Cambodian garment workers working in a garment factory in Phnom Penh.
http://www.internationalsupermarketnews.com
A documentary revealing the miserable conditions faced by Cambodian
factory workers producing goods for the fashion retailer H&M was
aired on Swedish national television last night. Campaigners and the
media are calling on H&M to respond to allegations of poverty pay in
the industry.
“The documentary revealed the reality behind the glamorous veneer of
fast, cheap fashion sold in H&M stores,” said Klaus Melvin Jensen,
Coordinator for Clean Clothes Campaign Denmark. “I fear many of
H&M’s customers will loose their appetite for cheap clothing after
seeing this film.”
In recent months H&M have held a number of high profile meetings
with dignitaries such as the Vice Prime-Minister of Cambodia, and
officials from the wage board of Cambodia to call for a higher minimum
wage to be implemented for workers. Yet campaigners say that meetings
and good intentions are not a sufficient response to the pressing health
risks and poverty conditions faced by factory workers.
“Low wages come at a high cost. Last year, over 2400 workers passed
out in Cambodian factories due to malnutrition as a direct consequence
of low salaries. But H&M, one of Cambodia’s main buyers, continues
to refuse to pay a living wage to its workers,” says Jeroen Merk of the
International Clean Clothes Campaign. “This is unacceptable.”
The Clean Clothes Campaign Network in collaboration with the
Cambodian trade union C.CAWDU launched in September a European-wide
campaign called ‘No more Excuses’, demanding that the company take a
proactive role in paying a wage that allows its workers to live with
dignity. The campaign aims to draw attention to the fact that whereas
the minimum wage for garment workers is USD 61 a month this amounts to
less than 25% of a living wage in Cambodia.
In an attempt to respond to the documentary’s findings, H&M
announced plans on Tuesday for a project to strengthen union –
management dialogue at some production units in Cambodia. Campaigners
and unionists have welcomed this step, but have expressed concern that
it offers no guarantee of living wages for workers who need them most.
“We support the idea of building a respectful dialogue between the
trade unions and the employers in Cambodia,” says Athit Kong, Vice
President of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic
Union (C.CAWDU), “but H&M must also play its part. It is absolutely
necessary that any project includes trade unions at the local and the
nation level and really reflects the worker’s voices. This is the only
way to achieve visible changes on a grassroots level. We call upon our
Swedish union friends to make sure H&M is brought to the table to
negotiate a real agreement with Cambodian and international unions that
will improve the conditions for the Cambodian workers”
Clean Clothes Campaign activists are calling on H&M and other
garment buyers from Cambodia to take immediate action to address the
poverty caused by the low wages in Cambodia. They are asking H&M to
support the Cambodian trade union’s 131 USD minimum wage goal by
issuing a public statement of support and engaging in building an action
plan for paying this figure with suppliers. To ensure long term results
on the ground and guarantee considerably higher wages for the garment
workers, H&M needs to adopt an action plan for its whole supplier
base with a clear benchmark for a living wage, a timeline, and a follow
up procedure for delivering this at a factory level.
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