Monday, March 8, 2010

Report From Cambodia's Garment Factories

By Anne Elizabeth Moore, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed 


 Meet the international working class - the faceless laborers that likely had a hand in stitching together your mid-range jeans, your jaunty parka or your favorite silky smooth T-shirt: They are super giggly and sharing snacks in the back of a converted military pickup truck over their lunch break.

In fact, they're downright cute as buttons, and make about that, too. Cambodia offers a national monthly minimum wage for garment workers of $50. This is still higher than in some countries, but Cambodia's economic boom means that prices and wages in almost all other sectors have risen rapidly in recent years. In 2009, the Cambodian Labour Union Federation and the National Institute of Statistics determined that theminimum wage to support the conditions factory workers lived under was $93 per month. Yet, recent talks to grant laborers a living wage stalled immediately.

 

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