News

A six-month standoff that eventually halted a box factory’s production ended on Friday, when managers of the factory in the capital’s Por Sen Chey district paid seniority bonuses to almost 150 former employees. Harta Packaging Industries paid bonuses of between $500 and $4,000 to a total ...

As Thailand today opens another fast-track visa office along the border in the hope of reversing the ongoing exodus of workers, Cambodia continues clamouring to find jobs for the returning migrants. The Ministry of Labour remained adamant yesterday that there are enough open positions in the ...

Union leaders made another appeal for the Cambodian government to raise the minimum wage to $160 and rescind convictions of 25 workers arrested during deadly demonstrations in November and January. ...

Workers in an industry where obnoxious, drunk customers and 12-hour shifts are common could gain legal safeguards if a subdecree brought before a Ministry of Labour committee yesterday passes into law. The set of prakases for entertainment workers – which appeared before the Labour Advisory Committee ...

About 100 domestic workers planned to gather today in front of the Ministry of Labour to mark International Domestic Workers Day by calling on the government to do more to ensure their rights. Vun Samphors, president of the Cambodian Domestic Workers Network (CDWN), told the Postthat participants ...

Union officials and the garment sector’s factory association said yesterday they supported a new program meant to enhance relations between employers and employees, but remained sceptical of how effective it would be. In a ceremony yesterday, the Ministry of Labour inaugurated the program, which entails training ...

Union members of the Ministry of Labour’s Labour Advisory Committee (LAC) will meet on Monday for a garment industry wage discussion focusing on ideas raised at a workshop in April. The invitation from Labour Minister Ith Sam Heng was sent to the seven LAC unions on ...

Protesting workers at Ocean Garment factory say they are worried the manufacturer, which has suspended operations for one month, will close altogether. About 20 per cent of Ocean’s 1,300 workers demanding full payment during the break have found work elsewhere, while longtime employees are literally praying ...

A Ministry of Labour official yesterday vowed to go after any of his “corrupt” colleagues that deal with the garment and footwear sector, and urged workers to file complaints about substandard working conditions. ...

Police yesterday morning blocked more than 1,000 garment workers as they tried to march from their Por Sen Chey district factory to the Ministry of Labour to plead for intervention. ...

More than 600 workers have fainted on factory floors so far this year, compared with about 800 such incidents over the whole of 2013, a Labour Ministry official said yesterday. Pok Vanthat, deputy director of the ministry’s labour health department and head of a committee that ...

Police yesterday morning blocked more than 1,000 garment workers as they tried to march from their Por Sen Chey district factory to the Ministry of Labour to plead for intervention. Management at the Ocean Garment factory informed staff on May 24 that it would close for ...

An International Labour Organization official yesterday called the draft of a Ministry of Labour trade union law “a step backwards” during the opening of a two-day workshop meant to hear concerns of both labour unions and employers. In a speech to worker representatives, members of the ...

Petrol station workers who were back on strike on Friday returned to work yesterday as they prepare to file a complaint to the Ministry of Labour against US-owned Caltex over alleged rights abuse. Yoeun Reth, one of 20 Caltex workers striking on Friday, said yesterday that ...

Employees of Caltex petrol stations in Phnom Penh are returning to work today after management offered to raise salaries by $20 a month and not withhold pay for time missed during the strike, which started earlier this month. ...

After Caltex managers allegedly reneged on an agreement to pay workers a $20 bonus to suspend a strike for two months, employees say they would only return if the deal is in writing. In a Friday meeting, the Cambodian Food and Service Workers Federation agreed with ...

They save for months, borrowing from family and friends, even taking out loans, to pour as much as a year’s worth of earnings into the hands of recruiters that may have no intention and certainly have no guarantee of procuring overseas employment. Recruitment agencies, several of ...

A new auto-mechanics training school at the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia (NPI) that aims to train select Cambodian youth and support a shortage in the labour market officially commenced construction yesterday. In partnership with the Ministry of Labour, joint sponsors the Korean International Cooperation Agency ...

The manager of Giant Ocean International, a now-defunct recruitment firm notorious for abuse scandals, was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in jail for trafficking hundreds of Cambodian fishermen to work in slave-like conditions overseas. Taiwanese national Lin Yu-shin, who ran the firm, was arrested in May ...

All but four garment factories in Svay Rieng province were closed yesterday, as a strike of thousands of workers there continued into its second week, a labour union official said. The strike, estimated to involve about 20,000 people across the province’s Tai Seng and Manhattan special ...

Striking Phnom Penh Sorya Transportation bus service workers demonstrated with fired employees outside a company garage in Russey Keo district yesterday and threatened to lead others off the job again if a deal on contracts can’t be brokered by the Ministry of Labour and company ...

Exactly who will participate in a workshop to set the minimum wage in the garment sector with the Ministry of Labour this week remained unclear yesterday, with some key figures saying they had not yet been invited. During the workshop, to be held on Thursday and ...

The Zongtex Garment factory off Phnom Penh’s Russian Boulevard looks like a nondescript residential compound, hidden down a dead-end road. There are no signs suggesting that it supplied to some of the world’s leading high street names – and the US military. Taiwanese-owned Zongtex Garment Manufacturing ...

At the site where security forces shot dead at least four people during a nationwide strike on January 3, union leaders yesterday passed out fliers encouraging workers to join a stay-at-home strike after Khmer New Year. When workers filed out of Canadia Industrial Park’s gates for ...