ILPC 2027

 This paper will focus on the strategies used in the Cambodian garment sector to deny workers their rights in law and inhibit independent union organisation. The garment sector contributes around 80% of Cambodia’s GDP but the industry is 95% foreign owned, largely by Chinese and Korean multinationals.  Just 5% of the Cambodian garment sector is owned by indigenous entrepreneurs.  While around 60% of the Cambodian workforce is registered as a union member (Hegazy and Reinhart, 2014) collective bargaining is a distant goal. Among garment employer tactics, which include explicit threat and violence, yellow unions and casualization of contracts are used to squeeze out bona fide trade union organisation. 

The paper will detail findings from qualitative research undertaken in December 2015.  It explains the ways in which new technology and short term and temporary contracts are used as a means of identifying, excluding and then blacklisting independent union organisers and members. Here, in the labour process, we see the use of long-established control strategies in new settings (see, for example, Anner, 2015).  However, at the level of the state, we also see the political and economic power wielded by employers from their position in a highly competitive value chain. The paper will also refer to the Cambodian Wage Protests of 2014 as an example of the ways in which the structure of the global value chain has been at the heart of the influence exercised by overseas employers over local, national decisions on labour rights taken by the Cambodian government.

The paper thus affords insight into the industrial relations environment in Cambodia and highlights the way that the labour process connects with the dynamics of global capital in the international garment value chain.  Workplace conflict spills over into political life in this developing economy, where international capital holds considerable political and economic power and influence over a weak and corrupt state, under the threat of capital flight.

Indicative References:

Anner, M. (2015), ‘Social Downgrading and Worker Resistance in apparel Global Value Chains’ in K. Newsome, P. Taylor, J. Bair and A. Rainnie (eds) Putting Labour in its Place: Labour Process Analysis and Global Value Chains, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan, 152–170.

Asia Monitor Resource Centre (2014), A Week that Shook Cambodia The Hope, Anger and Despair of Cambodian Workers after the General Strike and Violent Crackdown (December 2013 - January 2014) A Fact-finding Report by Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Hong Kong; Asian Labour Study Group, The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK; Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong; Center for Trade Union and Human Rights, Philippines; Korean Confederation of Trade Union, South Korea; Korean House for International Solidarity, South Korea; Oxfam Solidarity Belgium; Serve People Association, Taiwan.

Hegazy F. and Reinhart, G. (2014) The enabling environment for sustainable

enterprises in Cambodia, Small and Medium Enterprises Unit, Geneva, International Labour Organization 2014.

ILO (2009), Twenty-Third Synthesis Report On Working Conditions In Cambodia’s Garment Sector, Geneva, International Labour Organization.