Cambodia’s ‘Better Factories’ Are Getting A Lot Worse
Three months pregnant at the time, Sam Ath doesn’t remember collapsing two months ago at the crowded, muggy garment factory where she works at the southwestern edge of the Cambodian capital. The 30-year-old woke up in a hospital bed, only to be told that she had fainted alongside some 60 laborers earlier that day. One worker later died. … Collective swoons have become a regular part of garment industry life in Cambodia, which employs an estimated 400,000 people, mostly women, and is by far the country’s biggest export earner. Every few weeks, there’s a mass fainting at a factory here. Some 500 people have already collapsed this year. More than 4,000 have dropped unconscious at work over the past four. … A big part of that has been the rise of an SUV-driving, glitzy ruling elite enriched by foreign investment, who’ve spent the past decade piling up loot in offshore bank accounts. Those politically savvy crony networks with a stake in the garment business have used their considerable influence to curtail union rights, particular as workers have made calls for higher wages. That became even more apparent on Friday, when the Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted 25 unionists, garment workers and bystanders of aggravated violence, damage to public property, and insulting civil servants, among other charges. Most of the suspended two- to four-and-a-half-year sentences, with no jail time yet, stemmed from raucous demonstrations earlier in January, when workers took to the streets demanding better working conditions and a near-doubling of the national minimum wage to $154 a month. The nation’s elites felt the financial pinch from that wave of street protests, and the authorities responded with a raft of crackdowns that have made protest harder than ever, lamented Chhorn Sokha, a labor specialist at the Cambodian Legal Education Community (CLEC), a non-profit that aids garment workers. The demonstrators were met last January by a duo of elite military units armed with guns and batons; the ensuing clashes left dozens injured and a handful killed. … As long as Cambodia fails to tackle its corruption problem — the country frequently ranks near the bottom of Transparency International’s annual rankings — and international organizations have little regulatory power beyond floor inspections, it’s unlikely workers will be able to unionize freely and work healthily, Sokha said. …
Geoffrey Cain
http://www.mintpressnews.com/cambodias-better-factories-are-getting-a-lot-worse/191790/
