News

About 600,000 workers in the lucrative garment and footwear industries, roughly 95 per cent of the sector’s work force, will soon take home an extra US$10 a month, the Ministry of Labour said yesterday. Barely an hour after a protest involving garment workers at the capital’s ...

More Cambodian migrant workers headed to South Korea in the first half of this year than in all of 2011, data from the Ministry of Labour shows. A suspension on Vietnamese migration, coupled with an improving Korean economy, primarily accounted for the jump, officials say. Working ...

Free Trade Union president Chea Mony has announced that his union will leave the Cambodian Confederation of Unions and sever all ties with its long-time ally, the Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association. In a letter to Minister of Labour Vong Sauth, dated June 27 and obtained by ...

The Free Trade Union has vowed to stage a mass strike in the garment and footwear industries if its demands for an extra US$30 per month of bonuses for workers are not met, union president Chea Mony said yesterday. The union sent a letter to Minister ...

The Cambodian Confederation of Unions has been shot down again in its bid for formal recognition as a trade union confederation, president Rong Chhun said yesterday, this time because some of its unions represent teachers. The Ministry of Labour informed the CCU in a letter ...

Thousands of garment workers went on strike yesterday demanding higher wages, fees for transportation and housing, and in one case, the elimination of smelly odours caused by a fish farm near their factory. Workers burned tyres and one union leader was allegedly assaulted with an electric ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on unions, employers and the Ministry of Labour to take a collaborative approach to stamping out violent protests in the garment industry, a unionist said yesterday. During a Saturday conference involving 4,000 people from more than 60 union groups, Hun ...

A draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) drawn up by Malaysia to regulate maids working in the country does not sufficiently protect their rights and needs improvements, an official at the Labor Ministry said on Thursday. Malaysian officials drew up the MoU between the two governments following ...

The Sabrina Garment factory, where 107 workers fainted on Wednesday morning, was ordered yesterday to close for two days to clean and repair its ventilation system, a Ministry of Labour official said yesterday. ...

More than 40 workers had fainted at a garment factory yesterday after officials prevented them leaving the building when four of their co-workers collapsed, a labour department official said. The mass fainting occurred at the Nanguo Garment Co Ltd factory in Preah Sihanouk province’s Prey Nub ...

A group of five unions plans to send a petition to the Ministry of Labor on Friday requesting a number of changes in the controversial draft union law. Speaking at a conference in Phnom Penh yesterday, Cambodian Confederation of Unions President Rong Chhun detailed the requests ...

Seven union leaders representing garment workers will send a statement today urging the Ministry of Labor and the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) to decrease the use of temporary labor contracts, because they erode the rights of workers, union leaders said yesterday. Rong Chhun, president ...

A new draft of the trade-union law included “huge changes” that removed all major controversial aspects of the legislation, including criminal sanctions, a union advocate said yesterday. Dave Welsh, country director for the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, said the Ministry of Labour was to ...

As reports of the death of yet another Cambodian maid in Malaysia surfaced, opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua said yesterday that a bilateral agreement between Cambodian and Malaysia was necessary if the two countries were serious about protecting the rights of Cambodian domestic workers living in ...

More than two weeks after a ban on sending maids to Malaysia began, work on a bilateral agreement that would protect Cambodian maids working in Malaysia has not begun, officials said yesterday. Ho Vuthy, deputy director general at the Ministry of Labor’s department of labor, said ...

Experts yesterday urged the Ministry of Labor to extend the latest draft of a forthcoming trade union law to include civil servants, who are currently shut out of the law in contravention of international conventions Rong Chhun, president of both the Cambodian Confederation of Unions and ...

The Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies announced a temporary ban on the sending of all domestic workers to Malaysia amidst another underage trainee scandal – this one involving a firm owned by the wife of a senior member of Cambodia’s international police department. On Monday, the ...

The Minister of Labor yesterday defended his ministry’s much-criticized interpretation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ban on sending maids to Malaysia, after it allowed about 3,000 young women to still be sent abroad despite the serious risk of abuse and exploitation. Minister of Labor Vong Sauth ...

Despite Prime Minister Hun Sen’s indefinite ban on sending Cambodian maids to Malaysia, two recruitment agencies continued to send maids there yesterday, according to rights group Licadho Recruitment agency Top Manpower put seven recruits on Air Asia flight AK 273 to Kuala Lumpur yesterday morning, while ...

The Ministry of Labour has been ordered to permanently close the labour recruitment firm T&P following the discovery of more under-age trainees in its Kampong Chhnang centre. The move marks the first time the ministry has shut a labour reruitment firm, and follows intense criticism of ...

Job recruitment agencies that send workers overseas often deceive young women through misleading job advertisements by using brokers that have “a position of authority” within the community, according to a new report by the Asia Foundation. According to the report, agencies also inflate migration costs that ...

Zhen Yong Garment Factory Co Ltd has agreed to some of the demands of about 400 workers who went on strike last week, including paying annual bonuses early next month Prum Veasna, deputy of the labor dispute department at the labor ministry, said yesterday that the ...

Nearly 400 workers at the Zhen Yun factory in the capital’s Russei Keo district went on strike yesterday after not receiving annual bonuses or appropriate overtime pay. The workers also said they were poorly treated by management While the factory workers were striking, a Free Trade ...

More than 300 striking workers at Jie Wei garment factory in the capital’s Dangkor district will return to work today after successful negotiations yesterday settled a labour dispute that led to a three-day strike last week. Factory management agreed to nine of the 11 demands ...