportation. …
A few years ago this scene would have played out in China. More specifically, it would have played out in a Chinese coastal region to which millions of rural folks had arrived looking for work. A huge hangar, piles of fabrics of all colors at both ends, and some 200 heads lowered over sewing machines set up one behind the other.
The atmosphere is not oppressive, just focused. But the workers here are too dark-skinned to be Chinese – though there are some: the managers of this clothes factory on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.
From his office next door, He Enjia directs operations at Sunkind Textile. He left China in 1996 to set up his first factory in Cambodia. At the time, he was a pioneer. He moved for one reason – to get around export quotas on Chinese fabrics.
Sixteen years later the sector has exploded. It generates over $4 billion of revenue a year, which makes it Cambodia’s biggest export by far. In a country of only 14 million inhabitants, the textile industry employs over 300,000 in the Phnom Penh region and plays a major role in the annual growth of 7% on average that the kingdom has been experiencing over the past decade.
Attracted by the legal framework, which is very favorable for investors, the Chinese have taken the lead. “Cambodia is the easiest Asian country to invest in,” says Daniel Zarba, Director General of the Franco-Cambodian Chamber of Commerce. What’s more, the cost of production is lower in Cambodia than it is in China. “Here a worker costs on average $150 a month compared to $600 in China. Even if you take into account the fact that Cambodians are less productive, it still means your labor is two times less expensive,” says He Enjia. …
The textile industry is part of a much wider phenomenon. In Cambodia, in the logging, mining, farming, construction, and energy sectors, the Chinese are filling their pockets. The six hydroelectric dams presently being built? All by Chinese companies. The mines in the north? Often run by Chinese groups. “I even saw Chinese soldiers guarding the entrance to a mine,” says a European man living in Phnom Penh. At the recently created Phnom Penh Stock Exchange, where only one – state-owned – company is listed, the Chinese presence is freely acknowledged. “In many sectors, Chinese investors are essential for us,” explains Charles Lu, deputy director of Phnom Penh Securities, adding that Chinese groups invested $9.1 billion in Cambodia between 1994 and 2012. …
More than 100 workers from Kingsland Garment Cambodia factory, which was a supplier to U.S. retail giant Wal-Mart, demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh yesterday, appealing for help in getting their severance payments. …
In December, workers found out the company had declared bankruptcy and departed Cambodia without paying them severance. …
Representatives of the Golden Gain Shoe factory yesterday demanded in court that six members of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (CCAWDU) pay $200,000 in compensation for organizing a week of strikes at the factory.
Factory management has accused the leader of the factory’s CCAWDU union and five members – three of whom still work at Golden Gain – of inciting the strike, which lasted from July 18 to July 24 and allegedly cost the factory more than $3 million. …
About 1,000 workers protested yesterday morning outside a Taiwanese electronics factory in Svay Rieng province’s Manhattan Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to demand better working conditions, a union representative said.
Among workers’ demand is a salary increase from the current minimum monthly wage of $61 to $70, as well as $15 extra per month for transportation and health care, said Pav Sina, president of the Collective Union of Movement Workers. …
The ministry said it had issued 1,694 construction patents covering 6.5 million square metres of land, involving total capital of $2.1 billion in 2012, compared with 2,125 patents for 4.2 million square metres and capital of $1.2 billion in 2011, an increase of 71.9 per cent, the data shows. …
The government on Monday requested that manufacturers look at raising the minimum wage for garment workers, but only after divided trade unions agree on what that wage should be. …
“After discussions, those present at the meeting agree in principle to discuss raising the minimum wage for workers,” the Ministry of Labor said in a statement after a meeting between manufacturers and unions on the issue.
“The meeting requested all unions meet and raise a joint request for the minimum wage to be discussed with the employers to reach a resolution,” the statement says, adding that union leaders should submit their request to the government before the next meeting at the ministry on February 26. …
The Arbitration Council heard about 230 collective labor disputes in the garment and footwear industry involving approximately 98,000 workers in 2012, a 38 percent increase from 2011, which saw 161 cases handled, according to the council.
Y Samphy, training and communications manager for the council’s Arbitration Council Foundation, said the labor dispute body received 255 total cases, the highest number since the council was establish in 2003, and 90 percent of the cases were in the garment and footwear industry.
Despite the rise in cases, the number of workers involved dropped from 173,000 workers workers in 2011 to about 98, 000 workers in 2012, he said. …
One of Cambodia’s most active unions has filed a complaint against a Thai mobile phone provider, claiming it laid off more than 50 staff members without warning and without compensation.
The complaint was filed with the Ministry of Labor against Mfone, a company that belongs to former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, after the Free Trade Union received a complaint from about half of the 54 fired workers. …
Strikes staged by garment and footwear factory workers more than tripled in 2012
compared to 2011, with more than 100,000 workers participating in at least one strike,
an official of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) said
yesterday. …
“Historically, prior to any elections, we will see a high occurrence of strike,” said Ken Loo, GMAC’s secretary-general. …
More than 1,000 workers protested in front of the soon-to-be-closed Svay Rieng Cambodia Garment factory yesterday to demand better severance benefits, and nearly half of them then marched to the provincial hall to seek help from government officials, workers said yesterday.
Worker representative Pang Tra said that the workers began protesting last Tuesday, after the factory informed them it would close on January 1 because the company had been transferred to a new owner. …
