Walmart intervention sought at Thai factory

Wednesday, 18 April 2012David Boyle and Sen David
The Phnom Penh Post

A large North American union has called on US retail giant Walmart to take immediate action against one of its seafood suppliers in Thailand accused of holding Cambodian workers in debt bondage while barely providing them with enough money to eat.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has waded into the ugly dispute between the Phatthana Seafood factory, its migrant work force and the Cambodian recruitment firm that sent many of them there.

Since a strike broke out at the firm’s Songkhla province factory just over a week ago, the situation has deteriorated to the point where some workers are reportedly so poor, they cannot afford food, while rights groups allege the company is engaged in direct human trafficking.

Cambodian worker representative Sor Sorng said yesterday an NGO donated food to some 300 migrant workers who could no longer afford to eat.

Migrant workers seek way out of Thailand

Wednesday, 22 February 2012Meas Sokchea
The Phnom Penh Post

A dispute between more than 1,000 Cambodian migrant workers and a seafood factory in Thailand over pay conditions has escalated, with the majority of them seeking to leave, several of the employees have said.

In late January, the Post reported that workers at the Pathana Frozen Food Factory in Thailand’s Songkla province had reported that hundreds of workers felt they had been cheated by the Cambodian recruitment firm that sent there, CDM Trading Manpower Ltd.

Four employees, all of who wish to remain anonymous, and former employee Keo Ratha have now told the Post that most of the 1,000 workers want to leave but are waiting for the company to answer their requests for their passports back.

Garment industry in dock over Cambodia's poverty wages

February 04, 2012 (Cambodia)
Clean Clothes Campaign

Garment workers' unions and human rights groups will hold a People's Tribunal to investigate the state of poverty pay in the Cambodian garment industry.

Following recent mass faintings induced by malnutrition, and strikes pulling more than 200,000 workers to the streets to protest poor conditions and inadequate pay, the tribunal will call evidence from a wide variety of stakeholders from the Cambodian garment industry.

Workers, manufacturers, and multinational brands Adidas and Puma, among others, will give evidence about the state of the industry in front of a panel of expert judges. H&M and Gap were also invited but have refused to attend.

“Despite experiencing sustained growth in the sector Cambodia’s minimum wage allowance is 66 USD a month and is currently the lowest of all its neighbouring states. This wage amounts to around half that required to adequately meet the average worker’s basic needs.” said Tola Moeun head of Labour Programs for the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC).

Industry action too harsh: report

Garment workers hold a strike at the Sunly Fong garment factory in the capital’s Meanchey district in August. Photo by: Pha Lina

FRIDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2010
JAMES O’TOOLE AND CHHAY CHANNYDA
The Phnom Penh Post

EMPLOYERS have taken disproportionately harsh measures against garment workers who participated in September’s industry-wide strikes, according to a report released yesterday by the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights.

Thousands of workers took to the streets in September to agitate for increased wages following a July decision from the Labour Advisory Committee, a body of government officials and industry representatives, to increase the industry’s minimum wage by US$5. In the aftermath of the strike, employers pursued lawsuits against union representatives involved, a move CCHR said was unjustified.

“While [the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia] is entitled to raise questions about the unions’ compliance with the law, the reaction ... was not proportionate and in most cases could not be justified even if their claims that the strike was illegal were accurate,” CCHR said in a statement.

GMAC Secretary Ggeneral Ken Loo rejected the contents of the CCHR report.

“I don’t know what lawyers are advising them, and if they are lawyers, they ought to be shot,” Loo said.

Ninety-four workers remain suspended pending court rulings on the legality of September’s strike, according to the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union. A total of 683 workers who later protested the suspensions of these representatives were dismissed after they failed to heed injunctions requiring them to return to work, the coalition says.

GMAC disputes these figures, saying that just 358 workers have been dismissed, with 67 still suspended.

CCHR said the unions gave ample notice of the strike, well clear of the seven working days’ notice required by the Kingdom’s Labour Law.

An August 19 letter threatened strikes in the absence of negotiations on the minimum wage, while a September 10 letter called for talks on a “living wage”. GMAC contends that this change represents a new set of demands and, coming just three days in advance, rendered the strikes illegal.

“GMAC’s argument that this [additional] letter re-started the notice period … is not persuasive,” the CCHR report says. “In both letters the actual wage being sought [US$93] was specified quite clearly and did not change. Nor did the dates or nature of strike action being threatened.”

Loo said, however, that the change of demands from minimum wage to living wage was “a significant change”.

“It’s not a slight change or a change of wording,” he said. “The difference for us is that the minimum wage had been decided by the [Labour Advisory Committee], and as such, we will not negotiate a new minimum wage outside the scope of the LAC.”

“When I read this, especially this part, it’s just a joke to me that they can claim that this is a slight amendment.”

In a September speech, Prime Minister Hun Sen called for factories to drop their complaints and allow workers to return to their jobs.

“There has been no proper solution for the workers who are suspended,” coalition president Ath Thun said. “The government has tried to negotiate to help the workers return to work, but GMAC and the factories will not listen to them.”

CCHR accused employers of trying to intimidate union representatives by filing complaints against them, and said complaints should have instead been filed against the unions as a whole. Loo said GMAC had declined to pursue complaints against the unions generally “as a sign of good faith”, but that individual factories had acted at their own discretion.

China's 12th Five Year Plan: The Coming Storm On Wages [-Cambodia's wage storm is already brewing]

November 03, 2010
By Steve Dickinson
ChinaLawBlog.com

The 5th Plenum of the 17th CCP Central Committee completed its meeting in Beijing on October 18. here is the full text of that meeting. Aside from various political issues, the major task of the plenum was to adopt the outline for the 12th Five Year Plan that will guide China's economic development of China from 2011 to 2015.

The plenum approved the outline for the plan, entitled The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee's Proposal on Formulating the Twelfth Five-year Program (2011-2015) on National Economic and Social Development. The Chinese version of that document was published on October 27. The formal plan will be drafted on the basis of the Proposal and will be submitted for approval at the next meeting of the National People’s Congress, scheduled for March 2011. One wonders what China will do in the first quarter of 2011 when there is no formal plan in effect. I am reviewing the Proposal and will publish some reports on its contents shortly.

Though there has been much speculation and discussion in the foreign press regarding the probable contents of the 12th Plan, I have been looking more at the the concerns of the local Chinese. In preparing for my review of the Proposal, my research assistant and I gathered several hundred pages of local Chinese language internet news reports on the 12th Five Year Plan. I was surprised to find that over 80% of the concerns were about a single issue: income disparity. The following concerns were constantly expressed:

• There is a growing disparity between the highest income earners and the lowest income earners (the GINI coefficient).
• There is a growing disparity between the incomes of urban residents and rural residents.
• There is a growing disparity between the incomes of residents of the coastal provinces and the residents of the rest of Western, Central and Northeast China.

These are common complaints of “uneven development” that have been the subject of concern in China for some time. We also saw the following new, more troubling, concerns consistently expressed:

• The percentage increase in the wages of Chinese citizens has not grown as fast as the percentage increase in China's overall GDP.
• Though China has a high savings rate, the percentage increase in the savings of Chinese citizens has not increased at the same rate as the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index. This means that even though the Chinese save, they are actually falling behind in terms of wealth accumulation.

Overall, the feeling is that "if China is now the second largest economy in the world, why don’t we feel better off?" The underlying theme is that "clearly China has made a lot of money over the past 10 years, but where did all that money go?" It certainly did not go into the pockets of the Chinese urban factory and service workers and it certainly did not go into the pockets of the Chinese farmers.

This theme is the basis for the new book by Lang Xianping 郎咸平 (Larry H.P Lang), a distinguished Hong Kong University Chinese economist. Lang’s new book, published in September, is entitled “Why Is Our Life So Hard? Why Is Our Income So Low? Why Are Our Prices so High? Why Do Our Businesses Struggle So Hard?” (我们的日子为什么这么难) (He apparently likes long titles). This book has only been out for a month and is already the number 2 best seller in Qingdao. This shows how its theme resonates with the local public. Professor Lang also has a blog (in Chinese) here.

In the first chapter of the book, Lang points out the strangeness of wage structure with the following key numbers:

• In 2009, China's domestic consumption as a percent of GDP was 29%. No modern country has ever achieved such a low number. The number for the U.S. is about 70%. Even the number for Africa is about 50%.
• The percentage of wages in China as a portion of GDP is 8%. This number is so low that it really cannot be understood. The number in the U.S. is 58%. The number in Mexico is 33%. The number in the Philippines is 27%. In most of Africa, the number is 20%.
• China has the lowest average wage in the industrial world at $.80 per hour, with the highest number of hours worked at 2,200 per year. Compare this to Brazil, for example, where the average hourly wage is $2.25 and the average hours worked per year is 1,841.

Given this data it is no surprise the average Chinese worker feels left out of China's economic miracle. That is, the “economic miracle” was created by sacrificing the Chinese wage earner. Lang’s point, stated more forcefully, is that these numbers show there has been no Chinese miracle for the average Chinese.

I will leave the obvious social and political implications to others and just examine what this all means for foreign businesses in or involved with China.

Clearly, the pressure is enormous in China for an upward push in wages in every segment of the economy. This means that for foreign businesses outsourcing product in China, making product in China and operating service businesses in China the party is over. All companies operating in China will see sharp increases in wages over the next five years. This trend simply cannot be avoided. This sharp increase in Chinese wages will then have a knock on effect, pulling up wages in places like Vietnam and Cambodia that look to China for a lead in manufacturing wages and costs. This is the future. Get ready for it.

Professor Lang answers the "why" question he poses in his book's title by asserting it is all a European/American imperialist plot explicitly designed to exploit China on an imperialist model. This answer is why he is permitted to publish his gloomy books: all of China’s many problems can be attributed to foreign plots. Lang is an interesting character: a Wharton School PhD who is an avowed student of Lenin’s views of Western imperialism. He is by far the most popular economics writer in China today and must be taken seriously. Though I question his mono-causal analysis, I agree with much of what he says in this and other books about the structure of the Chinese economy.

China's wage storm is coming.

What do you think?

‘Beer girls’ underpaid: report

A beer seller refills glasses for young men at a beer garden in Phnom Penh. A report has found that beer promotion women in Siem Reap town are underpaid. (Photo by: Sovan Philong)

Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Will Baxter
The Phnom Penh Post

FEMALE beer promotion workers in Siem Reap town earned salaries that covered only half of their living expenses last year, a fact that led some 57 percent to engage in sex work, according to a report released last week by a Siem Reap-based NGO.

The report, co-authored by Ian Lubek, a psychology professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, is an updated version of an older report, and draws from interviews with 900 women.

International and domestic beer companies operating in Cambodia offered average monthly incomes of about US$81, but workers, often referred to around the country as “beer girls”, said they needed between US$160 and $209 to cover monthly expenses and support their families, according to the report.

Those women who did engage in sex work to supplement their salaries said they had accepted a standard price of US$25 per session, and participated in 2.5 sessions per month, giving them an additional monthly income of $62.50, the report said.

“Most of the problem is that these women are underpaid. They need a living wage,” Lubek said Monday. “The average beer seller has about 3.5 dependants for whom they are responsible.”

The salaries on offer, he added, place “additional pressure on each woman to bring in extra income”.

“About half of these women feel obliged to sell sex,” he said.

The report, produced for the NGO Siem Reap Citizens for Health, Educational and Social Issues, is titled: “Health, safety and security for Cambodian women beer sellers were substandard in 2009: Urgent actions are still required by all major brewers (AB/INBEV, Carlsberg, HEINEKEN/Asia Pacific Breweries, SAB/Miller, Guinness, San Miguel, Bavaria, Asahi, etc.)”.

Lack of education

Women interviewed for the report said they had limited access to HIV/AIDS treatment and sex-education programmes, and the report recommends that basic health and sex education be provided to beer sellers on their first day of work.

Lubek said that 37 percent of beer sellers do not receive health training for more than a year after they begin work, and that some never do. He added that most reported consuming an average of 1.5 litres of beer per night.

“Unless they know about the dangers of alcohol and unsafe sex, in a country with a high rate of HIV infection, this puts them at greater risk,” he said.

In 2006, Heineken International, Carlsberg A/S, Guinness and Co, Asia Pacific Breweries, Cambodia Brewery Ltd and Cambrew Ltd formed the organisation Beer Selling Industry Cambodia (BSIC), “with the objective of improving the health, safety and working conditions of beer promoters by setting industry standards,” according to its website.

A spokesman for the Heineken-affiliated Cambodia Brewery Ltd, 80 percent of which is owned by Asia Pacific Breweries, declined to comment on Monday. Representatives of Cambrew Ltd, of which Carlsberg has a majority stake, could not be reached for comment.

Shadowy Workrooms [Sweatshops] Hurting Garment Industry

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
04 February 2010

Early one recent morning, Tol Sokhim rode her bicycle from her home in Kandal province’s Prek Treng village to a small workroom 2 kilometers away. The 20-year-old had recently quit work at the Good Fame garment factory, a bit farther away, for the workroom, to save on transportation costs and to feel a bit more secure in her commute.

Tol Sokhim is like many workers who have begun working in a shadowy area of garment manufacturing in the country, that of subcontracted workrooms, unregistered businesses where conditions can be worse than factories and labor laws ignored.

“The main factory is far from my house, and I have to spend more, so I changed to work in the workroom near my house,” she said. That saved her $6.50 a month, a considerable percentage of her wages.

Another worker, Mao Marea, in Sa’ang district, said she liked her job in a small workroom. It was closer to her house, allowing her parents to pick her up from work and it allowed her to save money.

The environment was “normal,” she said, except in the height of the hot season.

“They don’t have enough electric fans for the workers, and no ventilation machines in the workroom,” she said.

Even if they are favored by some workers, labor activists say the workrooms can be dangerous. Officials estimate there are hundreds of these subcontractors, employing between 300 and 700 workers apiece and paying between $60 and $70 a month.

The unregistered businesses can circumvent labor laws and violate workers rights, experts say.

“They do like this in order to avoid responsibilities for work conditions and the labor law, said Moeun Tola, head of the labor program unit at the Cambodian Legal Education Center.

Countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh or Nepal deal with similar problems, and labor activists in those countries work hard to ensure such businesses register and obey labor laws.

“When they close, it is difficult to find anybody responsible,” he said. “They use this style like a construction style.”

The government needs to do more to audit such workrooms to ensure they meet labor standards and worker rights, he said. The workrooms also lose revenue for the government, by avoiding taxes and by lowering the number of legitimate factories.

The conditions in some workrooms are difficult.

In Prek Thmey village, Sa’ang district, workers go in and out of a small building completely made of corrugated tin. It is impossible to enter if you are not a worker.

Such buildings have no names, and their owners are hard to find. Of 11 such business owners contacted by VOA Khmer recently, none would be interviewed. Some remained hidden in the work rooms, while other refused to talk without giving a specific reason.

Nearby, worker Pan Senphoum said the secrecy was due to the poor conditions faced by employees.

“In fact, they use electric fans too, but once you use the fan more than eight hours, the wind from the fan can turn hot,” he said. “We don’t have a machine to cool the tin, so it is really hot. The walls and the roof are all tin. It is dusty everywhere, and they don’t even have clean water for workers.”

Workers are paid poorly and eat poorly, he said, leading to a decline in overall health. There are no benefits, no overtime wages, no annual bonus and no maternity leave.

Ly Chantha, who is employed by a workroom in Prek Toch village, said workers do not receive enough salary, and not on time.

“When they don’t have shirts for us to sew, they say they will give us salaries, but when they have shirts, they say they will pay us by the number of shirts we can sew in a day,” she said. “They pay us so cheaply, only $0.35 for 12 shirts, even though we want them to increase that by $0.05. They still have not approved that.”

The presence of unregistered workrooms could also damage the work Cambodia has done towards making a name for itself in good labor conditions. This has been sought as a competitive advantage, as Cambodian manufacturing can cost more and labor skills are lower than in competing countries.

Buyers like Levi Straus, Gap, Nike Air and Walt Disney demand respect for labor standards and worker rights. Such buyers can lose confidence in Cambodia if the country does not respect its promises of high standards, Art Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers, told VOA Khmer.

The presence of workrooms can decrease the impact of demonstrations or strikes, he said, because they allow owners to subcontract their work. He would welcome such businesses if they operated legally, he said.

Ken Loo, general secretary of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia, said his organization does not approve of such workrooms if they are not registered with the ministries of Commerce or Labor.

“We don’t support such practices,” he said. “In fact, during the world economic crisis, currently, they don’t use such subcontract workrooms, because the main factory itself does not have enough orders.”

Um Mean, an undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Labor, told VOA Khmer the workrooms do exist, though some of them are legal, handling overflow from factories that cannot meet their orders.

“Some places are not fit to standards, but they only work through necessary emergencies required by the main factory,” he said.

A Commerce Ministry official said the government has learned of the smaller workrooms, but lacks clear evidence about them.

“We are working on this issue,” the official said. “This is our country’s reputation. What we’ve promised to buyers we must respect.”

Garment factories face labor shortage as workers quit

Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Eath Daravuth
The Mekong Times

The backbone of Cambodia’s exports – the garment industry – is facing a labor shortage as skyrocketing goods prices are pushing workers to seek more lucrative jobs in restaurants and night clubs, work illegally in neighboring Thailand, or return to their home provinces to farm.

Chea Mony, president of leading garment factory union the Free Trade Union, said more than 20,000 garment workers have resigned since mid-April.

“The recent US$6 monthly bonus given to our workers was supposed to help them cover daily expenses as goods prices have been rising so much,” he said. “[But] many factories are now facing a labor shortage.” He said major factories encountering this problem were Kandal province’s Clorite and New Mingda Factories, but there were many more. “The textile industry is Cambodia’s biggest earner and the industry will decline in the future if the government cannot curb the inflation rate and corruption.”

Kong Sang, deputy president of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), said many garment workers have left their jobs, and many factories are finding it difficult to employ workers.

“I do not know the reason behind the decline,” he said.

Kong Sang’s comment was supported by Cambodian Confederation of Trade Unions leader Chhoun Momthol.

“This decline in the labor force at factories could be associated with the fact that a large number of factories have moved from Phnom Penh to the provinces,” he said. “This has caused workers to stop working in Phnom Penh and move to their home provinces. As well as this, it is because some workers are switching from small factories to large ones which offer them higher salaries. Some factories cannot employ workers as the salaries they offer are too low.”

Oun Mean, under secretary of state for labor, admitted that some factories found it difficult to employ workers, but added that he did not know the exact number of workers who have quit their jobs at the factories.

“The labor shortage [in the garment industry] is due to the growth of other sectors such as construction, tourism and the agro-industry, which have attracted the labor force from the garment factories. As well as this, because some factories have been established in the workers’ home provinces, they [do not need to move to Phnom Penh],” he said.

Labour shortages in Cambodia's garment industry

Protest of garment workers at the Fortune textile factory (Photo: SRP)

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
ABC Radio Australia

Unions and manufacturers are at odds over the supply of labour in Cambodia.

Cambodia's garment industry says it is facing labour shortages with the cost of living forcing garment workers out of Phnom Penh.

Manufacturers are planning to shift production to the provinces to cope.

But the unions say the real problem is low pay.

Most of Cambodia's 300-odd garment factories are located in and around the capital of Phnom Penh.

For more than a decade they've been a magnet to young women from the provinces - seeking monthly salaries of $US60.

But now many of the 400,000 workers are heading in the opposite direction, forced out of the capital by the spiralling cost of living.

Chea Mony, the President of the Free Trade Unions of Workers in Kingdom of Cambodia, told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program, the factories are now competing for the workers who are left.

They've asked him to recruit thousands of workers but, he says, he simply cannot find them.

"Some factories order 1,000, some order 2,000 and some order 500 workers and we cannot find that many workers," Mr Mony said.

The Garment Manufacturing Association in Cambodia, GMAC, says factories from around the capital are planning to disperse to the provinces with the support of the government.

However, Chea Mony says if factories move to the provinces, workers would be likely to be exploited with low salaries and poorer conditions.

"There wouldn't be any unions and the law wouldn't be respected.

"They would simply say if you can work with us you continue to work, or if you cannot cope with it, then it's up to you," Mr Mony said.

He says workers are deserting garment factories to find higher paying jobs in Thailand.

Search for better pay

Chea Mony says even doubling Cambodia's current minimum wage wouldn't meet the basic needs of a factory worker living in the capital.

Chan Sophal, president of Cambodia's Economist Association, believes Cambodia's real inflation rate is about 30 per cent - well above the most recent official figure of 18.7 per cent.

He says Cambodia still has plenty of labour available but warns that at current low rates of pay garment factories will continue to lose workers.

"To say Cambodia is short of labour is not true.

"[There are] at least 200,000 workers now in Thailand, Malaysia, Korea.

"Especially in rural areas, wages also are rising so the garment industry has to offer attractive wages if they want labour," Mr Sophal said.

Immigrant women describe plights

At a press conference hosted by the Taiwan International Family Association yesterday, Ruan Fan Chiu-hsiang from Vietnam tearfully reveals her hardships as a foreign worker in Taiwan, saying that she has helped her Taiwanese husband to recycle metal since the day she arrived in Taiwan, but often made mistakes and got laughed at by others. (CNA)

Monday, April 28, 2008
The China Post news staff (Taiwan)

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Most working women who have immigrated from Southeast Asia are plagued by five major plights, including job discrimination, having to work multiple jobs, no labor insurance, no overtime pay and low wages, according to findings of a survey conducted by the Taiwan International Family Association (TIFA).

The TIFA conducted one-on-one interviews with 75 Southeast Asian women married to Taiwanese residents, between February and April.

Although Southeast Asian spouses of Taiwanese citizens do not require a work permit, TIFA found that local employers often refuse to hire immigrant women as they lack a work permit or national ID card, or that they speak poor Chinese.

"We speak Chinese with an accent, but we deserve an opportunity to demonstrate our working ability," said Yeh Pei-chi, a Thai woman who married a Taiwanese citizen 13 years ago.

"If we are proven incapable, then don't hire us, but don't refuse to hire us simply because we are foreigners," Yeh said.

She recalled that she was once rejected by a factory employer who told her that "we don't hire foreign spouses," a common example of job discrimination experienced by many female immigrant workers in Taiwan.

The TIFA also found that 72 percent of the women interviewed do not have the labor insurance to which they are entitled, while 68 percent work overtime without overtime pay, said Wang Shu-chuan, executive secretary of the association.

The association also observed that half of the immigrant women in the southern port city of Kaohsiung need to have multiple jobs to support their families, many of them working in restaurants or breakfast shops, she noted.

Wang called for greater attention to job discrimination and the predicaments faced by immigrant women in Taiwan, saying hat the Council of Labor Affairs and local governments should raise the awareness of immigrants' working rights and related rules among local employers and immigrants.

Chang Yu-hua, executive director of TIFA, described female immigrants in Taiwan as "new low-level workers," as many of them work as restaurant staff, household maids, or small factory workers.

Immigrant women need to learn local languages and adapt to a new environment but do not have strong emotional support as they do not have many family members and friends in Taiwan, Chang added, urging the public to offer care and help. Taiwan has more than 123,000 foreign spouses from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia, as well as over 270,000 from China, Japan and South Korea.

Near Anniversary of Leader's Murder, Union Calls for Mass Rally Over Salaries

Funeral of Chea Vichea in 2004

By Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
10 January 2008

A trade union in Cambodia is seeking government permission to hold a massive rally Jan. 25 over workers' salaries and the rising cost of living in Cambodia.

Chea Mony, brother of slain union leader Chea Vichea and president of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, told VOA Khmer he was seeking permission to gather 100,000 workers.

The proposed rally would come just three days after the fourth anniversary of the murder of Chea Vichea, which sparked widespread worker unrest.

Cambodia earns much of its foreign revenue from garment factories, and unions continually clash with authorities over their rights.

Chea Vichea was murdered Jan. 22, 2004.

In two separate letters, to Minister of Education Kol Pheng and Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema, Chea Mony requested permission to rally 100,000 workers from 180 factories near Olympic Stadium.

"If the wage is still low while inflation keeps increasing, and the garment factory associations have shown the increase in products in both 2006 and 2007—up to 12 percent—we'd like them to use those profits to increase the salaries of the workers," Chea Mony said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hun Sen told the Cambodian Union Federation in a letter Thursday the government's response to inflation could be to raise the minimum wage to $72 per month, while their living expenses are only $30 per month.

Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Union Federation, called the response "an excuse and temporary answer to avoid dealing with the problems, while inflation is worsening.