Cambodia Falls Short as Garment-Industry Model

This small Southeast Asian country was supposed to become a model for the world apparel industry, with tough factory monitoring and strong worker protections. But a dozen years after the United Nations’ International Labour Organization launched a program to manage Cambodia’s booming garment trade—the first of its kind in the world—labor activists say many factories still suffer from problems that triggered calls for more oversight in the first place, including the abuse of workers’ rights. … “The core problem is the way the supply chain is structured, which exploits the most vulnerable people, the workers,” says Sanjiv Pandita, executive director of the Asia Monitor Resource Center, a nongovernmental organization focusing on Asia labor issues. Labor activists say the government, factories, brands and even some unions keep labor costs down for their own economic benefit. Workers—often extremely poor and uneducated—have little leverage. … Cambodia’s Secretary of State of the Ministry of Labor Oum Mean said the country doesn’t have problems with garment factories because it has appropriate legislation in place to police them. “If the factories do not follow the labor law, we will punish them,” he said. He also said that competitive labor costs in Cambodia can attract investors to the country, which in turn improves the lives of Cambodians. … In May, the country’s minimum wage rose to $80 per month, from $66, the largest bump in over a decade. Even so, when adjusted for inflation, the wages of Cambodian garment-sector workers are equal to what they were in 2000, according to Bent Gehrt, Southeast Asia field director for the Worker Rights Consortium. Meanwhile, employers are increasingly signing workers to short-term contracts lasting three or six months, which critics say let them easily terminate workers if they join unions or seek bonuses or maternity leave benefits. An April 2013 Better Factories Cambodia report said that 90% of the newly-registered factories it assessed say all of their workers are on short-term contracts. …

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