Labor

Trade unions agreed yesterday to lobby the government to double the minimum wage in the garment sector, representatives said, following two days of meetings. Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, said union delegates had agreed on the $120 per month figure ahead of ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen has promised to compensate thousands of garment workers demanding back pay they say they are owed since their factory owner fled the country to escape mounting debt, according to officials. Kandal provincial labor department director Thol Neang told RFA’s ...

The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia program (BFC) must employ more transparency in their monitoring of Cambodia’s factories in order to effectively bring change to the country’s working and wage conditions, a report launched yesterday says. According to “Monitoring in the Dark” a ...

More than 5,000 workers from across seven factories in Svay Rieng province protested yesterday, demanding a doubling of the current minimum wage, a provincial labor official said yesterday. The country’s minimum wage sits at $61, and is supplemented by a $5 health benefit and a ...

The Cambodia’s Ministry of Labour has scheduled a meeting on February 26 with representatives of various unions to discuss the new minimum wage for garment workers in the country. However, the Ministry expects the various workers’ unions to agree on what the new wage should ...

Major hotels are under the microscope after a labour rights group found that some have been failing to pass their entire service charge on to their staff, a violation of the Labour Law. Dave Welsh, country manager of the American Center for International Labor Solidarity(ACILS), said yesterday ...

Efforts to map the ancestral land of five ethnic Bunong communities that have long sought collective property titles in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Chreada district will finally begin later this month, with funding for the project coming from the U.N., officials said yesterday. “We are working in ...

The Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU) filed legal complaints yesterday, following allegations on Wednesday that police had assaulted seven garment workers, including a pregnant woman. Sa’ang district police chief Chea Socheat yesterday again denied officers had been violent during a strike ...

Korean investors are relocating labour-intensive businesses to countries such as Cambodia after Indonesia raised its minimum wage. A number of Korean investors had closed their Indonesian factories and relocated to other countries in the region because their requests for minimum-wage exemption had been refused, The Jakarta ...

K-Cement workers who were told they could not form a company-wide union because their workplaces were “separate” entities have now had their application to register individual unions rejected by the Ministry of Labour, union leaders said yesterday. Sok Kin, vice president of the Building and Woodworkers ...

A group of opposition lawmakers have written to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen urging action against a sugar factory owned by a ruling party official accused of exploiting child labor and grabbing land from villagers. Six Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) parliamentarians sent a letter dated Jan. ...

The Cambodian Confederation of Unions warned Thursday of a general strike if proposed increases in monthly salaries are too small. “Cambodia will have a big strike exploding across all clothing and footwear factories if minimum wages are raised by only 10 percent from the basic $61,” ...

The government on Monday re­quested that manufacturers look at raising the minimum wage for garment workers, but only after divided trade unions agree on what that wage should be. “After discussions, those present at the meeting agree in principle to discuss raising the minimum wage ...

Manufacturers and unions aligned with the ruling CPP yesterday said the current labor shortage inside the garment industry would act as an incentive for employers to increase salaries, and that there was no need for the government to impose a new minimum wage. During a meeting ...

Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC) on Monday agreed to increase salaries for the workers in the kingdom’s garment and footwear industries, according to a press release after a closed door meeting. The meeting was attended by Minister of Social Affairs Ith Samheng, Minister of Labor ...

Noise from a loudspeaker yesterday cut through the usual peace on street 282 in Phnom Penh’s Beoung Keng Kang 1 neighbourhood, as five former massage workers at upscale spa Aziadee protested the sudden termination of their contracts. Waving posters in front of the shop ...

The Arbitration Council heard about 230 collective labor disputes in the garment and footwear industry involving approximately 98,000 workers in 2012, a 38 percent increase from 2011, which saw 161 cases handled, according to the council. Y Samphy, training and communications manager for the council’s Arbitration ...

Fixed-duration contracts (FDCs) are in the sights of Cambodian Confederation of Unions president Rong Chhun, who yesterday urged Prime Minister Hun Sen to outlaw their use in the garment and footwear industries. Chhun said the cancellation of such contracts would provide better conditions and job security ...

One of Cambodia’s most active unions has filed a complaint against a Thai mobile phone provider, claiming it laid off more than 50 staff members without warning and without compensation. The complaint was filed with the Ministry of Labor against Mfone, a company that belongs to ...

Free Trade Union of Workers of Cambodia said Tuesday it had sued the director of Thailand’s Mfone Co Ltd for not respecting local labor laws. In a letter issued Tuesday to the Department of Labor Disputes, the union’s deputy secretary general Sam Srey Mom accused Mfone ...

In the latest bid for an increase in garment-industry wages, Free Trade Union (FTU) president Chea Mony yesterday called on the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) to come to the table and discuss a $120-per-month minimum wage. A few days after Cambodian Confederation of Unions ...

Union reps and government officials are offering significantly different – if both substantial – numbers in their year-end tallies of garment workers who fainted on the job in 2012. The Free Trade Union yesterday announced that the number of workers to faint in factories rose to ...

Approximately 1,686 workers in garment and shoe factories got fainted last year due mainly to overwork, poor health, exposure to chemical substances, and hysteria, a Cambodian labor official said Wednesday. Pok Vanthath, vice-chief of the Labor Ministry’s vocational training department, said the mass fainting incidents had ...

Amid threats of another mass strike in the thriving garment sector, the Ministry of Social Affairs has called a meeting with the industry’s leading players to discuss union demands for a $150-per-month minimum wage, a letter obtained yesterday reveals. At the behest of Prime Minister Hun ...