Labor

Around 20,000 workers from the garment, construction, tourism, banking, service and agriculture sectors want to march to present a petition to the National Assembly on International Labor Day, May 1, but Phnom Penh City Hall did not approve the rally. City hall asked them to wait ...

Four of Cambodia’s independent and opposition-aligned unions have informed the Phnom Penh municipality that they plan to gather 20,000 people on May 1 to march from Olympic Stadium to the National Assembly. ...

Cambodia’s construction sector is facing a massive labor shortage due to a recent boom in construction projects throughout the country and workers migrating en masse to Thailand in search of higher wages. In 2012, the construction sector expanded rapidly with the total value of approved projects ...

In May 2013, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and Better Work will launch HERproject in Cambodia. HERproject links multinational companies and their factories to local NGOs to create sustainable workplace programmes that increase women’s health awareness. The project also seeks to demonstrate the return on investment ...

Cambodia’s garment industry is experiencing a worrying rise in fire safety violations as factories struggle to cope with a sharp increase in the number of orders they are receiving, the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia program (BFC) said in a report on Thursday. The ...

The United Nations in Cambodia has taken a beating in recent months. The UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal has been plagued by high-profile resignations and accusations of political interference. Elsewhere human rights activists have criticised the UN’s failure to take a firm stance against an increasingly ...

The Labor Advisory Committee issued a joint statement on the decision to raise wages from $61 to $80 per month for garment and footwear workers. The statement was announced Friday, after a meeting between factory employers, union leaders and Labor Minister, Vong Soth. The wage provision ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday issued extensive orders to unions, factories, workers and authorities to rid the garment industry of violent strikes, roadblocks and rights violations he says are threatening public order. “There have been many strikes and demonstrations at factories recently, and, in some cases, ...

Cambodia is making plans to open passport offices along its border with Thailand in a bid to cut down on illegal migration, Interior Minister Sar Kheng announced yesterday. Speaking at the close of a migration workshop, Kheng said that officials are already preparing to open a ...

The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications has revoked the operating licence of bankrupt phone operator Mfone, which went out of business two months ago, while more than 1,000 employees had their jobs officially terminated yesterday. The revocation of the licence and the mass dismissal of the ...

Eric Sidgwick, Country director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to Cambodia applauded Cambodia for managing it’s, sometimes problematic, public debts. During the Wednesday meeting with Deputy Prime Minister, Sok An, Eric Sidgwick said, good management led to the positive changes of donations and ...

llegall migration is on the rise, but human trafficking cases appear to be declining, according to the government’s annual labor migration report, released yesterday. Speaking at the start of a three-day workshop held at the Ministry of Interior that involving embassies, NGOs and government officials, Chou ...

The Cambodian government on Thursday announced a higher minimum wage of U.S. $80 per month for garment and footwear workers but they were not impressed, vowing to continue a strike until it is raised to U.S. $100. A tripartite meeting between the government, unions and Garment ...

Six of the 10 labor unions negotiating with the country’s garment manufacturers over a new minimum wage for factory workers dropped their demands yesterday to $73 per month, breaking previous commitments by unions to stand at $91. Ken Loo, secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers Association ...

Union leaders asked garment workers to go on strike and demand the $100/month wage because the factory owners were not budging from their $75 stance. Rong Chhun, President of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, said “This was the last meeting and we couldn’t ...

About 300 former employees of bankrupt mobile phone operator Mfone continued to protest yesterday outside the company’s closed Phnom Penh offices, demanding severance payments totaling $4.4 million for 1,092 workers. But Vong Savan, deputy secretary-general of the Labor Dissolution Commission at the Ministry of Social ...

Unions and labour rights groups have spent recent months unashamedly drilling home a stark reminder: Cambodia’s minimum garment wage, at $61 per month, compares poorly with those in Thailand – where workers earn more than $200 a month – and Vietnam, which has a base ...

As night falls in Phonm Penh, thousands of weary workers stream from textile factories, reflecting the abundance of jobs created by the clothing industry’s desire for cheap labor. However, as the number of international clothes companies tapping into Cambodia’s workforce grows, so does anger at the ...

The government approved 103 factories with a combined investment of $660 million last year a big increase from the previous year’s 52 factories valued at $230 million, according to data from the Council for the Development of Cambodia. Industry representatives and economists said the sharp ...

More than a thousand garment workers went on strike yesterday morning to demand a minimum wage increase and better working conditions, following the failure of minimum wage negotiations between unions and employers on Monday. Some 600 workers in Kandal province yesterday protested in front of ...

The third round of negotiation between Cambodia’s garment and footwear manufacturers and representatives of trade unions on minimum wage increase ended without result on Monday. The talk between the employers represented by Nang Sothy, co- chair of the Government-Private Working Group on Industrial Relations, and Ken ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that the government has no role in setting the minimum wage, as Cambodia is a market driven economy, and shot down unnamed people who have been calling for the government to significantly raise the country’s floor wage of $61. “For ...

Unions and the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) are unlikely to walk out of their final minimum wage meeting today with an agreed-upon increase for workers, industry insiders said yesterday. Both parties have reaffirmed their respective positions: GMAC secretary-general Ken Loo said yesterday that “nothing’s ...

The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia and unions both need to compromise further to secure a “proper wage” for garment workers whose lives are hampered by their current $61 minimum wage, a Ministry of Social Affairs official overseeing wage negotiations said yesterday. “The government needs the ...