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SPECIAL PROGRAMS > GARMENT WORKER [ ABOUT
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The garment industry is the main employment sector for women after agriculture in Cambodia. Nearly 20% of Cambodian women between the ages of 18 - 25 work or have worked in this industry.
The whole sector, linked to international fluctuations in textiles trade and marketing is very volatile, and business can be easily moved out and established elsewhere. Cambodia enjoys a trade agreement with the US and has been granted a Most Favoured Nation (MFN) and Generalised System of Preference (GSP). Both these agreements lead to special tariff reductions by the US, EU and other industrialized countries allowing "Made in Cambodia" apparel to be imported in such countries. Despite that, the local garment sector now faces a downtrend due to the global economic recession and fall in consumer expenditure in the first world. As a result, Cambodian garment workers are being dismissed or forced to accept deregulated working conditions that become more exploitative and less secure.
On the other hand, giant garment companies are increasingly alarmed by consumers and citizens protests and boycotts in their own countries. This kind of concern has brought garment multinational groups, including those operating and producing in Cambodia, to invest in initiatives aimed at certifying their good labour practices. The US-Cambodia agreement on textiles includes a clause on respect of labour rights also.
As a result, different initiatives aimed at monitoring working conditions are happening, supported by International Agencies, as well as by other independent or corporate-sponsored groups. Unfortunately, this monitoring activity adds itself to a situation of fragility and immaturity of the local unions structure, and risks becoming a further element of destabilisation and weakening. Cambodian unions developed themselves in strict connection with political parties, both governmental and oppositional, and their own agendas have suffered from these links. Instead of representing a different and alternative kind of bottom up associationism, they tend to reproduce the hierarchy, the power struggles and the tendency to fragment so typical of the political scene.
Moreover, no attempt has been made to give birth to any association or organisation based on a gender approach, even though the Cambodian garment factories, with 90% of employees being female, reflect the situation of all other countries in the world where the sector has flourished, and where women's organisations or unions became important social counterparts.
WAC research on garment workers in Cambodia has identified different mechanisms of gender discrimination and inequality, which contribute to increasing women's exploitation and lack of perspectives. The research has also shown that the development of a genuine women's workers association or organisation would be a major advance for workers labour and living conditions.
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