In what labor campaigners have described as a “breakthrough” for freedom of association in Cambodia, a mechanic who was arrested and imprisoned after attempting to form an Asics supplier’s first independent union has been reinstated to his former role and allowed to continue to champion workers’ rights.
Chea Chan, who was jailed for six months in 2024 before Wing Star Shoes’ charges were ruled baseless by the Cambodian appeals court, has also received $50,000 in compensation for the time he erroneously served, as well as $3,000 in back wages. The total sum, the equivalent of more than 20 years of pay for an individual working in Cambodia’s garment industry, is potentially the largest settlement received by a garment worker in the global South following a breach in a constitutional right to organize.
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Equally worth celebrating, said Thulsi Narayanasamy, director of international advocacy at the Worker Rights Consortium, a Washington, D.C. watchdog group, is the fact that the Chan-led union has been officially registered as an affiliate of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions, marking the first recognition of an independent factory-level union by the Cambodian Ministry of Labour this year. A second registration at another CATU-affiliated factory has soon followed, buoying hopes that authorities could start making a dent in the backlog of applications.
In a matter of weeks, more than 350 workers at Wing Star Shoes, which was established in 2012 by a joint venture between an Asics subsidiary and Taiwanese firm New Star Shoes, signed up to address what they have described as persistent labor violations, including excessively high indoor temperatures, forced overtime and denial of personal or medical leave. New Star Shoes, which still operates the factory, did not respond to a request for comment.
“Our working conditions are inhumane,” one worker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told WRC researchers. “We’re expected to endure unbearable heat every day without any protection or relief. It’s exhausting and dangerous, especially with our long hours and constant high pressure.”
“Every day our managers pit us against each other, to do more, that we’re the reason others have to stay longer—and we don’t even get paid enough to afford basic necessities,” another said. “We end up having to do overtime for the money, and for those of us whose families might have enough to get by, we still have to do overtime or we’ll lose our jobs.”
But the “historic” outcomes, which Narayanasamy attributes to Chan and CATU’s sheer persistence, are overshadowed by the fact that Asics—along with Muji, another major customer—could have done more with their clout as buyers to hasten those results. She said that over the past 20 months, the two brands had plenty of opportunity to require Wing Star Shoes to end its union busting and remedy what she said was its “egregious” use of criminalization to silence unionists. Instead, Asics sided with the supplier, counted yellow union membership as legitimate, and otherwise stalled the process before “belatedly” engaging with WRC and the International Committee of the Labour Lawyers Association of Japan to help bring about redress, Narayanasamy added. Muji, for its part, did not “directly in the resolution of this case.”
“This case shows the stark gap between brands’ rhetoric and reality,” Narayanasamy said. “Freedom of association is supposed to be a cornerstone of ethical sourcing, yet workers were punished for exercising it while Asics and Muji failed to intervene even in the face of their supplier fabricating a criminal complaint to falsely imprison a human rights defender. Real respect for rights means preventing abuses before they escalate, not cleaning up after being forced to.”
At the same time, she said, it hasn’t been as if a switch has been thrown. The union reports that Wing Star Shoes’ management has continued to take a hostile posture against freedom of association by approaching or pressuring workers to resign from CATU membership. It has also only been deducting union dues from 10 employees, claiming that the remaining workers were still members of another employer-controlled “yellow” union.
Wing Star Shoes “seems to have more power than the government,” one worker said. “The authorities seem unwilling or unable to enforce the laws that are meant to protect us. Many of us are too afraid to join or support an independent union, because we could end up like Chan.”
According to Cambodian labor law and International Labour Organization conventions, every worker has the right to freely join or withdraw from any union and only the latest membership is considered valid.
Asics said in a statement that it remains “firmly committed” to respecting internationally recognized human rights and the fundamental right to freedom of association throughout its global supply chain and that it “has maintained continuous engagement and made active efforts with both Wing Star Shoes and Mr. Chan throughout this process, demonstrating our commitment to constructive dialogue, responsible influence and collaboration with all stakeholders.”
“Asics welcomes this progress and remains committed to transparency, accountability, and constructive engagement with all stakeholders to ensure the resolution is implemented appropriately and that the rights of all workers are respected and upheld,” it said.
Muji did not return an email requesting comment.
Narayanasamy said that the “steady creep” of criminalization of worker leaders is the “clearest sign” of “how confident factories are of brands’ apathy towards worker rights.” Both Asics and Muji, she said, must do better to fulfill their human rights due diligence responsibilities to workers in their supply chains.
Asics in particular, Narayanasamy said, has maintained its partnership with Wing Star Shoes despite a ceiling collapse at the factory that killed two workers—one of them just 15 years old—and injured several others, evidence of child and prison labor and a flurry of mass fainting incidents involving as many as 100 workers grappling with a combination of extreme heat, exhaustion and malnutrition.
“When brands look away, factories learn that brutally crushing organizing carries no cost for their business,” she said. “Without consequences from buyers, factories receive tacit agreement to simply return to business as usual. If buyers only act when they are forced to, it’s unsurprising that factories follow their lead. It’s the workers who pay the price for brands’ indifference.”
