AsiaLIFE

The garment industry accounts for around US$2 billion of Cambodia’s Gross 
Domestic Product per year. With predominantly female workforces, garment 
factories offer some Cambodian women opportunities—yet are they enough? 
Mai Lynn Miller Nguyen takes a look at the heroines of the garment industry.
 Photo by James Grant.

On a Sunday morning, around 500 garment factory workers are assembled on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. For many of them, this is their only day off for the week. And they have chosen to spend it learning about their labour rights.

Garment Workers Open University is a one-day course run by Better Factories Cambodia (BFC), a unique programme of the International Labour Organization. Today’s training covers the Cambodian Labour Law.

In one classroom, the morning session is just about to finish with a discussion on how to calculate wages. After a lunch break, which includes edutainment skits about the prevention of HIV/AIDS and domestic violence, the workers will discuss issues of occupational health and safety, as well as their own responsibilities under the law.

It seems an ordinary scene at a university or, judging by how young some of the workers look, a girls’ high school. Yet for most of these women, school was traded for the factories so that they could help support their families.

Working women
In the country’s shift toward an industrialised economy, young women are the cogs in the machine of Cambodia’s third highest-earning industry, behind tourism and agriculture.
According to the Cambodian Researchers for Development around 90 percent of the 300,000 garment factory workers are women. As the girlish faces at the Open University indicate, most workers are under the age of 25, with the legal minimum working age at 15.

“It’s important to recognise the value of the industry and the women that are working so hard,” says Catherine Vaillancourt-Laflamme, training specialist at BFC. “They are the ones driving the development of Cambodia. They are the heroines of Cambodia.”

The current minimum wage is US$61 dollars per month. In Cambodia, that salary is a necessity.

“Children, generally, and girls in particular, grow up knowing that they are going to help their family,” explains Bindi Borg, programme coordinator at CARE International, an NGO focusing on empowering women and their communities that has been working with Cambodian garment factory workers for 12 years. “It is unspoken perhaps, but it is clear that is what they are going to do.”

Which side of the law?
Around 262 export garment factories are registered in the Better Factories Cambodia programme, which is mandated to monitor and report on these factories and help them to improve working conditions and productivity.

BFC reports a high level of compliance with the labour law among registered factories.

Yet not everyone is fortunate to work in one of these compliant factories.

One 30-year old woman interviewed outside her workplace reported that her factory requires working 12-hour days for up to seven days a week, well beyond the legal allowance of 48 hours over six days and two optional paid overtime hours per day.

Her overtime is forced and not appropriately compensated, claims Srey Pich (name has been changed),  who earns around US$80. If she wants to visit her child in Kampot Province, Srey Pich is penalised US$7 a day for her absence.

If she had any other option to support herself and her child, Srey Pich says she would quit her job at once. For the moment, her
income sends her son to school.

“This factory is only for people with no choice,” she says. “Otherwise, I would not go to work because the salary is very low and the conditions are very hard.”

Leng Leakena is a member of the Messenger Band, a group of former and current garment workers. She believes that worker exploitation is intrinsic to the system.

“Most factories do not follow the labour law,” she says. “If the employer is compliant with the law, how can they benefit from the workers?”

Best practice
Kevin Plenty disagrees. He manages Quantum Clothing, a British manufacturing factory formerly known as New Island. In its ten years of existence, Quantum has built a reputation for its commitment to the welfare of its 1,800 workers.

Filled with neat rows of sewing stations, ample lighting and workers dressed in uniforms, the factory floor is a temple to efficiency—creating an atmosphere that bears more resemblance to a hospital than a sweatshop.

Workers do five nine and a half hour shifts per week. They also have the opportunity to work overtime on Saturdays. For the two-thirds of workers who are paid by the piece, the overtime day tends to be the most productive, as they are paid twice their normal rate. Quantum states that operators earn an average salary of US$150 per month.

The piecework system can benefit both workers and company.

“Our efficiency is well above the normal average for the country. Because our workers earn by piecework, our productivity is higher. The company wins by better productivity, the operators win by earning better living wages for their family,” says Plenty.

Quantum offers workers incentives, including English lessons for interested employees. Over a hundred workers currently receive two hours of tuition per week, and a new class will begin the course in the next six months.

Free healthcare is another benefit. Through a micro health insurance scheme operated by French NGO GRET, Quantum ensures that all workers have access to seven public health facilities, additional to the in-house medical clinic required by labour law.

A total of 5,000 workers are enrolled in the Health Insurance Project, with Quantum as the sole factory to have 100 percent worker inclusion. Whereas factories are responsible for half the monthly cost, a sum of 80 cents with workers paying the remainder, Quantum covers the entire US$1.60.

“We try to make sure that when they come in to work, all they’re thinking about is their work,” explains Plenty.

A living wage?
Quantum workers are said to receive twice the minimum wage, including piecework incentives and seniority and attendance bonuses. though most of the industry’s workers are believed to receive around US$85 a month.

A study by the Cambodia Institute of Development in February 2009 assessed a living wage as being between US$90 and US$120. A living wage is defined as one that provides decent living for a worker and dependents, allowing for some savings and excluding any overtime.

Based on a survey of over 300 factory workers, the research concluded that interviewees were spending a total of US$72 per month, including a remittance of around US$15 to their families.

To allow for family commitments, those surveyed said they spent just under US$1 per day, in contrast to the US$3 of an average resident in Phnom Penh. Some skimp on food to maximise the amount sent home to families, resorting to inexpensive, unhealthy foods or barely eating at all.

Instituted last year, the US$61 minimum wage was a US$6 increase on the previous figure set in 2005. Dissatisfaction with the minimum wage came to a head in September, when 200,000 garment workers walked out of their factories to strike for higher salaries. Demands for a living wage of US$93 were unsuccessful, and the strikes were deemed illegal.

Yet in a country where one third of the population is under the poverty line, salaries are relatively high. The World Bank estimates that the gross national income per capita is US$54 a month. The average monthly salary of a teacher, which requires education, is between US$30 and US$60.

“By working in the garment industry, I can earn enough to live by myself and send some to my family,” said one young 23-year old, a three-year factory veteran participating in the BFC Open University. “If I work in another field like construction, growing or farming, I would earn a very small amount.”

The social impact
Because most factories are located close to Phnom Penh, young women are usually living a distance from their families in the provinces. Female labour is nothing new in Cambodia, but the advent of young women living independently challenges the traditional way of life.

“This is nothing short of a social revolution,” says Borg. “15 years ago, you grew up in a village, you didn’t leave the village. Now it’s very common for young women to leave their village.
“Effectively, women’s economic value has increased, so potentially their social value has also increased.”

Though garment factory workers report that society is becoming more open, stereotypes and assumptions still linger.

“There’s a cultural dichotomy between workers being sent to the city to work and the city being not such a decent place for young Cambodian women,” says Vaillancourt-Laflamme. “If they send too much money back, depriving themselves here, some people may say, what are they doing in order to be able to send so much money? There’s this sort of assumption that maybe they aren’t pure anymore.”

Fighting social discrimination against garment factory workers is a primary goal of The Messenger Band. Formed in 2005 by the Womyn’s Agenda for Change, The Messenger Band is a group of current and former garment workers who sing about their experiences.

Leng Leakena, 26, is among the “new generation” of The Messenger Band, which now counts seven members. She has worked in the factories for seven years, and finds that female garment factory workers are often stigmatised.

“Some mothers say she is a garment worker, she cannot be my daughter-in-law,” says Leng. “They say that garment workers are not good, during the day they work in the garment factory, but afterwards they might be sex workers or massage girls.”

Precious girls
The Messenger Band encourages women to speak out about injustices, and ignorance. Besides drawing attention to these issues, they inform their families and communities about the hardship of garment workers.

“It is good if society opens to accepting garment workers,” says Leng. “We go to rural areas and we explain how hard working garment workers are. Most of the rural people also have daughters working in garment factories, so they should know about the real conditions and situations that garment workers face.”

Emphasising the value of female garment factory workers is also the aim of Precious Girl, a tri-monthly magazine that targets factory employees.

With simple vocabulary, issues are accessible to those on a low literacy level. Articles offer tips for healthy nutrition and insight into saving strategies, alongside instructions for homemade fashion. The most popular articles tend be those with real life stories of those who have found favourable outcomes in tough situations.

Editor and writer Nou Rotha, who is also employed by GRET, believes Precious Girl helps readers to strengthen their sense of self-worth and dignity. “We try to get them to think about their future, what they want to do, where they want to go,” says Nou. “Factory work can be a bridge, they can move forward to something new after they have enough money to create something.”

For a brighter future
Working in a garment factory can open up many opportunities for Cambodian women. For workers who are able to save money, the future can look much brighter.

A helping hand from an NGO certainly make a difference.

Teaching garment workers how to save is one of the objectives of CARE’s Sewing for a Brighter Future project. Sponsored by the Levi Strauss Foundation, the project began with the aim of improving knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. Now, it has moved towards promoting savings strategies, working with 10,000 female garment factory workers across eight factories. Another CARE project, Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement (P.A.C.E.), offers life skills training modules with support from GAP Inc. Life skills like communication and problem solving can help workers in their daily work and also to rise to factory management positions, such as line leaders, supervisors, and senior management.

Female management is unusual among most factories. At Quantum, Cambodian female supervisors and management are the norm—and perhaps an example to the industry. “We don’t look at the gender of the person in terms of the job that is required,” says Kevin Plenty. “It doesn’t matter to us. We look at filling a role.” Some workers learn trades outside of working hours, equipping themselves to work in a salon or as a tailor. As these opportunities are not be so available in rural areas, living in the country’s capital can open up doors. “Life in the province is one thing, but in Phnom Penh, we have something new to learn,” says one garment factory worker. “In our hometowns, we just grow rice.”

“These women seem really hungry for opportunities,” says Borg.

But how many can access them? For women bound by the poverty of their families, saving money can be futile. For those who are exhausted by long-days of work, there’s little energy left for further education. “I never think about anything that needs to change,” said one 18-year old worker. “If we work in the garment factory, it must be hard.”