Garments and textiles

Cambodia’s government is moving forward in adopting a controversial law on trade unions, despite opposition from labour rights groups and garment manufacturers. Latest figures show Cambodia’s garment and footwear exports in the first six months of 2015 reached US$3 bn, a rise of 12.7% on ...

Despite industry concerns that a minimum wage increase to $128 earlier this year would hurt Cambodia’s garment exports, the garment and footwear sector – a mainstay of the economy – showed robust growth for the first half of 2015, netting around $3 billion, according to ...

H&M and global union federation IndustriALL on Tuesday signed off on a deal aimed at improving conditions for the 1.6 million workers at the 1,900 factories around the world filling orders for the Swedish clothing giant that will include a new oversight committee in Cambodia. ...

Investigations are continuing after Siem Reap’s economic police conducted four raids last Saturday on shops selling knock-offs of products from US-based outdoor apparel and equipment brand The North Face, police sources said yesterday.The raids were conducted on four stores – Cambodia Outlet, Duty Free Outlet, ...

Major global brands that source from Cambodia welcome the recent rise in the basic minimum wage for the country’s more than 700,000 garment workers, representatives of three brands told Khmer Times yesterday. They have no plans to shift sourcing to other countries where wages are ...

Hong Kong based garment manufacturing giant Crystal Group is hoping to replicate the success of its “Chinese role model sustainable denim jeans factory” with its new facility in Cambodia. ...

A protest over attendance bonuses among workers at a factory in southern Phnom Penh turned violent yesterday morning, after the factory owner’s driver allegedly assaulted a worker. ...

About 90 per cent of workers from the Tien Tien factory in Kandal province, whose Chinese owner disappeared leaving some $30,000 in unpaid wages last month, have found new jobs according to staff and union officials. ...

The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia says unions and their demands for higher wages are rattling the country’s industry and could lead to a decline in buyers, factories and jobs. ...

Employing some 700,000 Cambodians, the garment sector is the country’s largest private employer. But move above the factory floor and you will find mostly foreigners, from countries such as China, Singapore, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. ...

The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia wants to build a special school to improve Cambodian workers’ skills and make the country more competitive, but labor leaders say if the school is not provided for free, it won’t work. ...

Garment industry, Cambodia’s largest foreign currency earner, has seen a 9% rise in exports in the first six months of 2015, according to the Chinese State’s News Agency-Xinhua. ...

A majority of members of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia, which represents the country’s more than 500 exporting garment factories, have voted against any raise to their workers’ minimum wage next year. ...

A visiting delegation from the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, which handles tens of billions of dollars in regional investment, says it raised concerns about the low threshold for forming unions in a pending new law during meetings with government officials Monday. ...

Some 300 garment workers were due to end their strike today following three days of protest and negotiations with GIN-SOVAN Fashion Cambodia Limited factory management. ...

A report released yesterday by the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia claims that the Kingdom is having difficulties competing against its neighbours due to low productivity, increasing wages and labour strife. ...

In the inaugural issue of its bulletin on Cambodia’s $5.8-billion garment industry, the International Labor Organization said Thursday that business remained strong on the back of rising exports despite a 28-percent hike to the sector’s minimum wage in January. ...

More than 60 garment workers fainted yesterday afternoon after a bout of food poisoning, police have said. ...

The independent dispute resolution body established to help workers and employers in Cambodia resolve labor disputes had its busiest year ever in 2014. ...

The recently established National Silk Board is looking to tighten regulations and boost investor confidence in Cambodia’s silk industry, as well as create a policy for silk promotion in the future. ...

Workers at A & J Carter (Cambodia) Limited in Kampong Speu province’s Samrong Tong district protested outside the factory yesterday, continuing a strike that began five days ago. ...

The government has released a schedule for minimum wage discussions with unions and factories this year, as workers continue to demand $177 per month to keep up with the rising cost of living. More talks are scheduled from July through January. ...

Two weeks of strikes by Cambodian garment workers of a Phnom Penh factory could have “negatively impacted” the country’s industry, The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) has said.  Figures published last week by GMAC showed the number of strikes at Cambodia’s garment factories during ...

ASEAN is poised to become Asia’s next low-cost manufacturing powerhouse as wages in China’s Pearl River Delta (PRD) factory belt continue to creep up, said an economist. ...