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Increasingly, opposition protesters have found common cause with striking workers in the nation’s booming apparel sector—a $5.5 billion industry, yet one in which average monthly wages stand at only $80. “Unless workers put in pretty outrageous levels of overtime,” they in no way make a living wage, says David Welsh, Cambodia program director for the Solidarity Center labor advocacy group.
This time, many megabrands have condemned the violence and, in a letter, called for a new wage-setting process for Cambodian garment workers. David Welsh, Cambodia program director for the Solidarity Center, characterized the first response as weak but commended the brands for the latest letter.
For an estimated garment workforce of at least 450,000, by the International Labor Organization’s tally, there are now over 400 unions, according to Solidarity Center, an international labor rights group.
Four people were killed, 37 were injured, three have gone missing and 21 of the 23 people detained in last week’s crackdown on protests in Cambodia are garment workers. “What’s happened in the past week is a complete assault on trade worker rights and union rights in the most important sector of the Cambodian economy,” says David Welsh, country director for the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center in Phnom Penh.
A staggering number of strikes in this Southeast Asian nation indicates a blasé attitude in the garment sector toward worker rights, said David Welsh, country director for Washington D.C.-based labor rights group Solidarity Center.
A coalition of international retailers condemned Cambodia’s violent crackdown on striking garment-industry workers, while labor advocates criticized the response to the deadly wage dispute as weak. David Welsh, Cambodia program director for the Solidarity Center, said the letter failed to address the plight of at least 23 workers and labor activists have been detained in an unknown location since the protests began.
In the wake of Colombia’s narrow rejection of a peace accord and the subsequent bestowing of the Nobel Peace Prize on the country’s president last October, Colombian trade unions vowed to remain part of the process to end the Western Hemisphere’s longest war and work toward a more inclusive society, the Solidarity Center reported.