Unionists face embezzlement trial + ‘Anti-union bias’ in factories + Wage raise decision in Oct: gov

Phnom Penh Municipal Court is set to hear the civil case against the top three leaders of Cambodia’s largest independent garment union from a former member who alleges the trio embezzled more than $90,000.

Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU) president Ath Thorn, vice president Kong Athit and secretary-general Ek Sopheakdey will appear before a judge on July 2, union officials said yesterday.

Former CCAWDU member Um Visal alleges the trio pocketed $93,000 of a settlement they reached with E Garment to rehire 30 workers with 46 months’ back pay.

“He wants to put himself as leader of C.CAWDU,” Athit said of Visal, who has asked the court in a letter to name him the union’s interim chief. “We are very confident in our position.”

Visal yesterday said he was not sure what evidence he will bring. “I do not know about the documents or what evidence I have to bring yet, because everything is prepared by my lawyer.”

Visal and former C.CAWDU member Roeun Chanthorn also say they were forced out of the union because of their investigation of the alleged embezzlement. Current C.CAWDU leadership say the two refused to sign new contracts when their old ones expired.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/unionists-face-embezzlement-trial

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Discrimination against unions and incidents of garment factory managers interfering with freedom of association has slightly increased in the past year, a report from an International Labour Organization (ILO) factory-monitoring group says.

Factory managers’ hindrance of workers’ freedom of association rose by 2 per cent and anti-union bias climbed by 1 per cent, a synthesis report from the ILO’s Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) says. Data for the report were collected from 362 garment and nine shoe factories between May 2013 and this past April.

“We have to try new strategies to see more improvement,” Jill Tucker BFC’s chief technical adviser, said of the report, which also found improvements in areas including personal protection equipment and managers allowing sick leave. “The improvements are too small for my liking.”

In March, BFC launched a transparency database on its website, which publicly names factories that do not comply with critical issues such as correctly paid overtime wages and proper emergency exit doors.

Tucker said she hopes the database will push factory managers to follow Cambodia’s labour law more closely. There are currently 61 factories listed on the database, but that number will rise to 155 by the end of this week. “We need to see much more of a steady upper trend,” Tucker said.

Joel Preston, a consultant for the Community Legal Education Center, yesterday agreed that action against unions has increased over the past year.

“It’s been unprecedented … we had over 1,000 union dismissals in the past 12 months,” Preston said.

BFC’s data show that 9 per cent of factories interfered with freedom of association, a figure Preston said “seems really low”.

The report also says that one likely cause of managers stymieing union rights and subjecting employees to poor working conditions is a disconnect between workers and their bosses.

“The absence of Occupational Health and Safety Committees in 71% of factories underlines the lack of engagement between workers and management on these issues,” the report reads, highlighting such areas as heat levels, obstructed access paths and a lack of proper equipment for handling chemicals.

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The controversial matter of next year’s garment sector minimum wage will be finalised in October and put into effect on January 1, a Ministry of Labour committee decided yesterday.

At a meeting of the Labour Advisory Committee (LAC) at the Labour Ministry, Minister of Labour Ith Sam Heng advised unions and employers to begin their own internal discussions about wages in July. Talks between the two groups will take place at the Ministry of Labour in August, he said.

“After August, we will have another meeting between unions, employers and the Ministry of Labour to discuss the minimum wage in September,” Sam Heng said. “In October, we will discuss and make the final decision of how much the . . . wage will be increased in 2015.”

The LAC’s decision in December to set 2014’s minimum wage at $95 per month, later changed by Sam Heng to $100, caused a nationwide strike led by unions who demanded their monthly floor wage be $160. The strike ended in deadly violence in early January.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/wage-raise-decision-oct-gov%E2%80%99t