ILO Respond to Scathing Stanford Report on Factory Monitoring
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Better Factories Program (BFC) has responded to a scathing report released last week by Stanford University, which said the ILO program was ineffectual as it had not helped secure Cambodian workers a significant wage increase since the program started over a decade ago. In a statement released Friday, the ILO said it welcomed criticism in Stanford’s Law School’s “Monitoring in the Dark” Report about the Cambodian factories program. However the ILO was more “complex and nuanced” than the Stanford researchers had presented. … Created in 2001, the ILO program’s mandate was to improve labour law compliance and standards in Cambodia’s garment factories, as well as to promote the country’s garment sector internationally among buyers. … The Stanford research found that not only had Cambodian garment workers’ wages dropped in real terms since the ILO program’s interception in 2001 but conditions in Cambodian factories might also have worsened during that 12 year period. The Stanford research compared garment worker wages with those in China, Indonesia and Vietnam- countries that did not have an ILO “better factories program” until very recently- and found that wages in those countries had improved significantly compared to Cambodian workers. …
