Labor policy and administration

In Cambodia, where the garment sector accounts for 80 percent of exports, hundreds of thousands of people depend on their slice of the $5 billion industry to survive. But for suppliers currently exhibiting their wares at a trade show this weekend on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich ...

At least 127 Cambodian garment workers at six different factories got fainted on Friday due to poor health, a local police chief confirmed. Yim Socheat, police chief of Phnom Penh’s Dangkor district, where the incidents occurred, said the victims had been sent to hospitals soon after ...

About 50 workers from the Xin Chang Xin garment factory on Thursday marched for the second time to the Ministry of Labor to demand intervention after the factory allegedly failed to pay two months of wages, workers and a union representative said. ...

About 3,000 garment workers in Kompong Chhnang province agreed to end their protest and return to work Wednesday after confusion over their monthly salaries was cleared away. Workers from the Chinese-owned Jiun Ye Garment factory in Samakki Meanchey district went on strike Monday after picking up ...

Unions representing garment workers have pledged to reignite protests if the minimum wage for the industry is raised to only $115 next year, a sum they say was offered by the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia during a meeting on Friday. The Labour Advisory Committee (LAC) ...

At least six people, including three Cambodian migrant workers, were killed late on Monday when a condominium construction project north of Bangkok collapsed, according to news reports, officials and witnesses at the scene. Twenty-four people, at least one of whom is Cambodian, were also injured in ...

Bus drivers fired from the Phnom Penh Sorya Transportation company earlier this year waged a fresh protest outside the bus station in Phnom Penh on Monday, calling on passengers to boycott the service until they are rehired or given proper compensation. The 17 drivers were sacked ...

Former bus drivers are set to stage a protest today outside Phnom Penh Sorya Transportation Company in the capital’s Daun Penh district, calling on its management to respect an arbitration ruling to reinstate most of them.   ...

After four days of waiting amid a mounting death count, Yat Meng got a call that his younger brother, Pheng, was found dead yesterday, buried under the concrete slabs of a collapsed condominium just north of Bangkok. Pheng, 20, was one of two dead Cambodian migrant ...

As the razor-wire came down from Freedom Park on Wednesday, a group of unions quickly filed a request to be the first people to hold a demonstration inside the park since it was put into lockdown in early January. The letter, obtained by the Post yesterday, calls on ...

The government’s long-pledged health insurance scheme for private sector employees, including factory workers, is just around the corner, officials promised yesterday while refusing to name a more specific date. On Wednesday, the Ministry of Labour held a public forum on the insurance plan, which is expected ...

Representatives for the employees and owners of a Phnom Penh garment factory gutted by a fire last month will meet at the Ministry of Labor today to try and hammer out a pay package for the workers, though a factory official said they would not ...

Seven union leaders protesting against being sacked from the Vantage River Textile factory in Preah Sihanouk province each agreed yesterday to accept $300 compensation. Worker representative and sacked employee Keo Srey Pich, 22, said three hours of negotiations between the union, workers and the company, in ...

The number of Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand has risen to 190,000 thanks to the new one-stop service centers set up across the border, Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor said Wednesday. Labor Ministry spokesman Heng Suor said about 190,000 migrant workers—some with a full complement of legal ...

Cambodia’s embassy in Kuala Lumpur has played a key role in pressuring domestic workers to stay in the country despite fears for their welfare, rights groups have said. While a moratorium was placed on sending domestic workers to Malaysia in 2011 amid mounting concerns over abuses, ...

Deposite not coming close to achieving their goal of a $160 monthly minimum garment wage, unions announced yesterday that they will raise their demands to $177 for 2015. Ken Chhenglang, acting pres­ident of the National Independent Federation Textile Union of Cambodia (NIFTUC), said about 10 union ...

Dozens of workers in Preah Sihanouk province marched on the local labour department yesterday after three days of protests against the sacking of seven employees. ...

The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, must force British clothing companies to investigate whether garments sourced from Cambodia are made at factories with fair labour practices, the unions have warned. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trade Union Congress, has written to Mr Cable warning that ...

A lingering odour in a Sixplus Industry garment factory is aggravating the already-fragile health of its workers, 100 of whom fainted last weekend, and has forced the factory to send many of them back to health centres. ...

In June, after about a quarter million migrant workers returned from their jobs in Thailand fearing the military junta’s crackdown on illegal labor, Cambodia’s government announced it had slashed the cost of emigration, and would charge workers only $49 to legally return to work across ...

Trade unions at either end of the political divide Wednesday said they were eager to renew their agreement with garment factories to abide by the rulings of the country’s Arbitration Council, with some changes, despite a new report showing that both unions and employers often ...

Expatriates working in Cambodia without labour identification cards will face fines and even jail when strict new enforcement kicks in, according to a July 16 joint statement from the ministries of interior and labour. Government inspectors, the statement adds, will begin checking workplaces immediately in order ...

NGOs say the Ministry of Labour’s use of its own method for determining the garment industry’s minimum wage is risking a repeat of the tensions that exploded in violent protests in January, when authorities killed at least five people. More than six months after the Labour ...

Workers at a Taiwanese-owned sandal factory in Kompong Cham province on strike since last week over an eight-point list of demands agreed to go back to work Tuesday after reaching a deal with management that included a monthly lunch stipend. A few hundred of the Carlington ...