Background
Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia and home to the country's garment industry, generates more than ninety per cent of Cambodia's exports -supplying clothes and shoes to the mega stores of the EU and USA.
Ninety per cent of all garment workers are women. Most of them have migrated to Phnom Penh from poor rural areas, to support their relatives. Families put enormous pressure on them, often leaving them with barely enough to survive.
Exploitation continues outside the factories: rents for dormitories are high, water and electricity cost more than the normal rate, and only private health services are available. Transport may cost more than 25 per cent of a monthly salary.
Cambodia's government has signed a trade agreement with the US, which includes a labor rights clause. Bizarrely, this means that it is now up to the United States to police Cambodia's labor practices - and thus determine the working lives of almost 200,000 people. But the United States' decisions on trade are motivated more by its own political agenda than by any desire to protect workers in poor countries.
It's the large international corporations (that are driven by the desire to find cheap labor), which really have the power to raise standards for workers. Huge corporations know that they need to clean up their image and stand up for workers' rights. Consumers around the world are waking up to the bad practices that bring them their clothes.
While most transnational companies have adopted codes of conduct on employment, the benefits have been limited. Some companies with exemplary codes of conduct are being supplied by subcontractors, which violate basic employment rights.
Transnational companies can create market conditions that make it impossible for subcontractors to improve conditions for their workers. These include intense pressure to keep prices low, including threats to relocate supply to other countries with cheaper labor markets, and stringent delivery deadlines that pressure companies to violate agreements on working hours.
To avoid the risk of organized protests by workers or trade unions, Cambodia - like other countries in the region - is creating Export Industrial Zones. In these, the workers will live isolated from the rest of the country. According to the draft law that regulates the zones, "people can be arrested without warrant".
Cambodian women working in the garment industry face enormous pressure - from the world's most powerful companies and countries; from their own government and society; and even from the organization that are supposed to protect them.