Crisis in the Cambodian garment sector: workers torn between concern and pragmatism

Chom Chao (Cambodia, Phnom Penh). 10/03/2009: A garment factory worker, based on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, has her brother bring her back to the village. (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum)

16-03-2009
By Anne-Laure Porée and Ros Dina
Ka-set

Tuesday, March 10th. It’s pay day today at the back of the Canadia market, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Along this never-ending road lined with yellow factories, gathered in small groups, workers are waiting for the gates of their factory to open and for the guards to call them out. Tum, a 22 year-old worker, steps forward without any enthusiasm. She comes back twenty minutes later, her fist clenched over a few bills and her payslip. She is determined to take a bus the next day to go back to her village, in her native province of Kampong Thom. Waiting for some hypothetical job far away from her relatives does not make her happy and on top of that, it is costly. It is now a month since the 43 girls in her shoe manufacturing group started clocking in every day to receive 50% of their initial salary, i.e. US$25. Not even enough to pay for the rent and food.

They heard that their factory would close down after payday. The rumour reached stall-keepers from the nearby market, already disheartened by the significant drop in sales since the Water Festival last year. False alarm. But for these workers, left high and dry, the shutdown of a factory of the suspension of its activity is equally bad: they will not work in March. Many say they won’t last for another month and they will have to go back to “work the ricefield”, an expression which signifies, without considering the rainy season, a return to family activities, land, growing and raising or little country jobs. For some observers of Cambodia’s economy, employers obviously count on that type of defections to reduce their number of employees.

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