Labor

Following the announcement earlier this month that the monthly minimum wage in the garment sector will be raised from $128 to $140 next year, eight unions representing factory workers issued a list of 13 demands on Tuesday, threatening protests if their requests go ignored. ...

Six Cambodian women were convicted by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court and sentenced to seven years in prison each for conspiring to traffic three Cambodian girls to be sold as brides in China. ...

Thailand has agreed to relax enforcement against expired documents held by migrant Cambodians, which become invalid when they switch jobs without their previous employer’s written consent. ...

A fire tore through a garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district on Monday evening, destroying more than half of the building and its inventory but injuring no workers, an official said Tuesday. ...

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 ...

Factories in Cambodia’s garment industry say they need more productivity out of workers if they are to survive a new wage hike.Earlier this month, the government agreed to raise minimum wage to $140 per month, a figure managers said would damage the industry. ...

After weeks of occasionally tumultuous negotiations saw 2016’s minimum wage for garment workers raised to $140 earlier this month, Prime Minister Hun Sen warned yesterday that the new rate could cause factories to flee Cambodia, even though he was credited with personally intervening to push ...

Garment workers unions unhappy with next year’s recently announced $140 minimum wage for the sector will meet this week to determine whether or not to hold demonstrations to protest the disappointingly low figure.The unions were pushing for $160 a month when the government announced the ...

As human trafficking makes world news headlines, experts at a documentary screening discuss how poverty, vulnerability, and corruption are the root cause.“The Storm Makers” documentary illustrates how young women in rural Cambodia are lured into slavery. At a recent screening in Washington, human trafficking experts ...

Dozens of workers fainted at a garment factory in Kompong Chhnang province on Friday after seeing one of their colleagues have a seizure, which they feared was caused by an electric shock from her sewing machine, a police official said. ...

The government set the new monthly minimum wage for the country’s multibillion-dollar garment industry at $140 Thursday—up from $128—after months of tough negotiations that failed to bring employers and unions even close to a consensus. ...

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has expressed its appreciation for Cambodia’s decision to increase the minimum wage of garment, textile and footwear workers to US$140 per month, according to an ILO’s statement received by the state news agency-AKP this afternoon.   ...

Factory and union representatives remain as far apart as ever over where to set next year’s minimum wage for garment workers, now at $128 per month, after hours of heated negotiations Wednesday and a vote that seemed to settle nothing. ...

Workers across the globe took to the streets on Wednesday to mark the World Day for Decent Work.In South Africa, the largest union federation, Cosatu, held marches across the country to highlight a number of socioeconomic issues. ...

Government, factory and union representatives tasked with proposing a new monthly minimum wage for the garment sector will vote Wednesday to find a figure after once again failing to reach a consensus during negotiations in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. ...

While Cambodia marginally stepped up efforts to combat child labour in 2014, a lack of resources and corruption remain massive impediments to the fight, according to a report released by the United States Department of Labor last week. It attributed those improvements largely to beefed-up ...

The tripartite Labor Advisory Committee (LAC) on Monday missed its provisional deadline to decide on a new minimum wage for the garment sector, with employers and trade unions making little progress in coming to an agreement. ...

The Cambodian government just released its official list of public holidays for 2016, beating past years’ record by increasing the number of public holidays for 2016 to be 28 days notwithstanding when holidays fall on a weekend (Saturday-Sunday) the following Monday is off as compensation. ...

Seven people who were arrested last week for attempting to sell merchandise from a factory in Kompong Speu province were released on Friday, officials said, with factory owners paying more than 100 workers part of the wages they were owed. ...

As negotiations over a new minimum wage for the garment sector continued on Friday, union representatives agreed to temper their demands in exchange for concessions from manufacturers. ...

Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries need to do more to curb human trafficking, a leading human rights advocate says. Yet Asean was formed for the countries in the region to help each other with such issues, Lim Mony said. Trafficking in the region should ...

Three garment workers were arrested in Phnom Penh over the past two days for their alleged roles in the fatal stabbing of their colleague at his home on Monday night, officials said Wednesday.   ...

A recruitment company has offered to help find employment in Thailand for a group of migrant workers who have accused another firm of cheating them out of hundreds of dollars each and leaving them at the Thai border last week, the company’s director said Wednesday. ...

Short-sightedness, weak adherence to the law and poor working conditions in Cambodia’s garment sector are creating a fertile field for strikes to prevail over negotiations, a recent study released by the Arbitration Council Foundation, an independent labour mediator, has found.According to the study, incidents of ...