Cambodia Garment Workers in Mass Protest Over ‘Unfair’ Dismissals

By Sun Narin and Chun Han Wong
The Wall Street Journal

September 5, 2013,

European Pressphoto Agency

Cambodian garment protest in Phnom Penh on Thursday.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—More than 4,000 garment workers marched in Cambodia’s capital Thursday to protest their factory’s alleged mass dismissal of employees who had gone on strike.

The labor protest is one of the largest this year in Cambodia, an impoverished Southeast Asian economy heavily reliant on the garment industry as its main exports earner and biggest formal sector employer.

Union leaders and workers from the Singaporean-owned SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd. say they marched to Phnom Penh’s municipal-government buildings, where they lobbied authorities to intervene in a standoff that started two weeks ago.

Workers say they went on strike over what they described as workplace intimidation, citing the alleged presence of military police during regular factory inspections. SL Garment responded by sacking more than 700 workers on Wednesday and suspending more than 5,000 others, according to Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union.

SL Garment officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia, an industry body, has described the two-week strike at SL Garment as “illegal,” alleging that the workers had used “violence and strong-arm coercion techniques.”

Following negotiations between union members and the Labor and Social Affairs ministries, the government has ordered SL Garment to reinstate the dismissed and suspended workers, who would be able to resume working from Friday, officials and union leaders told reporters after the talks.

Officials also said they would work to resolve outstanding issues over the coming days, and have warned the factory owner has also been warned not to leave the country before the dispute is settled.

According to Mr. Ath Thorn, workers had issued 11 demands during the negotiations, including the dismissal of an unnamed Cambodian factory supervisor, the timely payment of monthly wages and a $3 daily meal allowance. It wasn’t immediately clear whether these demands would be met.

Garment manufacturing is Cambodia’s biggest exporter, earning about $4.6 billion last year by supplying apparel to retailers mainly in the U.S. and the European Union. According to the Commerce Ministry, the country had 412 export factories employing about 394,200 workers as of April. Labor activists, however, estimate that the industry employs more than 600,000 people, mostly women.

The garment industry has also been plagued by strikes, which labor activists attribute to discontentment with meager salaries, poor working conditions and lax enforcement of labor laws.

In May, Cambodia’s minimum wage rose to $80 per month from $66, the largest bump in more than a decade, although garment workers’ salaries remain equal to levels seen in 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In July, a study by the International Labor Organization found that Cambodia’s garment factories had become less compliant with health and safety measures compared with seven years ago.

According to the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia, garment workers have mounted 83 strikes from January to July, compared with 121 strikes logged in the whole of 2012—the worst year since records began in 2003.

Watch video of the mass protest here.