Compliance, Skills Could Help Garments
The garment industry must work to decrease illegal strikes and better train workers before the end of the year, a new report says.
The garment industry mustwork to decrease illegal strikes and better train workers before the end of theyear, when competition from Chinese could further damage the sector, a new analysis suggests. Growth within Cambodia’s top industry slowed in 2008, and a recent International Labor Organization report found thatof 35 labor strikes in 2007, 32 were illegal. Meanwhile, the amount of value aCambodian worker can add to a garment is much lower than in neighboringcountries. Price competition is expected to increase when the US liftssafeguards on Chinese exports at the end of the year, according to the CambodiaInstitute of Development Study, which issued a monitoring report in July. “As price competition will likely continue tointensify…Cambodian factories will likely lean on the strategy of laborcompliance in the short term and raising productivity and skills in the longterm,” according to the report. Union leaders need to be trained to understand the basics ofthe global economy and be ready to compete in it, said Kang Chadararoth,director of the Institute. Workers and managers must learn to resolve their problems tokeep a factory viable, he said. “We have to take responsibility, even if we are workersdepending on monthly wages. If the factory is good we get more wages,” he said.“The factory owner also has to do the same thing. If they pay the workers on time...careabout working conditions, have good relationships, then the environment of thefactory is good, and you are able to compete better.” Kaing Monika, an official with the Garment ManufacturingAssociation of Cambodia, said Cambodiahad a productivity problem, not a labor compliance problem. Nearly 90 percentof factories complied with labor laws, he said. Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh said the government has beenaware of the lifting of trade barriers with Vietnamand Chinaand has been preparing for the competition. “We have made a working conditions policy for all factoriesto respect the rights of workers, and we use this reputation to attractbuyers,” he said. “We are succeeding and we are a country as a good symbol tothe world.”