In April, 2,000 migrant workers in a factory in Thailand that processes shrimp for a major supplier to Walmart revolted against their abusive and degrading conditions. The workers, from Cambodia and Burma, protested the seizure of their passports by factory owners in Thailand. Police were called. Shots were fired.
It wasn't just the passport seizure that incited the workers' anger - it was management slashing wages again. Their wages already failed to cover the most basic needs, and this latest action put workers deeper into the factory's debt. Many of them are still legally and financially trapped at the factory, victims of human trafficking. This is not an isolated incident. Also in Thailand, workers at a pineapple factory recently held similar protests over wage reductions. There are now reports of human trafficking involving children under 15, bought and sold to work there. More than 73% of this factory's shipments to the USA go to Walmart.
Sign the petition to Walmart's VP of Ethical Sourcing, calling for him to demand these factory owners end human trafficking immediately and allow independent monitors to audit all of their factories.
For more information, and to sign the petition, click here.
Ron Oswald
General Secretary, IUF
International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF)
8, rampe du Pont-Rouge
1213 Petit Lancy, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 793 22 33
Fax: +41 22 793 22 38
web-site:
www.iuf.org
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CAMBODIA:SUPPORT SACKED CAMBODIAN GARMENT WORKERS:The following appeal for online solidarity with unjustly fired Cambodian garment workers comes from the Clean Clothes Campaign:♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦…
Continue reading at Molly'sBlog …
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR:SUPPORT CAMBODIAN UNION ACTIVISTS:The government of Cambodia has continued with its anti-labour practices despite international pressure. Here is an appeal from the Clean Clothes Campaign for support of a union leader arrested on f…
Continue reading at Molly'sBlog …
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CAMBODIA:
SOLIDARITY WITH CAMBODIAN CONSTRUCTION WORKERS:
Molly first saw this appeal at the online labour solidarity site
Labour Start. It comes originally from the
Building and Woodworkers International union where more information on this struggle can be found. Interested readers might also like to check out the independent Cambodian news site
KI Media.
CLCLCLCLCL
Cambodia: Reinstate sacked construction workers
The Building and Wood Workers Trade Union of Cambodia (BWTUC, an affiliate of BWI, has been struggling to organise the KC GECIN Enterprise, located at No.500, National Road 2, Sangkhat Chak Angre Loe, Khann Meanchey, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. KC GECIN Enterprises is a local construction company, owned by Mr. Kim Chhean, a Cambodian national. This company has two main construction producing sites - one located in Prekho, Kandal District and another main site is located in Kilo 10, Khann Russei Keo, Phnom Penh. It employs around 160 workers all in main headquarter and in the two main sites. However, instead of recognising the union and starting a process to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement, the company has resorted to drastic and discriminatory measures as evident by the illegal termination of 25 union leaders and activists on August 13th and another 25 members who had participated in a legitimate trade union seminar.
CLCLCLCLCL
THE LETTER:
Please go to this link to send the following letter to the management of the KC GECIN Enterprises in Cambodia. CLCLCLCLCL
We strongly urge you to immediately reinstate the dismissed union leaders and members without preconditions, refrain from intimidating the workers on strike, recognise the union as a primary step that would lead to normalcy in the employee-employer relationship towards settling the industrial dispute through a collective bargaining agreement.
Sooo, Congress is bothered by a little corruption? Hah! Also, will there be war with North Korea and/or Iran? (9:30):
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By way of imagining the real world, Southeast Asia Sounding: 1/18/2010:
I previously mentioned a review of the “Chomsky/Cambodia” debate. For those not familiar with this eternally recurring ideologically-driven nightmare, Noam Chomsky, internationally the most respected intellectual in the world (if one is to judge by citation, a common measure), is repeatedly accused of having been a Khmer Rouge apologist during the years 1975-1979. It is implied in most of these critiques that Chomsky’s immense influence with US architects of foreign policy somehow made the suffering of Cambodians under Pol Pot’s frankly evil regime worse. Horse-hockey. Here is the latest set of articles in this debate. If you read any of them, please do yourself a favor and read all of them, and to very carefully weigh the arguments made by each, and consider what position is more solid. I know my answer, but I’m convinced that the silly ad hominems and pseudo-moralism passing for serious discussion and debate is not worthwhile, and that careful, personal examination of the real facts is more persuasive.
* “Lost in Cambodia,” by Andrew Anthony. Times of London, January 10, 2010
* “Malcolm Caldwell: a carefully redesigned version of history,” by Noam Chomsky. The Guardian, January 17, 2010
* “Never apologize, never explain,” by Oliver Kamm. Times of London, January 17, 2010.
See also : Noam Chomsky on Cambodia, “West Midlands Anarchists”/Paul Bogdanor.
Note to self:
1) Chomsky is essentially soft on rightwing militia depending on where they come from;
2) Chomsky supports the increase of guns and armaments into a volatile region of the world, the Middle East;
3) Chomsky wouldn’t support the arming of rightwing militia in the United States, because that’s a bit too close to home, yet he’s happy for rightwing militia in Lebanon to be up to their eyeballs in guns rockets and other useless killing machinery;
4) that is not the stance of a consistent intellectual, and certainly not the world’s greatest intellectual.
Discuss.
Prompted by a bloke called Bob — he’s from Barcelona Brockley — I’ve been doing a little reading on Chomsky on Cambodia.
In summary, a number of Chomsky’s critics accuse him (and occasionally his partner-in-crime Edward Herman) of being apologists for the Khmer Rouge (’Red Khmer’). Often, Chomsky’s critics assert that this gross failing (and occasionally [...]
Continue reading at slackbastard …
Browsing the interwebs a few days ago, I found an article that discussed a situation in Cambodia where a whole community is being evicted because it is claimed they are squatting on the property of the French government. My reason for posting it and the relevant text is that in my mind, it highlights the [...]
Continue reading at .urbandissent …
Radio Free Asia has a sad article on young Cambodian girls being pushed into prostitution, made all the more horrific because it seems that US trade and foreign policy is exacerbating the trend. The US is working in a few ways that harm these young girls: they push for labor standards that make employing these girls legally more expensive, and thus they are left to professions not subject to the law. But more directly, they pushed for anti-trafficking laws that the Cambodian government interpreted as a directive to crack down on prostitution, driving prostitutes deeper into the underworld and away from the protection that legal tolerance provides to these most vulnerable of businesswomen.
In his NYT column two weeks ago, Nicholas Kristof did a good job of summing up the ways that US pressure on Cambodia's labor standards has decreased employment opportunities:
Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.
The Radio Free Asia article explains how the worsening plight of prostitutes is thanks to US foreign policy, and how NGOs are willing partners in crime:
In February 2008, the Cambodian government began enforcing the new “Law on the Suppression of Human-Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation” after years of U.S. pressure to crack down on sex trafficking.
Human rights groups, however, say the law and its enforcement have made life harder for the women they aim to help.
Prostitutes caught in police raids are made to pay fines of up to U.S. $200 for their release, the 17-year-old girl said.
“They take us to district police headquarters and take our money. If we don’t have the money, we will be kept in custody for two or three days. So we have to run for our lives when we see police approaching us.”
“Police arrest us in the hope that the brothel owners will pay, but if we don’t have anyone to pay for our release we will be sent to one of the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It’s o.k. to live at the NGOs, but then our families have nothing to eat,” she said.
“If [the NGOs] want to help me, they should also help my family. Otherwise I can’t quit.”
