It was the third day of the year. As thousands of workers took to the streets of Phnom Penh demanding an increase in minimum wage, Cambodian security forces, including the army, came at them with batons and assault rifles, killing five and injuring 38.
The protests had started on Christmas eve when the government refused their demand to double minimum wage to $160. Pang Vanny was one of 23 people who were arrested and jailed for five months.
Cambodia, where half its 15 million people are under the age of 25, is one of the poorest countries in Asia. It’s been averaging a growth rate of about 7% since 2010, driven by the garment sector, as well as construction, agriculture and tourism. The garment sector employs about 400,000 people. Last year it exported $5 billion worth of goods, accounting for about 33% of the GDP, says U.K.-based risk analysis firm, Maplecroft. Companies from Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan own the majority of the factories.
While these jobs have helped pull several hundred thousand people out of abject poverty, the sector is beset with problems—predominantly of low wages (it has amongst the lowest wages in the region and has benefited by the wage increase in China as more business has shifted to Cambodia) and poor working conditions.
I met Pang when I was reporting a story earlier this month for Forbes Asia magazine on the challenges of Cambodia's garment sector. His life is fairly typical of many workers in the sector. Occasionally better, and at times worse.
Pang Vanny was beaten up and jailed for five months. Credit: Megha Bahree
Pang Vanny's room is the second door from the right. Credit: Megha Bahree
Pang’s room is part of a set of rooms, almost like barracks, in a compound enclosed by a wall and a gate, down a side street from the Canadia industrial park where the protests and riots took place and which houses about 120 factories in its neighborhood.
Pang, 38, says since there was a call to strike, he was in his room reading on January 3 when a soldier shoved open his door, breaking the flimsy latch, and dragged him out. A few rioters had run down his street, and some had jumped over the wall into the compound where he lives. About 10 soldiers came looking for them, and went door to door, pulling everyone out of their rooms.
Pang, a slight man whose head looks too big for his small body, was beaten on his head, back and neck with batons, he says. When he collapsed and fell down, the soldiers poured water on his face to revive him and then held him from his arms and dragged him for a few meters on the road to where their truck was parked.
A native of Prey Veng province, along the border with Vietnam, Pang came to Phnom Penh in search of a job in 2005 and joined Suntex, now owned by Hong Kong-listed Luen Thai Holdings Ltd. which saw revenues of $1.2 billion last year. Suntex makes clothes for
For six days a week, Pang stands in line, putting clothes in boxes. He starts his day at 6am and wraps up by 2.45pm, with a 45-minute lunch break. The days he's working overtime he wraps up at 5pm. For this, he earns $90 a month, or about $130 with overtime. He keeps half that for himself, and sends the rest home. Thanks to his job and his income, his one sister and one nephew have just finished high school and one brother recently completed a law degree.
But his penury is obvious. His room is about 5x7 feet. A wooden plank acts as a bed and takes up three quarters of the room. There’s only enough room left to wedge a battered red bicycle into the space next to the plank. A wire has been strung up high around the room on which he hangs his clothes. A small stove and some dishes piled up outside his room act as his kitchen. There’s a common toilet for the residents outside which there are large jars of water. He, like other residents here, rents one by the month so he has water for his ablutions and to do his laundry and dishes.
While in prison he didn’t get paid and his sister and nephew have had to put on hold their college dreams. He was grudgingly rehired by a sister company of Suntex, he says.
(A spokeswoman for Luen Thai said that she couldn't reach the company's management in the two full days they had to meet this deadline.)
The next round of negotiations for a wage hike for 2015 will start in the next couple of weeks. The unions are demanding a monthly minimum wage of $177, up from the $100 that was agreed upon for 2014 after the violence that shook the capital at the start of the year. The owners of the factories have already said they will not pay this.
"In Cambodia there's a complete absence of living wage," says David Welsh, program director for Cambodia at the Solidarity Center, a D.C.-based non profit international workers rights organization. "This is a race to the bottom.... Things will get ugly in the next couple of weeks," predicts Welsh, if minimum wage negotiations and other related matters are not dealt with and conducted in good faith.
Politics of the industry aside, there are real people like Pang who are caught up in this.
“After everything that has happened, I don’t want to work in the factory anymore,” says Pang. “But I need the money and don’t have the ability to do anything else.”
