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.
Download a PDF brochure outlining the strategies and measures
WAC will employ to empower and assist workers in the creation
of a representative grassroots workers organisation 
Sex worker project