PHNOM PENH,
Cambodia - About 3,500 workers protested on Wednesday at a factory in
Cambodia that makes clothing for U.S. sportswear company Nike, refusing
to give up their campaign for higher pay despite a crackdown by police
this week.
At least 23 people were injured on Monday when police
with riot gear and stun batons were deployed to disperse about 3,000
workers, most of them women, who had blocked a road outside the factory
owned by Sabrina Cambodia Garment Manufacturing in Kampong Speu
province, west of the capital, Phnom Penh.
A trade union
representative claimed that a woman who was two months pregnant lost her
child after military police pushed her to the ground. Military police
spokesman Kheng Tito, however, said the claim was false and denied that
his men had been violent. He said some police officers had been hurt by
workers throwing stones.
The workers walked out on strike on May 21. Sun Vanny, president of
the Free Trade Union (FTU) at Sabrina, said about 4,000 workers were
expected to join the protest on Thursday.
"We will continue the
strike to demand what they want," Vanny said, adding that union
representatives had been invited for talks on Wednesday but no agreement
had been reached.
"We want to know why violence was used against
the woman and workers, we want to know who hired these officers to
come," he added, referring to Monday's clash.
A Nike spokeswoman
in the United States told Reuters by email on Monday that the company
was "concerned" about the allegations that workers had been hurt and was
investigating. Nike requires contract manufacturers to respect
employees' rights to freedom of association, the spokeswoman added.
Hong
Luy, chief of administration for Sabrina Cambodia, said the company
could not afford to raise workers' pay. She said workers made up to $102
a month and the strike had forced the factory to shut down until
Friday.
Many Western brands, attracted by cheap labor, have turned
to Asia to get their garments made at a cost that will make them
attractive to customers in the troubled economies of Europe and North
America.
A series of deadly incidents at factories in Bangladesh,
the world's biggest clothing exporter after China, including the
collapse of a building last month that killed more than 1,100 people,
has focused the world's attention on safety standards.
Strikes
over pay and working conditions have become common in Cambodia, where
garments accounted for 75 percent of total exports of $5.22 billion in
2011, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Earlier this
month, two people were killed at a factory producing running shoes for
Asics when part of a warehouse fell in on them. A union representative
had initially said six people were killed in that accident.
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