Workers at a lunch break in front of factories supplying H&M in Phnom Penh. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS.

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Mar 4 2014 (IPS)

An uneasy calm prevails in Cambodia after the government crackdown on protests by garment workers in January. With public gatherings banned and charges framed against 23 union leaders and activists, labour discontent may not be spilling on to the streets, but it is simmering.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has now called for removal of the ban on public assembly.“This is a critical juncture for garment workers and trade unions to use their leverage as a voting bloc to pressure both parties for better wages."

“The government should not be suppressing the demonstrators if they want to prove that Cambodia is a democratic country,” Phorn Sreywin, a 26-year-old garment worker, told IPS.

She has the support of the Workers Information Centre (WIC), which supports women in the garment industry, but voices asking for higher minimum wages in this impoverished Southeast Asian country appear to have been muffled for the time being.

“There should never have been a ban as this contradicts the Constitution and treaties ratified by Cambodia,” Naly Pilorge, Director of the human rights NGO LICADHO, told IPS by e-mail.

The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), 93 percent of which comprises foreign business owners, mostly from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, has cited the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) convention number 87 to claim that workers have no “right to strike”.

“Freedom of association cannot be used as an excuse to get away with illegal behaviour and undermine a government’s ability to govern,” said a statement on GMAC’s website, alluding to the protests of Jan. 2-3 by garment workers, which led to military action.

GMAC claims that the strike by garment workers was violent.

“A multiplicity of unions in the workplace continues to create challenges, including but not limited to an increasing mass of unrepresentative unions, infighting amongst unions on the factory floor to gain popularity, misrepresentation of membership numbers due to double counting, and inability to engage with the unions constructively,” it said.

Activists, however, say that this amounts to intimidation by GMAC.

International trade unions around the world have protested in front of Cambodian consulates in support of the country’s garment workers.

Trade unions have also condemned GMAC for stating that it condoned the military action on striking garment workers Jan. 3 that killed four of them, left one missing and seriously injured over 30.

“The response from the Cambodian government is very oppressive,” said Pranom Somwong, a labour activist and consultant for the Clean Clothes Campaign who helped organise a protest in Bangkok in front of the Cambodian consulate.

She also told IPS that factory owners were “confrontational” vis-a-vis the unions. “Denying workers the right to freedom of assembly and the right to a living wage is unacceptable,” she said.

In the days leading up to the protest, the Labour Ministry had approved an increase in the minimum wage for garment workers, from 80 to 95 dollars a month. But trade unions and workers protested, saying it was not enough to live on, and demanded a monthly minimum wage of 160 dollars.

Labour activists are now being threatened with loss of job or with lawsuits, Sophea Chrek, interim coordinator for WIC, told IPS.

Tola Moeun, head of the advocacy organisation, Community Legal Education Centre, explained that factory owners have threatened labour leaders with lawsuits. “Yang Sophorn (president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions) was sued by suppliers (factory owners) for mobilising workers to strike,” he pointed out.

He highlighted another problem.

Despite 90 percent of garment workers being women, men tend to lead the labour unions, partly owing to the combative environment. “Women do not feel confident in their positions or are not provided enough opportunities to grow, especially due to their poor wages and short term contracts,” he told IPS.

Thida Khus, Executive Director of SILAKA, an organisation that trains women, believes women workers hold the key to shaping their work environment.

“Women workers need to lead and use their natural leadership quality to deal with the environment, using better negotiation skills with the thugs in factories, with the government and with the elites who are looking after their bosses’ interests,” Khus told IPS.

Labour researcher Dennis Arnold has written a report detailing how the bargaining power of workers in Cambodia weakened under the 2005 WTO free trade agreement (FTA).

He found that, prior to the agreement, most workers in registered factories had long-term contracts with holiday pay benefits, including sick and maternity leave. But afterwards the contracts became short-term, covering just three to six months, and with no benefits. Factory owners said western brands preferred flexibility in their contracts but the shift also made factory workers easier to manage.

There are an estimated 400,000 workers in registered factories, but if those in unregistered factories, and workers who are part of the supply chain were to be included, the number would be around 600,000, he says.

Arnold told IPS that the elite siphon off money through “bribes, bureaucracy and corruption”, contributing to the already high cost of production, and this is used by factory owners as a reason for not raising wages.

“This is a critical juncture for garment workers and trade unions to use their leverage as a voting bloc to pressure both parties for better wages,” Arnold said. “This is part of broader efforts to redistribute wealth and power in favour of workers – and you see very clearly the deep resistance to this by GMAC and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).”

The opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) is completely on board.

Mu Sochua, CNRP’s elected lawmaker and Director General of Public Affairs, told IPS, “Strong trade unions, strict implementation of the labour law (against short-term contracts) and ILO conventions must be upheld and the government and global brands should be allowed no excuses to delay negotiations for living wage.”

A spokesperson for H&M, one of the largest brands sourcing from Cambodia, told IPS on e-mail that the company plans to work towards a living wage “by 2018”.

By Irfan Ahmed
LAHORE, Pakistan, Jan 4 2013 (IPS)

The European Union (EU) is Pakistan’s largest trading partner, with overall trade between the two countries topping eight million euros in 2011.

Pakistan enjoyed a one billion-euro surplus that year and stands to gain even more from the EU’s generous trade concessions, announced in the aftermath of the devastating floods that ravaged this South Asian country in 2010 and 2011.

Still, in order to fully benefit from these concessions, Pakistan will have to enforce stricter labour standards and comply with the terms and conditions of several international conventions on human rights, governance and environmental safety to which it is a signatory.

Currently, most workers in Pakistan’s export sector do not receive social security benefits, work in hazardous conditions and are paid on a piece-by-piece basis in lieu of a regular salary.

These hands that enable trade to the EU often go home empty, feeding into a cycle of poverty that continues to consume this country of 176 million people.

By Michelle Tolson
BATTAMBANG, Cambodia, Jan 3 2013 (IPS)

As one of the world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs), Cambodia is afforded the most beneficial trade ranking to the European Union (EU) under the generalised scheme of preferences (GSP) known as the Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme.

The EBA allows those countries ranked as LDCs to export products duty-free to the EU, except arms and ammunition.

Cambodia’s largest exports to the EU are textiles, such as garments and shoes, comprising 89 percent of exports, valued at over 1.1 billion euros, according to a report released by the European Commission.

Agricultural products such as rice, sugar cane, fruits and vegetables, fish, peppers and cashews account for 5.8 percent of exports, valued at 75 million euros.

Introduced in January of 2011, the EBA has resulted in a 53 percent upsurge of exports to the EU from Cambodia in 2011, with the EU becoming Cambodia’s second largest export partner.

The intention of the agreement has been to elevate Cambodia from LDC status, encouraging the country to process its own products rather than have neighbouring countries benefit.

The trade treaty has boosted exports in various sectors, but experts have questioned the impact of increased trade on producers across this country of 14 million people. Of particular concern have been the rural peasants, considering that 92 percent of Cambodia’s poor live in the countryside.

For example, despite an increase in sugar cane exports to the EU, critics question the benefits to small-scale farmers, since land concessions to corporations have spiked and local farmers have been displaced from their land.  Activists have called for a sugar boycott to raise awareness.

What was once Rizk Al-Madhoun's clothing factory. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
JABALIYA, Gaza, Sep 8 2012 (IPS)

“Gaza’s economy is expected to grow modestly and people will likely still be worse off in 2015 compared to the mid-1990s,” reads a press release announcing the United Nations’ August 2012 report, ‘Gaza in 2020 – A Liveable Place?’

In the no-frills office of his stalled Jabaliya clothing factory, Rizik Al-Madhoun, 41, explains how his clothing factory began shutting down six years ago.

“We started in 1993 with seven sewing machines. By 2005 we had 250 machines and as many tailors,” he says. “In 2006, after Hamas was elected and Israel sealed the borders, we had to close down half of the factory. We stopped all production in 2007, when Israel tightened the siege.”

Madhoun’s is one of the 97 percent of industrial establishments in the Gaza Strip which by 2008 had stopped production as a result of the Israeli-led, internationally-complicit closure of Gaza’s borders that limited imports and virtually halted all exports. By December 2007, the UN had already reported that only one percent of Gaza’s 960 garment factories remained open.

Today, a reported 80 percent of factories in Gaza are still closed or operating at minimum capability.

“Until 2005, our work was good,” says Madhoun. “We made shirts, pants, jeans, dresses, skirts, school clothes…we’d make whatever was in demand. Since our clothes were high quality, 80 percent were exported to Israeli markets, and some of these were then exported to European markets.

His workers were, Madhoun says, among 40,000 who worked as tailors in Gaza.

“Before our factory closed, I employed 250 high-quality tailors, as well as another 100 who worked from home. Another 50 families worked from home, doing the final touches and finishing work.”

A tour through the vast warehouse that was Madhoun’s factory reveals much now-unused space, with a few rooms devoted to storing cheap imported clothing.

“Now we just have a large storage area. There’s no way we can run our factory, so instead we sell these imports in Gaza markets.”

Focusing on Gaza’s siege-devasted economy, the UN in June 2012 noted that “the continued ban on the transfer of goods from Gaza to its traditional markets in the West Bank and Israel, along with the severe restrictions on access to agricultural land and fishing waters, prevents sustainable growth and perpetuates the high levels of unemployment, food insecurity and aid dependency.”

Israeli-rights group Gisha notes that 85 percent of Gaza’s exports traditionally went to Israeli and Palestinian markets outside of Gaza. Gisha further notes that any claims of security precautions being the reason for prohibiting exports from Gaza hold no weight: “Recently a new scanner for screening goods was installed at the crossing,” wrote Gisha in June 2012. It said that Israeli military officials “have said that the choice to prevent sale of goods from Gaza in Israel and the West Bank was made at the political echelon and needs to be decided upon there.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reports that the amount of exports allowed to leave Gaza in March 2012 were “1.28 percent of pre-closure numbers,” with April exports at “0.85 percent of the preclosure numbers.”

Gaza’s unemployment rates continue to hover at between 35 percent to 65 percent (adults versus those in their early twenties), and food-aid dependency remains at 80 percent.

“An urban area cannot survive without being connected,” the UN’s Maxwell Gaylard stated on Aug. 27, reiterating the necessity to reopen Gaza’s closed borders to trade.

“The area has been essentially isolated since 2005,” reads the UN press release, “meaning that, in the longer term, its economy is fundamentally unviable under present circumstances. Gaza is currently kept alive through external funding and the illegal tunnel economy.”

The United Nations’ August report finishes by insisting that, among other things, the Palestinians of Gaza “must have ready access to the world beyond Gaza for religious, educational, medical, cultural, commercial and other purposes.”

Rizik Al-Madhoun simplifies the call: allow Gaza’s exports out.

“Since we have so few options for work, Gaza’s tailors have perfected their crafts,” Madhoun says. “We can make clothes as good and better quality than the Turkish imports we get, but without a market, there is no point in producing goods.”