Striking workers call on Wal-Mart to take responsibility after supplier
skips country owing $200,000 in wages
On Thursday morning garment
workers gathered outside the US Embassy in Phnom Penh to follow up with the
petition they submitted on Januray 18th, 2013 asking the US government to
pressure Wal-Mart. They are owed
$200,000 by Kingsland, a Hong Kong-based company that started to operate
in Cambodia 10 years ago and worked with Wal-Mart and H&M suppliers.
Yon Sok Lein, one of the
Kingsland’s workers, said that there was no feedback from the US Embassy. “We
would like Wal-Mart to be held accountable for this situation. It is a big and
powerful company. We would also like the owner of the factory to be held
accountable but he left the country”. As a garment worker for Kingsland, Yon
Sok Lein was working on 1,000 pieces of underwear per day from 7 AM to 4 PM for
$120 to $130 per month. There are 400,000 garment workers in Cambodia and 90%
of them are women.
A video published on January 20th
by the independent Cambodian media Voice of Democracy, shows garment workers
outside Kingsland factory protesting for not having been paid and blaming
H&M and Wal-Mart. They have been striking since January 3rd, 2013.
The workers have been told since
September that they did not have to come to work anymore due to the lack of
orders but that they would be paid 50%
of they salary until work would resume in January. But they never
received the money before the owners declared bankruptcy and left the country.
According to Wal-Mart, it stopped
Kingsland’s products in 2011. H&M in June 2012. However, the Community
Legal Education Center (CLEC) gathered testimonies from worker stating
that H&M alterations and quality
checks continued until the first week of September, 2012 and that Walmart
production continued until the same week. According to CLEC, the H&M
representative admitted it.
A 1997 progressive labor law?
Kingsland is famous for violating
legislation and it is not the first time such protests have occurred. In 2008,
16 workers were fired for belonging to a union that was not recognized by the
company. Despite attempts to negociate their reintegration, none of them were
able to go back to work, suggesting that belonging to an independent union was
still problematic at Kingsland. This is in violation of the 1997 labor law.
Cambodia still portrays an
“ethical” label to international brands. The country stands out among
garment-exporting countries as one where working conditions for factory workers
have improved. Since the 1990s, Cambodia has shaped a worker-friendly
reputation to be able to compete internationally. In 1997, a labor law was
adopted that recognized rights of Cambodian workers, such as ” the minimum wage
must ensure every worker of a decent standard of living compatible with human
dignity”. Today, the garment industry
is the first source of income in the country with more than US$4 billion profit
a year. In 1999, the country also agreed to submit an extensive labor
inspection program that would be coordinated by the International Labour
Organization (ILO). In 2005, it became a full member of the World Trade
Organization (WTO).
Argued responsibilities?
Interviewed earlier this month by
The Cambodia Daily, Nick Rudikoff, global affairs coordinator of Warehouse
Workers United (WWU), a U.S.-based union representing 5.5 million workers in
different sectors, said that “Kingsland’s failure to inform the workers’ of
their situation is an example of Wal-Mart not making sure members of its supply
chain treat workers in a fair manner”.
Legally the factory owners are
responsible for the workers’ severance pay and working conditions. But as Dave
Welsh, the head of the American Centre for International Labor Solidarity, told
Voice of Democracy last August “it really is the brands putting the squeeze
around the world on the industry. But the industry doesn’t mind, because the
people who suffer are not the owners, the people who suffer are the workers.”
The International Labour
Organization (ILO) established the “Better Factories Cambodia” program
(ILO-BFC) to monitor the compliance to the 1999 US – Cambodia bilateral trade
agreement, generating reports about working conditions in Cambodian factories.
According to the latest one, there is a need
for a new industry-wide agreement as “the number of strikes over the
reporting period is twice as many for the same reporting period [a year
before]“. The reports records 27 strikes
and 16 mass faintings between November 2011 and June 2012. This represents more
than 2,000 women fainting.
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