Phnom Penh, Cambodia — The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia hit back on Tuesday against allegations of human rights abuses in the country’s factories by Human Rights Watch, calling it “a leap of logic that defies the reality.”
On Friday, New York-based rights organization HRW released a report claiming that labor rights abuses were rampant in the garment sector, which generates more than $5 billion a year. In interviews with some 340 people, including 270 garment workers, HRW found that workers toiled under excessive overtime hours and were denied sick leave, factories misused short-term contracts that led to worker insecurity, union members and pregnant women faced discrimination, and some factories were outsourcing production to subcontractors, which functioned without oversight.
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In a statement issued Tuesday, GMAC — which represents Cambodia’s exporting factories — said they were “disappointed” by HRW’s report, which they called “subjective.”
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“[T]he research team interviewed only 270 workers – equivalent to only 0.038 percent of the 700,000 workers in our industry,” the statement said. “It would be rash and irresponsible to suggest that, on the basis of this sampling, the Human Rights Watch report presents an accurate picture of our industry.
“To suggest that workers’ rights are being abused in a systemic manner in the garment industry, based on such a small sampling, is a leap of logic that defies reality on the ground,” the statement said.
GMAC also pointed out that HRW should have employed a more “even-handed approach” and singled out labor unions that conduct wildcat strikes, which GMAC said impacts the basic rights of workers who wish to work.
Many of HRW’s allegations of human rights abuses are not new and have long been documented by labor unions as well as the International Labor Organization’s Better Factories Cambodia program, which monitors exporting factories. For example, on the topic of fixed-duration contracts — which allows the three-to-six-month employment of workers — BFC has found that 33 percent of exporting factories hired their workers on a short-term basis in 2013-14 beyond the legal two-year limit, in an effort to avoid paying maternity and seniority benefits.
Aruna Kashyap, HRW’s Asia Women’s Rights researcher, said most of the abuses listed were tied to BFC’s findings and were not one-off discoveries. “Our report was based on in-depth consultations with a number of people, including workers. We have also cited ILO and BFC report data wherever they were available to show prevalence,” Kashyap said.
Disputing GMAC’s accusations of bias, Kashyap said HRW had requested for 58 factories to answer a questionnaire, but only two responded. She disagreed with GMAC’s assessment of the unions staging wildcat strikes, and appealed to the association to work on resolving disputes between factory owners and employees by enforcing arbitration agreements.
“It’s disingenuous to refer to strikes as ‘wildcat strikes’ where factories create an environment where workers cannot freely unionize,” she said. “It’s a strategy often used by GMAC to avoid addressing the real challenge of reducing factory interference with unionizing.”