Hotel Council Hearing Hits Speed Bump

An Arbitration Council hearing over mass layoffs at Hotel Le Royal last month labored on Wednesday, with the hotel reportedly denying the council access to requested documents.

The council—a neutral panel designed to hear and make judgements on labor disputes in Cam­bodia—is reviewing the legality of Le Royal’s firing of 97 workers following a weeklong strike last month in protest over the non-payment of service charges.

The layoffs were followed by an announcement this month that the hotel had resolved their labor dispute by reaching a new collective bargaining agreement with workers’ representatives, ignoring the union’s complaints.

The legality of that agreement has also come into question, and the council on Tuesday requested that the hotel disclose all documents relating to the election of workers’ delegates and the new agreement. The hotel refused to comply Wednesday, said union lawyer Lean Chenda.

Le Royal’s sister hotel, Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Siem Reap, fired some 190 workers after a strike at that hotel, and has announced a similar resolution with workers’ delegates. Seng Vuoch Hun, a lawyer for Le Royal, declined to comment Wednes­day.

Ly Korm, president of the Cambodia Tourism and Service Workers’ Federation, maintains that the hotels are busting unions by making an agreement with workers’ representatives, and says that the hotels have hand-picked those representatives.

Those charges were echoed last week by one member of the US Con­gress who recently visited Cam­bodia. Representative George Miller appealed in an open letter last week for Raffles management to accommodate the workers’ demands through arbitration.

“The practice of undercutting a lawful strike by signing an agreement with a ‘friendly’ union of the company’s design is a familiar tactic, but one which is illegal and ill serve both Cambodia’s hotel workers and the international reputation of Raffles,” Miller wrote in a letter dated May 14.

Raffles managers say their workers are well-paid and receive substantial benefits, and that the labor law does not require the collection of a service charge.