| By PHILIP ROBERTSON | FEBRUARY, 2000 - VOLUME 8 NO.2 |
As more and more Cambodian women leave the fields to work in factories, labor rights issues are coming to the fore, writes Philip Robertson Mention Cambodia and most observers’ thoughts immediately turn to the Khmer Rouge genocide, endless civil wars, landmines that cripple and maim, and the long road to national reconciliation. But increasingly, "Made in Cambodia" is popping up on the labels of GAP, Nike, Wal-Mart clothes sold in the US and Europe. Few consumers see the faces behind the label – and if they did, the sight would not be pretty. Cambodia has entered the modern industrial era on the backs of mostly young female workers, freshly arrived from the countryside, who are willing to work at $40 a month in an industry where payment of sub-minimum wages is the norm and employers from Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand demand forced overtime that stretches into 12-14 hour days. In February 1999, there were 157 apparel companies concentrated in and around Phnom Penh, employing between 70,000 to 90,000 workers. Yet unlike many countries where sweatshop conditions are common, Cambodia has a modern labor code (passed in 1997) which offers numerous protections and guarantees the rights of workers to form unions. The problem is that it is infrequently enforced. Enter the world of the 18-25 year old women who form 90% of this workforce, and the image of Cambodia as a land of rice paddies goes out the window. Yet the problem of impunity often referred to by human rights groups does not change. In Kompong Speu province in the first week of January 2000, the vice-president of a local union at Cambodia Apparel Industry protests against late payment of wages and he and two other union activists are arrested and held in jail without charge, food or water for 26 hours at the behest of the provincial Governor who is close to the factory owner. At Quality Garment in Phnom Penh, the president of the union complains to management about a requirement for all workers to stand at all times which is resulting in workers’ feet becoming so numb that they have difficulty walking—and she is put on internal suspension where she is required to sit for two months in front of the factory and publicly humiliated as an example to other "trouble-makers". At Winner Knitting, three shop stewards receive a letter from the Ministry of Labor to be excused to attend an International Labor Organization (ILO) training and give it to their employer—but when they return from the training, they find they have been fired for missing work. Where owners don’t want to be troubled with worker complaints about forced overtime, unclean toilets and drinking water, sub-minimum wages, or failing to observe the many other provisions of the labor law, they form their own "yellow" unions. Even at the PPS factory of Vann Sou Ieng, the high profile head of the Cambodia Garment Manufacturers Export Association, workers report that union applications were handed out by security guards with an implied threat that they had better join. Needless to say, that company union was registered quickly by the compliant officials at the Ministry of Social Affairs, Labor, Vocational Training and Youth Rehabilitation (MOL, for short), who as the Ministry’s name suggests have a bit more on their plate than just labor. But then talk to the workers forming the independent union at Chu Sing factory in Phnom Penh, and they will tell a different story of Ministry officials telling them that they couldn’t register their union if its name included the word "welfare." Like so much that goes on in Cambodia, it’s money and connections that counts, and independent unions formed by workers earning $40 a month don’t have either. The Chu Sing workers filed their union registration application in September 1999, and they still haven’t received the registration that will (they hope) protect the union organizers and activists from employer harassment and firings. It is testament to how bad the forced overtime, dangerous work conditions, and arbitrary punishment is that these young women workers continue to form unions to protect themselves even after seeing so many previous unions busted. Workers file complaint after complaint to the MOL, yet the impunity continues, often with the active cooperation of Ministry labor inspectors who are paid official salaries of $20-30 per month. Employers usually ignore those very few orders to reinstate workers that the MOL actually does issue. Even worse, investigations in 1998 and 1999 by the Solidarity Center, a NGO connected with the AFL-CIO, found documented instances where Cambodian labor inspectors participated in the rigging of shop steward elections by employers, told pro-employer shop stewards at Quality Garment that they shouldn’t be concerned about union leaders because they could "be fired easily", and received under the table payments in connection with labor disputes. Actually, for workers to lose their jobs and their prospects the inspectors actually don’t have to do much. Declaring an impasse in resolving a dispute and telling the workers to sue the employer in Cambodia’s notoriously corrupt courts is the equivalent of a death sentence for workers’ hopes. Officials at the Free Trade Union of the Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTU) recently told me that they have worker reinstatement cases that have been in the courts since 1997 but still have not had a hearing. The sweatshop conditions and union busting continues despite the existence of "codes of conduct" adopted by many of the US and European garment retailers that are the customers for what these factories produce. These voluntarily adopted codes are supposed to govern labor and working conditions in all suppliers that are producing the brand of clothing that has the code. In reality, these codes have served primarily as corporate window dressing. In a tour of three garment factories that I took in September 1999, codes were posted in one corner of the factory—but all of them were either in English, Chinese or Thai, not much help to a Cambodian worker who only speaks and reads Khmer. In one factory producing Nike shirts for toddlers, covered by the Nike code that extols safe working environments and freedom of association, scraps of cloth were piled up near electric circuits and the union president was essentially kidnapped and driven around Phnom Penh by management so that she wouldn’t be at work when our delegation visited. At Cambodian Apparel where the three union officials were imprisoned at the behest of the owner, the workers making apparel for Dayton Hudson Corporation don’t get much help from that company’s code of conduct. Despite the proclamation that Dayton Hudson is "concerned with the worldwide state of being of human rights and environmental degradation", there is no mention of freedom of association in the code and no monitoring by the company of whether it suppliers comply. Even if the abuse is brought to their attention Dayton Hudson notes only that "any effort to suppress any of these standards will be met with strong objection on our part." Into this seemingly hopeless web of unscrupulous employers, corrupt officials, unskilled women workers, and sweatshop conditions comes a new hope for a better way. Prodded by a complaint filed by the AFL-CIO to withdraw Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the tariff-free treatment for Cambodian exports to the US, the Cambodian and US governments concluded a bilateral textile quota agreement that includes for the first time ever conditionality on treatment of workers. Specifically, the agreement provides positive conditionality (in the form of up to 14% additional garment quota per year) if Cambodia faithfully enforces its labor code and the international labor standards contained in the seven core ILO conventions ratified by the country in July 1999. This is a first for the US, giving positive incentives for respect for core labor rights, and if it works, it could serve as a new model. It is also a breakthrough agreement for labor rights with an ASEAN state, a fact that has not been lost on some of Cambodia’s neighbors. The Cambodian government has reportedly been strongly criticized by other more authoritarian ASEAN governments for letting the labor rights issue be connected with trade. Now the key issue on the ground is "who monitors compliance?" Which organization(s) in Cambodia have the necessary credibility with employers, government, workers and the US government to make a determination that a factory is complying with the labor law and labor standards? Despite initial efforts by some UN bureaucrats and Cambodian government officials to make this project essentially a training project for government labor inspectors without any wider accountability for results, it now appears that an independent monitoring organization, operating under the authority of the ILO, will be created to train inspectors, conduct factory visits, report findings, and make recommendations to the US government on factory compliance. Where non-compliance can be remedied, systematic plans may be worked out between the Cambodian government and the factory owner to take corrective action. Ideally, those factories which do not comply with the law will be fined by MOL, and if they continue to violate the law, will face the risk of the ultimate sanction – being deprived of precious garment export quota to ship their goods to the lucrative US clothing market. Approximately $500,000 of US government assistance will be made available to fund the project. But there remain a number of unresolved issues. For instance, how will workers and their unions be able to participate in these monitoring and compliance visits, and comment on the findings of the ILO trained inspectors? What training will be provided to workers so that they know how the system will work, and how to access it so that their legitimate grievances are addressed? What documents will be made public? In cases of factory non-compliance, how will corrective measures be enacted and who will make sure the factory owners follow the recommendations? And to return to the perennial question in Cambodia, what role will money, corruption and impunity play with respect to ILO-trained inspectors and sanctions against violators by the Cambodian MOL and Ministry of Commerce (which distributes garment export quota to manufacturers)? All these issues are still being tackled in ongoing negotiations between the US government, the ILO, and the AFL-CIO which should be concluded in the next month. Breaking new ground always brings new questions and risks, and there will certainly be bumps in the road as this innovative project starts up. The approach is a new one for the global economy, because the project provides rewards for taking the "high road" towards respect for workers and basic rights rather than the low road of cut-throat competition where the winner is the country that cuts the most corners by violating worker rights and tolerating dangerous and dirty factories. For the women workers in Cambodia’s garment factories, it is a start towards what they hope will be a new deal that will end the pattern of continued exploitation and firings, and offer them something that they not yet enjoyed: justice and respect. Philip Robertson is a labor activist based in Bangkok. The views expressed in this article are his own.