Labor incidents

This profile page compiles and categorizes labor incidents (or labor cases) affecting Khmer and foreign workers and employees in Cambodia, self-employed persons and Khmer migrant workers who cross international borders for labor and employment purposes.

Labor cases are both broad and sensitive. While the profile page has been developed mainly based on limited sources of open and generally accessible data or online publication, there are a lot of issues associated with labor and industrial relations in private, non-governmental and public formal and informal employment sectors. Therefore, it is important for users to keep in mind that the information categorized in the datasets is not factual and conclusive but rather indicative and informative, based on what was claimed or reported in the case references.

Since 2020, the Solidarity Center (SC) team in Cambodia has been collecting Cambodia’s labor cases from publicly available documents and from a variety of other sources. In collaboration with the SC, the Open Development Cambodia (ODC) team has further built on the datasets by additional data collection, cleanup, data extraction and sub-categorization, and reformatting​ in the form of Google spreadsheets, then converting the data into CSV format and creating geospatial data to be uploaded onto ODC's website.

The labor case dataset shows to the extent available and accessible the information on employer and/or concerned party, country (but not nationality) of the employer or director of the relevant enterprise or organization, economic sector, type of worker, type of labor case, and intervening institutions or stakeholders.

As labor is a sector by itself, when looking at labor cases from the economic angle, the sector categorization of the datasets could somehow confuse some readers. There is no agreed ideal way or international practice in categorizing various sectors for the purpose of labor case datasets. The ODC team together with an external labor law expert consultant have looked at the ways international and national organizations such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations, the Ministry of Planning and the Cambodia Development Council categorize various economic sectors for different purposes. The ODC team has also taken into consideration Cambodia’s labor and industrial relations context and the development of relevant public policy for different social and labor groups in drawing up various sub-categorizations of economic sector, types of workers/employees, and types of labor cases.

We chose to include over 20 economic sector sub-categories with extended notes on what is included and excluded in each sub-category. The worker/employee types include apprentice, child /minor workers, domestic/home-based workers, foreign workers, Khmer migrant workers, pregnant workers, protected workers, seasonal workers, self-employed workers, workers with disabilities, and others.

For types of labor cases, the profile page contains datasets on collective and individual labor dispute cases as well as cases that are not in dispute or at least not yet in dispute. These involve public policy advocacy, sector-based minimum wage negotiation, collective bargaining agreement negotiation, landmark labor movement event commemoration, commuting accidents, occupational health and safety or other hazardous incidents affecting workplaces, labor related migration issues, and arrest, discrimination, interference, harassment, threats, violence, human trafficking or sexual exploitation in connection with employment, workplace representation and union activities.

For labor dispute cases, the profile page aims to provide various sub-categories of disputes and associated issues, and a tracking of all labor dispute resolution processes including alternative and judicial procedures. Although challenging, an effort has been made in attempting to harmonize or cross reference employers, project developers and sector categorizations available in the labor profile page and other datasets with the foreign investment and corporate social responsibility profile pages and datasets developed and published by ODC.

Last but not least, to enrich and expand the labor case datasets, reporters and data owners/holders from public, private and non-governmental sectors are encouraged to collect or/and share with the ODC team more specific and diversified data and information concerning labor/employment and industrial relations in Cambodia. We are also interested in labor cases affecting Cambodian workers/employees and self-employed persons in formal or informal private and non-governmental sectors, the domestic/home-based setting or national and sub-national public administration.