Garments and textiles

A would-be tripartite workshop intended to improve the garment sector’s minimum wage setting process closed Friday, with the industry’s most influential player, the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), boycotting the talks at Phnom Penh Hotel. The two-day workshop would have been the first meeting between ...

Phnom Penh City Hall has refused labor unions and associations to celebrate 128th International Labor Day (May 1) at Freedom Park. The decision was made during a meeting on Thursday between representatives of labor unions, association and Phnom Penh City Hall officials. ...

Government officials and union representatives met behind closed doors Thursday to start hashing out a better way to set the minimum wage for the country’s all-important but troubled garment sector at a workshop brokered by the International Labor Organization (ILO). But what was supposed to be ...

Union leaders say they expect upwards of 1,000 people to jam the streets around Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday in a show of support for 23 unionists, workers and bystanders who are on trial for their alleged part in violent protests in Pur Senchey ...

Grand Twins International, Cambodia’s second stock exchange listing, will list at the lower end of its expected buy-in range, an announcement on the Phnom Penh Securities (PPS) website said yesterday. GTI is to begin trading on May 29 with nine million shares at $2.41 each, according ...

Garment factory owners failed to turn up for what was supposed to have been a tripartite meeting with the government and worker unions on Thursday to help break an impasse in negotiations to increase the minimum wage for workers, officials said. The International Labor Organization (ILO) ...

Garment and footwear industry, Cambodia’s largest foreign exchange earner, currently consists of 960 factories, employing some 620,000 workers, labor minister Ith Samheng said Thursday. The sector made a revenue of 5.5 billion U.S. dollars last year, accounting for around 80 percent of the country’s total exports, ...

Twenty-one labor activists who have been detained in Kampong Cham province since their arrests in January were moved to the main prison outside Phnom Penh on Wednesday. Supporters say the 21 are being detained as a lesson to other would-be demonstrators, after a brutal crackdown ...

Two union leaders were summonsed and questioned by a municipal court prosecutor yesterday over allegations they illegally detained the boss of a packaging factory in Por Sen Chey district’s Choam Chao commune during a strike. According to Phnom Penh Municipal Court deputy prosecutor Ek Chheng Huoth, ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday ordered embattled union leader Ath Thorn to stay away from the SL garment factory and its workers and to avoid any public gatherings that could “damage public order,” drawing a tight circle around one of the country’s most ...

Exactly who will participate in a workshop to set the minimum wage in the garment sector with the Ministry of Labour this week remained unclear yesterday, with some key figures saying they had not yet been invited. During the workshop, to be held on Thursday and ...

Unrest in the garment sector spread yesterday, as hundreds of workers from Kandal province demonstrated outside their factory. The 700 workers at Unity Fashion factory walked off the job after managers said they would dock wages of workers who did not show up on April 17, ...

Embattled union leader Ath Thorn yesterday said that he had begun a fundraising effort, trying to come up with $25,000 in bail money by the end of the week. Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), said union members would begin ...

The vast majority of the country’s 600,000-strong garment factory workforce appeared to be back on the job Monday despite a call from unions to continue a stay-at-home strike until Tuesday. Eight unions had spent weeks urging workers to stay home after the Khmer New Year from ...

The U.N.’s human rights office in Cambodia expressed concern Monday that 22 detained protesters may not be allowed to attend their trials on Friday, while the government insisted that the prisoners will be transported to the court. Two minors were arrested for intentional violence for their ...

A team of disabled security guards hired to protect the embattled SL Garment Factory in Phnom Penh is seeking the formalization of their employment and an end to what they claim is the factory’s exploitation of their impairments. In November—at the height of an occasionally violent, ...

A Phnom Penh-based factory supplying uniforms for police officers and firefighters in the US city of Los Angeles continues to break Cambodian labour laws, a report to be publicly released today says. Kin Tai Garment factory, a supplier to 5.11 Tactical – which sells the uniforms ...

More than 2,000 workers at three factories in Svay Rieng’s Bavet City went on strike Saturday, claiming their bosses owed them money. About 500 workers at the You Li factory, which makes baby clothes, went on strike Saturday because management refused to pay them for Thursday ...

A few garment factories resumed operations in Phnom Penh on Friday, albeit at reduced capacity, as thousands of workers returned to the city after Khmer New Year celebrations in the provinces. While the majority of factories in Meanchey and Pur Senchey districts stayed closed, it remained ...

Most garment factories did not open for business Thursday, choosing to extend the Khmer New Year holidays—which officially ended Wednesday—rather than face industrial action in the form of a planned nationwide stay-at-home strike. However, a number of workers interviewed Thursday said they knew nothing about the ...

Exclusive use of short-term contracts continues to impede progress in Cambodia’s garment sector, with major brands still sourcing from factories violating the statutory two-year limit on temporary employment, labour rights groups have warned. According to a report released last week by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), ...

Cambodia’s government should make public a proposed law aimed at regulating the country’s labor movement, a rights group said Thursday, amid concerns that it includes provisions for the suspension of unions and for severely restricting their right to freedom of association. Requests from civil society to ...

Along Phnom Penh’s industry-heavy Veng Sreng Street on Wednesday, garment factories lay idle in observance of Khmer New Year. The dorms around them were empty, save for the few workers who could not afford the bus ticket home for the holiday, which ended Wednesday. Eight unions ...

The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) has issued nine points of its policies for upcoming local council Election which will be held on May 18, 2014. According a statement issued on Saturday, the policies included a promise to increase the monthly salary to 1,000,000 riel or ...