HRW -- Cambodia: Labor Laws Fail to Protect Garment Workers

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Cambodia: Labor Laws Fail to Protect Garment Workers

Brands Should Disclose Suppliers, Help Vulnerable Workers

Human Rights Watch | 12 March 2015

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  Women in the sewing division of a factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Women constitute about 90 percent of the workforce in Cambodia’s garment industry.
  © 2014 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch

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Our Report: 

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  “Work Faster or Get Out”
  Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia’s Garment Industry
   
  Human Rights Watch | March 11, 2015
  
  
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(Phnom Penh) – The Cambodian government is failing to protect garment workers who are producing for international apparel brands from serious labor rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The predominantly women workers often experience forced overtime, pregnancy-based discrimination, and anti-union practices that neither the government nor major brands have adequately addressed. 

The 140-page report, "Work Faster or Get Out’: Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia’s Garment Industry" documents lax government enforcement of labor laws and brand actions that hinder monitoring and compliance. In recent years, wage protests, instances of garment workers fainting, and burdensome union registration procedures have spotlighted the plight of workers in Cambodia’s garment factories.
“The Cambodian government should take swift measures to reverse its terrible record of enforcing its labor laws and protect workers from abuse,” said Aruna Kashyap, senior women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “These global apparel brands are household names. They have a lot of leverage, and can and should do more to ensure their contracts with garment factories are not contributing to labor rights abuses.”
Human Rights Watch found that many factories repeatedly issued unlawful short-term contracts to avoid paying workers maternity and other benefits, and to intimidate and control them. Small factories that subcontract to larger export-oriented factories are more likely to hire workers on a casual basis, making it harder for workers to assert their rights because they risk being easily fired. Apparel brands have not taken adequate steps to end the illegal short-term contracts in their supplier factories – even where their supplier codes of conduct have clauses limiting their use.

Cambodia’s garment industry, dominated by foreign investments from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea, is critical to the country’s economy and women’s livelihoods. Women make up 90 percent of the country’s more than 700,000 garment workers in 1,200 garment businesses, according to the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft.