As a new wave of COVID-19 hits Cambodia, a new study recommends urgent action to ensure garment and tourism workers workers do not experience widespread loss of jobs and wages as they did in 2020. The Center for Policy Studies survey is supported by Solidarity Center and The Asia Foundation.
A police crackdown against Lesotho garment workers protesting a two-year delay in scheduled minimum wage increases resulted in two fatalities in Maseru, the capital, last week. Pitso Mothala and Motselisi Ramasa died as police fired into the crowd. Many more workers were injured.
The deaths come after two weeks of escalating state-sponsored attempts to use shootings, beatings and arrests to force thousands of the country’s 50,000 garment workers to return to their factories. Meanwhile, government ministries have rejected union attempts to negotiate an end to protests and are still refusing to provide garment workers with the wage increases they need to sustain themselves and their families through the COVID-19 pandemic, reports United Textile Employees (UNITE).
“We want justice for our brutal[ally] killed comrades and we shall forever make sure that their blood is not in vain,” says a UNITE media release that identifies the two slain garment workers by name. Garment workers remain at home this week while the country’s armed forces continue to patrol the industry, reports the union.
The country’s unions are refusing to return to work until the government makes good on two missed incremental minimum wage increases—for 2020/2021 and 2021/2022—that have been delayed indefinitely.
Lesotho has a long history of human rights violations against political and labor activists, including police violence against peacefully striking factory workers rallying for fair wages last year. The 45th annual U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Human Rights report on Lesotho found that members of the Lesotho Mounted Police Service and Lesotho Defense Force last year committed numerous human rights abuses, including “unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions [and] arbitrary arrest or detention.”
Half or more workers in key Cambodian industries were suspended for three or four months, and most were unable to support themselves on government aid during the pandemic, according to a new study that put hard data to the suffering of the country’s low-wage workers.
Some 53 percent of those working in tourism were suspended for an average 15 weeks, and 40 percent of workers in Cambodia’s garment and footwear industries were suspended for an average of 11 weeks, according to a survey of 1,525 workers by the Center for Policy Studies. Solidarity Center and The Asia Foundation supported the research, which reports results from July and August 2020. (See the full survey.)
Women workers in Cambodia worked more and were still paid less than men during the pandemic. Source: CPS/Solidarity Center/Ponlok Chomnes
Women comprise the majority of workers surveyed and are the majority of 800,000 workers in the country’s garment and footwear industries. Before the pandemic, women were typically paid less than men. Yet, even when they returned to work in July 2020, they reported being paid less than men even though they worked more days than men.
All workers who returned to the job by July 2020 on average were employed for fewer hours and earned less than in July 2019.
Although many businesses were forced to temporarily suspend operations or shutter permanently during Cambodia’s first wave of COVID-19, some employers took advantage of the pandemic to lay off workers, union leaders say.
Further, hospitality and garment workers who returned to, or remained on the job, were not provided adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) or measures to ensure their safety, according to union leaders in Cambodia. Unions have been organizing to hold employers to account, negotiating for better protection measures.
To assist garment and tourism workers during the country’s first wave of COVID-19, the Cambodian government launched several programs, including financial support for workers suspended from the job and a skills improvement training program. But workers interviewed for the survey said the suspension payments, which ranged $40 to $70 per month, were not sufficient to cover the roughly $69 they needed for basic monthly food expenditures.
Half of those surveyed say the suspension allowance was their only income, and more than 50 percent said they could not afford to send remittances to their family as a result of pandemic-related losses. Between 40 percent and 60 percent of workers surveyed say they took on debt to survive.
The government announced in July 2020 that businesses closed during COVID-19 were not required to pay workers hardship or layoff wages. Tourism sector operations also were not required to contribute the $30 per month toward the suspension payments. The government provided $40 per month.
Since February, Cambodia has experienced its worst COVID-19 outbreak, which has led to a deepening crisis for workers as many major cities and several provinces have been in strict lockdown.
During the pandemic, workers in many industries have been left out of public social protection programs, such as health coverage, and the survey recommends extension of these benefits for the most vulnerable.
The survey also recommends expanding skills improvement training programs and funding opportunities for temporary jobs.
Without such support, garment workers like Eang Malea are returning to their factories despite the risk of contracting COVID-19.
“I need to pay rent, utilities and debts, ” Malea, 26, said. “I worry that I will get infected by going to work without being vaccinated, but I don’t really have a choice.”
At least two union members were confirmed killed by the Myanmar military this week and at least six workers were shot dead at the Xing Jia shoe factory in the Hlaing Thar Yar industrial zone Tuesday, according to union leaders. The factory workers, including the woman leader, were shot after the employer called the police when they demanded unpaid wages. Seventy workers were arrested and loaded onto two prisoner trucks.
Union leaders say the police and military violence against protesters in the industrial zones is much worse than is being reported because nationwide internet service repeatedly has been cut, including on Sunday before a violent crackdown.
Also this week, one union leader from the Federation of General Workers Myanmar (FGWM) was arrested while walking to the FGWM office but was released later that night.
Workers, especially women, have taken a leading role in the civil disobedience movement (CDM) that began February 1, following the military ouster of elected officials, including leader Aung San Suu Kyi. At least 217 people have been killed.
Garment workers, led by women union leaders, have demanded global corporate fashion brands tell factory owners to respect workers’ rights, including the freedom to freely express themselves and peacefully gather.
The Confederation of Trade Unions-Myanmar (CTUM) is requesting international financial institutions freeze all activities in Myanmar, saying all activities with government ministries translate as support for the coup. The CTUM also is calling on companies to protect and respect freedom of association and the rights to assemble and peacefully protest and must help ensure that no worker or union leader will be punished for joining the CDM.
The military is now targeting workers on several fronts, moving into industrial zones and declaring martial law. The military also issued a public statement that public-sector workers must return to work by Monday or they will be criminally charged.
Nearly all factories in the Yangon area, including in major industrial zones, have closed, and union leaders report a mass exodus of factory workers from the industrial zones to their hometown rural villages.
The military is asking factory owners to disclose the names and addresses of trade union leaders to arrest them, and soldiers are going door to door in the worker dormitories and hostels in a bid to find them, according to Khaing Zar Aung, president of the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar (IWFM).
Key union leaders of CTUM and affiliated unions were forced into hiding after the military issued a secret list of 27 trade union leaders to be persecute, she writes.
The global labor movement has condemned the military coup, including the International Trade Union Confederation, AFL-CIO and IndustriALL, which called for the immediate restoration of democracy.
“The accident took place earlier this month, in a factory that employs 130 workers, mostly women. The illegal factory is said to have been operating for 20 years. Labor groups including U.S.-based Solidarity Center, are campaigning for an investigation into the tragedy.”