CAMBODIA: Strike threat over wages cut to garment workers
Radio Australia, Australia
A plan by the Cambodian Government to update the country’s labour law is being applauded by employers and condemned by a major union. The first change to be legislated is likely to affect the garment making industry by cutting the wages paid to night shift workers. The union is threatening a nationwide strike, while the government says the move will create many more jobs.
Presenter/Interviewer: Karon Snowdon
Speakers: Ken Loo, Secretary General of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia; Chea Mony, Secretary of the Free Trade Union of Cambodia
SNOWDON: Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen has made a promise.
He says he can reduce poverty and create tens of thousands of new jobs in Cambodia’s major industry with a simple change to the labour law.
All it needs is for workers in the garment industry to take a pay cut.
The current labour law allows employees who work night shifts to get paid double the rate for a day shift.
The new law would cut this by 70 per cent.
Ken Loo is the Secretary General of the employers group, the Garment Manufacturers Association.
He says the ten year old labour law is outdated and needs to change.
LOO: Many companies are reluctant to start the night shift because of the exorbitant penalty rates.
SNOWDON: If this new labour law does go through do you expect there’ll be renewed foreign investor interest in Cambodia?
LOO: Definitely because for starters we would be able to start to attract a lot of the related industries, industries that we call the upstream and downstream industries. Not only in the garment industry but in other industries.
SNOWDON: Cambodia’s garment making factories are the backbone of its economy, earning export income of more than 2-billion US dollars a year and employing over 300-thousand people.
Ken Loo says only about ten thousand are now employed by factories working at night because of the high cost.
Minimum daytime rates are guaranteed at 50 US dollars a month.
Most workers are women who support families often in far-flung impoverished rural areas.
The Head of the Free Trade Union, Chea Mony, says they find it hard to make ends meet now.
He says speaking through an interpreter on a poor phone line that a survey of his members found their cost of living to be about 57 dollars a month.
MONY: The amendment will be very bad effect and its not a good idea that the Government try to reduce poverty (in this way).
SNOWDON: Union Secretary Chea Mony says the workforce will strike nationally if the amendment goes through the Parliament.
Manufacturing representative Ken Loo says he also wants the new labour law to go further and include amendments to curtail union power.
LOO: We need changes relating to the control and the behaviour of unions and what constitutes you know legal union activity.
SNOWDON: Unions don’t only have wages and conditions to contend with.
Violence against members and especially organisers has been on the rise in recent years with three union leaders murdered, sparking calls for an international investigation.
Chea Mony whose Free Trade Union is associated with the Opposition party of Sam Rainsy blames pro-government forces for the violence.
MONY: The reason is the workers don’t like the Government and the Government wants to win the election. So this is the reason they try and attack our union leaders.
SNOWDON: Such claims are dismissed as fanciful by Ken Loo.
LOO: But rather it relates to the general level of security in Cambodia.
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