Draft law not ready: unions

Bright Sky employees stand behind bars at a factory in Phnom Penh’s Por Sen Chey district earlier this week after they were locked in during a protest. Photo supplied

Draft law not ready: unions

Thu, 17 March 2016 ppp

Pech Sotheary and Sen David

A collective of Cambodian unions submitted a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen via Facebook on Tuesday requesting further revision of the controversial draft union law before it goes to the National Assembly on April 4.

The unions say they support the draft union law in principle, but 18 key points relating to the number of members required to form a union and the number workers required to hold a strike, among others, have not been addressed in the review process.

They have requested that the draft go back to the bipartisan committee previously tasked with reviewing the law.

“Samdech, please kindly urge the [bipartisan committee] to continue discussing [the law] and accepting the collective requests, which are our concerns, so that they can be included in the final step of the draft union law,” the letter reads.

Leng Peng Long, secretary-general of the National Assembly, said yesterday it would be left to the plenary session to decide if changes could still be made, at which point lawmakers could continue to debate the law.

Meanwhile, after two days of protesting by workers fearing job losses, the Singaporean-owned Bright Sky factory has decided to shut down one of its two production lines and pay out workers, according to a statement from the Ministry of Labour.

The ministry met with workers, unions and the company yesterday. Bright Sky had switched production from garments to bags, and orders for clothes were dwindling, and it had agreed to shut down its clothes production line at one of its factories and to pay out workers an undisclosed amount.