Cambodia Garment Workers Get Pay Raise
Tuesday April 1, 1:20 pm ET
By Ker Munthit, Associated Press Writer
Cambodian Garment Workers to Get $6 Per Month Pay Raise to Cope With
Inflation
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- Cambodian garment manufacturers and labor
unions have agreed to a $6 monthly raise for factory workers, averting
potential further strikes by employees struggling to make ends meet,
officials said Tuesday.
More garment workers had threatened to walk off their jobs this month
unless they got a pay raise to keep up with the soaring food prices
currently afflicting many poor Cambodians.
Employers and union representatives have been negotiating for weeks on
how much to increase average monthly wages of $50. A breakthrough was
found Monday when the government prodded manufacturers to increase the
wage by $6 to keep workers on their production lines.
Chuon Mom Thol, president of the Cambodian Union Federation, which has
more than 70,000 members, said he originally demanded an increase of
up to $15 a month.
He said that although he found the $6 raise unsatisfactory, "it is
still better than not getting anything at all."
Van Sou Ieng, president of Garment Manufacturers Association of
Cambodia, said employers had agreed to the government-proposed raise
but "we will not go further than that."
He complained that the raise will add to production costs and make
Cambodia "less competitive" in garment ex****ts.
"Unions must also improve productivity rather than just asking for an
increase of wages," he said.
In a statement issued Monday, Cambodian Social Affairs Minister Ith
Sam Heng called on workers who have been striking at some factories to
end their protests. He urged them to return to work for the "benefit
of yourselves, of the factories and our whole nation."
Without a pay raise while prices keep climbing, factories would have
been likely to see a lot of workers walking off their jobs, said Chea
Mony, president of the Free Trade Union of Workers.
He said many of his union's 80,000 members had already begun looking
for other jobs but the $6 raise could be "sufficient enough" to make
them stay on.
"It will help them with their daily spending and to avoid staging more
strikes ... but only if food prices begin to drop," Chea Mony said.
The garment industry is the major ex****t earner in Cambodia, where
some 35 percent of the country's 14 million people live on less than
$0.50 (euro0.32) a day. The industry employs about 355,000 workers,
mostly women.
Although high food prices alone are unlikely to pose a serious threat
to Cambodia's economic growth, they are adversely affecting the
country's poor, who spend approximately 70 percent of their total
household consumption on food, according to the World Bank in its
latest East Asian economic outlook update, issued Tuesday.
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