Cambodia’s Siem Reap temple complex draws millions of tourists each year. But what most tourists do not see are the restoration workers like Ong Kay, who are paid low wages and toil under the hot sun without safety clothing or equipment to protect against falling stones and other hazards.
Ong describes his experience in the latest personal narrative at the Solidarity Center Workers Equality Forum.
Sok Rathana, 19, has been a domestic worker in Cambodia for two years, working 100 hours a month for $70 while attending high school. Her family is poor, and her mother also is a domestic worker.
As in many countries, domestic workers in Cambodia are not covered by labor laws and so have no minimum wage, safety and health protections or other basic employment benefits.
As Sok says, “I don’t think I have full rights as a domestic worker.”
Lack of job protections, combined with the invisibility of their work, means many domestic workers toil long hours in unsafe conditions without a minimum wage or access to health care, sick leave or pensions. In Cambodia, domestic workers, who are not recognized as workers under national labor law or protected by Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN) agreements, are pushing their government to guarantee minimum labor standards.
Nearly 100 domestic workers rallied recently in Phnom Penh in support of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. The convention, which mandates regular working hours, fair pay and access to social benefit programs, is an important international standard for domestic workers who seek decent work. The Association of Cambodian Domestic Workers (ACDW), the Cambodian Domestic Workers Network (CDWN) and the Solidarity Center jointly organized the event to celebrate International Domestic Workers’ Day on June 16.
The domestic workers’ unions also have debuted a documentary that examines issues arising from domestic workers’ precarious job status, with workers telling their own stories. For example, Hang Sothea, 47 and divorced, is the mother of eight children. To support her family, she has cleaned houses since 2010, working 180 hours for two employers each month—for a total wage of $170.
In contrast, the minimum wage for Cambodia’s garment workers is $153 a month, and the law limits working hours to 48 a week.
Another domestic worker featured in the video, Sok Rathana, 19, has been working as a domestic worker for two years while she attends high school. Explaining how she followed her mother into the profession she says: “I think I’m not good enough to do other jobs, but I can do most of the house work.” Rathana receives $70 a month for her work.
A recent survey of Cambodian domestic workers underscores how lack of legal protection can lead to exploitation for domestic workers. Of the 600 workers interviewed, 60 percent make less than $50 a month and 83 percent report being uninsured. Many say they are forced to work overtime. Even among workers who report having asked for overtime, 18 percent say they never received compensation for those hours. The nonprofit Center for Policy Studies conducted the survey, with Solidarity Center support.
Through organizations like ACDW, CDWN and the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), which coordinates domestic workers globally to push for passage of Convention 189, Cambodian domestic workers have been petitioning the government for formal recognition of their rights. They say ratification of Convention 189 is a necessary first step toward covering the gaps in Cambodia labor laws and regional agreements that have deprived domestic workers of their worker rights.
In Cambodia’s booming construction industry, where up to 250,000 workers toil on building projects during peak season, laborers wear sandals or flip-flops and cloth gloves, if they have gloves at all, their heads covered only with towels or soft hats they bring to work.
One-third are women, who receive lower wages and are limited to the least skilled tasks that offer no opportunities for training and advancement. These construction workers risk their lives each day on the job, scaling tall structures without harnesses, helmets or other safety equipment and often are not paid for weeks. Their wages are disproportionately lower than the wages of foreign workers. At one site, for instance, a foreign worker receives $1,000 per month with a $300 allowance while his Cambodian colleagues receive between $160 and $240 a month.
Cambodia’s construction industry is one of the fastest growing sources of employment. In 2015, construction became the most dynamic driver of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), outpacing the country’s garment and footwear industries. Corporations from China, South Korea, Japan, and Thailand—at least 18 countries in all—have directed 284 projects, a construction area nearly five square miles worth $4.3 billion, between 2000 and August 2016.
The country’s lack of a labor inspection system to ensure compliance with national labor law allows employers to avoid receiving fines or other punitive measures when workers are injured on the job or are paid subminimum wages. As a result, construction workers do not have access to fundamental workplace rights like safety equipment, as stipulated in the country’s labor laws. Workers also receive little or no safety training.
“Based on a report we conducted in 2015, we discovered that more than 2,000 construction workers have been injured on construction sites,” says Yann Thy, secretary-general of Building and Wood Workers Trade Union Federation of Cambodia (BWTUC). “Out of this figure, 36 died.”
Yet when they seek to form unions and improve their working conditions, they often suffer retaliation, violence and imprisonment, as do garment workers and other workers across Cambodia, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
A 2016 trade union law further limits workers’ ability to negotiate over their working conditions and pay. Cambodia is now one of 10 countries ranked the worst for working people, according to the ITUC’s annual Global Rights Index.
Despite the obstacles, BWTUC, assisted by the global union, Building and Wood Workers International (BWI), the Solidarity Center and other international rights organizations, assist construction workers across Cambodia to form unions, enabling workers to break the cycle of poverty perpetuated by low-wage, dangerous jobs.
Angkor Archaeological Park generates $63.6 million in ticket sales but reconstruction workers are paid as little as $1 a day. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jennifer Bogar
When tourists enter Cambodia’s massive Angkor Archaeological Park, they are greeted by stunning temples carved with intricate sculptures built for the Khmer Empire, ruler of a large portion of Southeast Asia between the ninth and 15th centuries. Spreading over 154 square miles, the complex contains hundreds of buildings and monuments that had long decayed in disrepair.
Many buildings have now been restored, and while tourists encounter ancient structures resembling their original state, they are less likely to notice the construction workers laboring in often brutally hot conditions to make tourists’ trips Facebook friendly.
As a World Heritage site, Angkor is covered by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) restoration and conservation guidelines which provide for architectural and environmental safeguards—but include no such protections for workers.
Chhen Sophal worked for years on the massive Baphuon Temple, eating little for lunch and dinner so he would have enough money to support his family.
With support of a union federation that later merged into BWTUC, and the global union movement, the workers held an official union election and ultimately negotiated with their employer, raising wages to $15 a day and securing payment in dollars, which are more easily exchangeable than the Cambodian riel. Through ongoing pressure, they also ensured their employer keep its commitments to provide health care, workplace safety improvements and full implementation of 18 days paid annual leave.
Yet Chhen Sophal, who was a union leader at the site, knows that hundreds of thousands of construction workers across Cambodia still receive below-poverty wages, and he seeks to improve conditions beyond his workplace.
“In the future, I hope that we will be able to push for a sector minimum wage for the restoration workers,” he said through a translator. “I want to stand up for wages for next generation—even outside of restoration and construction sector.” Chhen Sophal says he wants to ensure that if his children become construction or restoration workers, they will receive decent wages and their workplaces will be safe.
Knowing that conditions in garment factories around the world should be improved is not the same as seeing those workplaces firsthand and talking with garment workers about their daily experiences on the job, as three Parsons Design students found out when they traveled from New York City to Cambodia.
“Hearing their stories, and seeing that they are more than just a number, was something that was really eye-opening,” says Allison Griffin, a dual fashion-journalism major who took part in a video project by Re/Make, a U.S.-based non-profit organization focused on ethical production of clothes and other other garments.
Griffin, Casey Barber and Anh Le, all of whom graduated last week, met last fall with garment workers like the woman who described the high penalty she faces for making a mistake when assembling garments.
“If there are 12 pieces and I forget to put a code on one piece, they don’t pay me for any of them,” she says. “I get nothing for that day.”
She is among some of the more than 200 women whose employer last July abruptly closed the knitwear plant where some of them had worked for up to 18 years, leaving the workers without jobs or the more than $500,000 in compensation owed them.
The tragedy of their story goes beyond a single knitwear plant in Phnom Penh. Workers throughout the global supply chain that fuels multinational corporations often face poverty wages, dangerous and unsafe working conditions, eroding rights on the job—and employers who find it all-too easy to abandon a plant in one country, only to open another elsewhere.
The students also met Sreyneang, a garment worker who invited the students to her home, where they met her two daughters whom she is supporting because her husband is unable to work.
“Every day when I finish my work (at one factory), I have to work at other factories until 9 or 10 p.m.,” says Sreyneang. “I walk home late.”
Sreyneang expressed hope the video can help improve the working conditions of Cambodia’s garment workers.
“It’s a lot to handle,” says Barber, speaking through tears on the video. “But hopefully we can make people understand and make change.”