Garments and textiles

In an effort to bring stability back to the country’s embattled but crucial garment industry, the Ministry of Labor has joined forces with the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Swedish clothing giant H&M in a campaign for unions and factories to sign direct agreements to ...

Union officials and the garment sector’s factory association said yesterday they supported a new program meant to enhance relations between employers and employees, but remained sceptical of how effective it would be. In a ceremony yesterday, the Ministry of Labour inaugurated the program, which entails training ...

Formation of the National Silk Board (NSB) has been delayed due to a lag in coordinating ministries to create the industry body, according to the spokesman of Ministry of Commerce. The former minister of commerce, Cham Prasidh, said in June last year that he was aiming ...

Union members of the Ministry of Labour’s Labour Advisory Committee (LAC) will meet on Monday for a garment industry wage discussion focusing on ideas raised at a workshop in April. The invitation from Labour Minister Ith Sam Heng was sent to the seven LAC unions on ...

About 400 garment workers arrived for their shifts and monthly pay at Phnom Penh’s Hongkong Yufeng factory Tuesday only to find it shuttered and its owner nowhere to be found, workers’ representatives said. “Today is payday for the workers and since the employer did not have ...

Protesting workers at Ocean Garment factory say they are worried the manufacturer, which has suspended operations for one month, will close altogether. About 20 per cent of Ocean’s 1,300 workers demanding full payment during the break have found work elsewhere, while longtime employees are literally praying ...

Union representatives stormed out of negotiations and continued a strike yesterday when managers at T&K Garment factory said workers would never receive the 2,000 riel ($0.50) daily lunch allowance allegedly promised to them. A week after they walked off the job, T&K workers at Por Sen ...

Amid complaints from union and labour rights officials of illegal firings over the years, Cambodia’s garment factory association is holding a course on the termination process in Preah Sihanouk province today. ...

A Ministry of Labour official yesterday vowed to go after any of his “corrupt” colleagues that deal with the garment and footwear sector, and urged workers to file complaints about substandard working conditions. ...

Before he was arrested in January, Vorn Pov and the union he created were not widely known outside of activist circles. But when he emerged from Phnom Penh’s CC1 prison on Friday, he walked away as one of the highest-profile unionists in the country, and a ...

Being placed on consecutive short-term contracts in Cambodia’s predominantly female-staffed garment sector is forcing many women to choose between a family and a factory job, unionists and rights groups said yesterday. Ken Chenglang, acting president of the National Independent Federation Textile Union of Cambodia, said many ...

More than 600 workers have fainted on factory floors so far this year, compared with about 800 such incidents over the whole of 2013, a Labour Ministry official said yesterday. Pok Vanthat, deputy director of the ministry’s labour health department and head of a committee that ...

Police yesterday morning blocked more than 1,000 garment workers as they tried to march from their Por Sen Chey district factory to the Ministry of Labour to plead for intervention. Management at the Ocean Garment factory informed staff on May 24 that it would close for ...

The South Korean ambassador to Cambodia, Kim Han-soo, on Monday denied having asked the Labor Ministry to stop a strike at a South Korean-owned garment factory last week, but said the dispute has put a $40 million investment from the parent company on hold. On Sunday, ...

Three months pregnant at the time, Sam Ath doesn’t remember collapsing two months ago at the crowded, muggy garment factory where she works at the southwestern edge of the Cambodian capital. The 30-year-old woke up in a hospital bed, only to be told that she had ...

As several hundred garment workers from the SL Garment factory pelted police with rocks during a protest near the Stung Meanchey pagoda in November, Men Sok Sambath, a 14-year-old scrap collector, decided to join the crowd. “I saw other people throwing rocks at the [police] truck, ...

Grand Twins International (Cambodia) Co. Ltd., a Phnom Penh-based manufacturer of clothes for U.S. athletic brands, has again delayed its listing on the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX), officials said Wednesday. The company was expected to list Thursday, but technical problems prevented it from doing so, according ...

About 1,000 workers protested outside Ocean Garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Pur Senchey district on Wednesday to demand compensation for being out of work while the factory suspends its operations for a month due to flagging demand from buyers, a union leader said. Workers have been ...

Representatives from some of the world’s largest fashion brands and the leader of one of the world’s biggest union organizations met this week with Cambodian officials and local clothing manufacturers to demand better treatment and improve workplace safety for the country’s estimated 600,000 garment workers. Garment ...

A major international union wants Cambodian garment workers and factory managers to return to negotiations, following meetings between international companies and officials. The IndustriALL Global Union said Tuesday that management should seriously consider a minimum wage of $160 per month, after international buyers such as Levis ...

Cambodian officials, led by Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Keat Chhon, on Monday met with a 18-member delegation representing global brands and trade unions to discuss garment worker rights and wages. It was the second round of talks between Cambodian government officials and representatives of major brands ...

About 150 garment workers turned out to the Phnom Penh of­fices of the United Sisterhood Alliance NGO on Sunday to watch a politically charged fashion show entitled “Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality.” Aimed to highlight “the income gap between Cambodian garment workers and the selected CEOs of ...

The Takeo Provincial Court charged eight union representatives with incitement Sunday for taking part in a garment factory strike, bringing to 17 the number of unionists charged this month alone. The latest in the spate of recent arrests came just ahead of today’s high-level meeting between ...

Two union leaders narrowly escaped arrest yesterday morning when employees on strike at a Phnom Penh garment factory forced their release from police and security guards, fellow union officials said. Seang Sambath, president of the Worker Friendship Union Federation, said WFUF vice president Mao Vannak and ...