Garment workers’ unions and human rights groups recently held a people’s tribunal in Feburary to investigate the state of povery pay in the Cambodia garment industry.  The tribunal called for evidence from a wide variety of stakeholders  including over 200 workers who work for factories manufacturing clothes for Adidas and Puma.

All of this follows strikes involving 200 000 workers, dismissals of 1000 union leaders and mass faintings induced by malnutrition of garment workers.

The tribunal concluded that workers are not being paid sufficient wages to lift them out of poverty, one of the main causes being that massive inflation in Cambodia has seen a real wage of loss of over 14% in real terms.

The problem today is that “Despite experiencing sustained growth in the sector, Cambodia’s minimum wage allowance is US $66 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.”

It also concluded that despite their PR talk, big clothing manufacturers are still failing to do enough to sort out ‘supply side issues’

Just thought I’d post this briefly as a succinct update on the latests evidence of sweat shop labour – students can obviously use the example in any essay on the failure of TNCs,  the downsides of economic globalisation, or the continued relevance of dependency theory.

The above is summarised from an extract in the latest consumer magazine.