ON THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS 2013, hundreds of thousands of Cambodian garment workers filled the streets. Vast protests stretched from one end of the country to the other. One of the organizers was a lean, thoughtful thirty-year-old named Khloek Outrok.
Khloek had worked at the FY garment factory in Phnom Penh since 2003. He says he saw “many of the worst conditions you can think of. Workers had to work twelve-hour shifts at least.” And management would “always find ways to delay payment.” So he organized his coworkers into the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTU). “We started to educate, to advocate, to improve workers’ rights.”1
They won some quick victories: convincing management to stop firing workers without cause and limiting the overtime labor they required of workers. Before they formed a union, Khloek says, workers at his shop were sometimes asked to work all night. Now the limit was two hours. And management agreed to pay workers one and a half times their normal wage for overtime, double if they worked on national holidays.
Like many in the new global labor movement, Khloek believes in applying pressure to the top of the supply chain. That’s the best strategy for Cambodian garment workers, he says. Pressure global brands: H&M, Puma, Nike, Adidas. In turn, they push factories to raise wages and improve conditions. The big companies are squirrely at first, he says. “They tell us it’s the factory owners who are exploiting us. But we know all the power is with them.”
First, he has to figure out who he is working for. Like Kalpona Akter, Khloek is obsessed with collecting labels. “Workers are kept from knowing who the buyers are,” he says. “So we started collecting labels wherever we could find them.” Sometimes he would spot a label on the floor and pick it up. Other times, he would dig around in the factory office. But even when he found labels, they did not always indicate which major corporation was paying the bills. “If we are not sure,” says Khloek, “we bring labels to the union office. They help us figure it out. Then we contact the buyers and push them.”
The unions help shop-floor organizers like Khloek research and translate into Khmer the corporate codes of conduct for each buyer. “Workers benefit when they report violations by factory owners. It embarrasses the brand,” says Khloek. Then the brand demands improvements. “Factory owners are afraid of the international brands,” he says. The Cambodian government is too. Without them, the booming garment trade on which Cambodia’s new prosperity has been built would disappear. The workers know this and keep on pressing.
At the end of 2013, the minimum monthly wage for garment workers in Cambodia was $80. Renting a room cost $35 monthly without running water, $50 with a toilet and shower. The cost was prohibitive. But because most garment workers leave their families behind in the countryside, they share a room with three or four other workers—a windowless, dank, eight-foot-square room with one bed and ceilings so low that even small women crouch to come inside.
The Cambodian Labor Department responded to the nationwide protests by offering to raise the monthly wage to $95. The response was powerful: across the country garment workers marched in silence, wearing headbands that said “$160,” the bare minimum necessary to sustain a decent life. Opposition leaders in the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) called for a general strike. Protesters chanted for Prime Minister Hun Sen to step down. Once garment workers’ protests threatened the regime, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party grew impatient.
Riot police clashed with striking garment workers in the capital. Seven were arrested. To defuse tensions, the government upped its offer to $100. Riding the momentum of their vast crowds, the protesters held firm at $160. The crackdown was bloody.
On January 3, 2014, military police opened fire on workers blocking a road to a garment production zone. According to multiple reports, four workers were killed and dozens wounded. Some disappeared that day, never to be seen again.
With some success, the workers tried to draw in global brands. H&M, the country’s largest buyer, wrote to Cambodian officials, arguing that workers have a right to ask for a living wage. But Sweden’s retail behemoth insisted it had to tread carefully, lest it alienate Cambodian officials. Khloek doesn’t buy it. “The government of Cambodia respects H&M more than they do the leaders of most other countries,” he says. “And they need H&M.”
Khloek believes that international condemnation of the shootings forced the Cambodian regime to forgo further repression, and that he benefited directly. He was arrested after the January 3 protests, but after H&M’s letter, he was freed. “I was lucky,” he says quietly. “They didn’t do anything to me then, even though they knew I was one of the protest organizers.”
Emboldened, Khloek continued his work. On January 3, 2015, one year after the massacre, he “mobilized workers to hold a few minutes of silence outside of the National Assembly. I didn’t know the workers they killed the previous year, but I wanted us to take a moment to honor their courage.” Khloek was arrested for protesting without a permit. In prison, police pressed him to give them names of other protest organizers. “I was lucky again.”
The Cambodian human rights organization LICADHO (the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights) sent lawyers. Khloek vividly remembers what it felt like to walk out of prison a second time. He has not been arrested since, but he knows he could be at any time. Many labor organizers in Phnom Penh have charges hanging over them—reminders that they can be jailed in a moment. The murder of human rights activist Kem Lay in the summer of 2016 made clear to every Cambodian activist how high the stakes are for dissidents. Since that time, leaders of the CNRP have been arrested and charged with treason. Newspapers have been shut down. Pressure is increasing on all fronts.
Still, governments are not the only ones who violate human rights, Khloek says. In March 2015, Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged H&M, Gap, Adidas, Marks & Spencer, and Armani with condoning widespread labor abuses in their Cambodian factories. When the brands denied the charges, HRW called on them to release a list of their suppliers and to open factories to inspections. Marks & Spencer had never released the names of its Cambodian contractors before but promised to. H&M sent its list to labor leaders and encouraged Cambodian officials to fine factory owners who were abusing workers. Adidas created a process for workers to report abuses. Gap, long opposed to any agreement that is legally binding, promised to investigate.2
Several months later, following more protests in the capital, the Cambodian Department of Labor raised the monthly minimum for garment workers to $140. It was not enough to live on, but it was a major victory. Bangladeshi workers took note and took heart. The big raise made news worldwide. And it gave Cambodian workers the courage to fight for more.
When I visited Phnom Penh in December 2015, many buildings were swathed in banners bearing corporate logos: H&M, Gap, Adidas, Puma, and Walmart. In English and Khmer, the banners said “End Corporate Greed. Pay Workers a Living Wage.” Walls across the city were plastered with green circular stickers showing a clenched fist and the newest monthly wage demand—$177. “Even that is not enough,” workers told me. To live decently in Cambodia, a parent needs well over $200 a month, they said. “Maybe $210 to $215 would work.”
Asia Floor Wage, an international coalition of workers, academics, and activists that calculates a living wage for every country in Asia, estimated in 2016 that Cambodian workers needed $283 a month to survive. This “floor wage” would not move anyone into the middle class, they said. But it would allow workers to shelter and clothe themselves and two children, provide food and basic medical care, and have 10 percent left to save or spend on recreation. In 2016, workers offered a compromise: $180 per month minimum. The international brands insisted they couldn’t afford that much. The government raised the minimum to $151.
Ath Thorn, leader of one of Cambodia’s largest garment unions, insists that, as much as wages, this struggle is about dignity. “We Khmer need our dignity and our respect,” he says. “If you respect us, we will respect you. If you look down on us, we won’t take your money. A Khmer worker would rather work for free than work without dignity.”