Garments and textiles
Clothes
Violent Mob, Police Attack Peaceful Protesters
Riot police and groups of men in plain clothes armed with sticks, Tasers and slingshots violently attacked a group of anti-eviction protesters conducting a hunger strike at Wat Phnom late last night, injuring several people. Protesters from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community began the hunger strike ...
Simon Marks and Kevin Doyle
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/violent-mob-police-attack-peaceful-protesters-42892/
Cambodian textile workers who supply UK clothing stores ‘starving’ and suffering 'mass faintings'
By the time London Fashion Week comes to a close, 58 high-end designers will have shown their collections. Rail-thin models will have walked the runways. Debate will have raged over size zero. In Cambodia, meanwhile, garment workers stitching clothes that supply the UK high street are ...
Cambodia PM says garment firms may quit over wage rows
Cambodia’s strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday warned garment workers that protests demanding higher wages could push manufacturers to quit the country. His appeal came after unions last week said hundreds of workers had been fired from a factory making sportswear for US giant Nike ...
Unions Trade Barbs Over Violent Factory Strike
Two rival workers unions continued to trade barbs Thursday, each blaming the other for a violent clash between striking garment workers and police at a factory in Kompong Speu province on Monday that saw eight people arrested. The Free Trade Union (FTU) has led strikes for ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/unions-trade-barbs-over-violent-factory-strike-29833/
Cambodian police clash with thousands of garment workers, 23 hurt
At least 23 workers were hurt in Cambodia on Monday when police using stun batons moved in to end a protest over pay at a factory that makes clothing for U.S. sportswear company Nike , a worker and a trade union representative said. Police with riot ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/27/cambodia-garments-workers-idUSL3N0E829T20130527
Factory Dining Hall Collapses in Phnom Penh; 23 injured
The dining hall of a garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district that supplies clothes to U.S. brand Gap collapsed into a pond Monday, injuring more than 20 workers who were eating lunch, workers and officials said. The hall, which is part of Top World Garment ...
France looks to increase exports to the Kingdom
France said it plans to boost its exports to Cambodia as French foreign direct investment in the country – worth $3.18 million in 2012 – continues to rise, officials said on Wednesday. Among this year’s investments, concessions and construction company group Vinci, the largest building ...
Bountiful work, but scant wages angers Cambodia
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 ...
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2013/03/17/2003557254
Wal-Mart and H&M Pay $200,000 to Cambodian Workers in Historic Settlement
When tales emerge from the retail supply chain, they’re usually tragic, like the alleged sweatshop conditions at the Foxconn (HKG:2038) plants that churn out Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) products, or the 112 Bangladeshi workers who died when their factory, where clothes for Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), Sears Holdings (NASDAQ:SHLD), ...
Low pay fuels anger among Cambodia's garment workers
As night falls thousands of weary workers stream from textile factories that fan out across Phnom Penh’s outskirts. The clothing industry’s desire for cheap labour having created an abundance of jobs but as the number of international clothes companies tapping into Cambodia’s workforce grows, so does ...
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1259888/1/.html
Foreign activists detained
Police arrested five activists from labour-rights group Clean Clothes Campaign yesterday outside the E Garment factory in Kandal province. Neuv Sakhan, deputy director of the Kandal provincial immigration police, told the Post four women and one man, from Norway, Belgium, England and Austria, had been taken ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013030661780/National/foreign-activists-detained.html
Demand for wage increases rejected
Cambodia, with over 400 garment and footwear factories, has become an Asian clothes manufacturing center, and hugely profitable for the factory owners They have rejected a demand by the Cambodian Confederation of Unions to double the minimum monthly wage of factory workers from $61. The ...
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Demand+wage+increases+rejected/8044435/story.html#ixzz2MYys4mpC
Unpaid Garment Workers Continue Protests
Some 200 garment factory workers protested at the Ministry of Social Affairs on Friday, a day after they held a demonstration in front of the Swedish Embassy in Phnom Penh and urged diplomats to intervene in a labour dispute involving unpaid wages from a factory ...
Investment Or Imperialism? Tracking China's Big Ambitions In Cambodia
A few years ago this scene would have played out in China. More specifically, it would have played out in a Chinese coastal region to which millions of rural folks had arrived looking for work. A huge hangar, piles of fabrics of all colors at both ...
‘Fashion Mobs’ to press for living wage in Cambodia
Christmas shoppers stand to be taken by surprise this month as campaigners take action in shopping centers around Europe to raise awareness of poverty wages of Cambodian garment workers. With these ‘fashion mobs’, they pressure H&M, Inditex (Zara), Levi’s and Gap to introduce a living ...
http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/apparel-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=118895
T.K. Garment Co moves across the border for cheaper wages
When the government decided to raise the daily minimum wage to 300 baht nationwide, labour-intensive industries knew sunset was descending on their businesses. As a leading original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for popular clothes lines in Thailand, the company is relocating its largest production site to ...
http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/economics/324412/sunrise-in-cambodia
CAMBODIA: H&M hits back at low wage claims
Swedish fashion retailer H&M has hit back at accusations that it fails to pay adequate wages to workers in Cambodian factories making its clothes – and says instead that the situation would be a lot worse if it didn’t source from the country ...
http://www.just-style.com/news/hm-hits-back-at-low-wage-claims_id115952.aspx
H&M slammed over wages
Criticism has mounted against Swedish multinational clothing company H&M in its home country following a documentary released last week that sheds light on wages in its source factories in Cambodia. The episode of Swedish network TV4’s Kalla Fakta, or Cold Facts, focuses mainly on Cambodian garment ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012102959442/National-news/ham-slammed-over-wages.html
Mind the wage gap
Most mornings, garment worker Vicheka buys food from the street vendors outside her factory in Kampong Chhnang province. The beef and pork dishes, she says, have a tendency to give workers a stomach ache – a reputation forged long before Vicheka and her co-workers at ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012092858979/National-news/mind-the-wage-gap.html
Protesters Stage EU faint-ins
In a year in which more than a thousand Cambodian garment factory workers have fainted on the job, activists across Europe are demonstrating for higher wages and better working conditions in the Kingdom’s factories. Throughout the past week, demonstrators mimicked faintings by collapsing on the floors ...
Activists Stage Flash “Faint-Ins” at H&M, Gap to Protest Sweatshop Conditions
Dozens of human-rights activists are staging flash “faint-ins” at high-street retailers across Europe to illustrate the high incidence of mass fainting in Cambodia’s apparel factories. Protestors from the Clean Clothes Campaign, an alliance of organizations in 15 European countries dedicated to improving working conditions in ...
http://www.ecouterre.com/activists-stage-flash-faint-ins-at-hm-gap-to-protest-sweatshop-conditions/
New report evaluates decade of Better Factories Cambodia
A new report – 10 Years of the Better Factories Cambodia Project: A critical evaluation – has been released by Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center. Started in 2001, the goal of the Better Factories program is to improve the working conditions in ...
http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/apparel-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=115382
Garment Factory Monitoring Needs to Improve
The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) program must overhaul its monitoring practices before it can meaningfully improve working conditions in the garment sector, accoring to the authors of a new report. the new report by Community Legal Education Center and the Netherlands-based ...
Fainting workers blame fumes
Almost 150 garment factory workers from two Phnom Penh factories fainted late last week after inhaling toxic fumes used to treat clothes, workers and union leaders said yesterday. The mass faintings came as the Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center released an evaluation report ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012090358448/National-news/fainting-workers-blame-fumes.html