In what labor activists are calling a landmark decision, a Kompong Speu provincial judge ruled Tuesday that a garment factory acted improperly when it fired workers for trying to organize a union and has ordered the company to pay back wages to the dismissed workers, officials said Tuesday.
Provincial Chief Judge Pol Vorn ordered Cambodia Apparel Industry Ltd to rehire seven workers who had attempted to organize a union at its Kompong Speu factory, activists said. The factory has 600 workers.
Pol Vorn also ordered the company to pay each worker back pay since the factory fired them about two years ago, or about $1,080 each. The company must also pay $1,000 more per worker in punitive damages the workers’ lawyer, Lean Chinda of Legal Aid of Cambodia, said.
The company has the right to appeal. A person answering the phone at Cambodia Apparel Industry Tuesday afternoon said he spoke only Chinese and would not take any questions on the ruling.
Labor observers and activists say Tuesday’s ruling was the first time a judge had made any sort of ruling in a union organizing case. Cambodian labor law forbids companies from interfering in organizing or discriminating against union members.
“This is unprecedented,” said Jason Judd, field representative with the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, an NGO that assists local unions. “Workers and unions are beginning to see the rule of law in the realm of labor.”
Workers at the factory began organizing in 1999. In response, Cambodia Apparel tried to force workers to sign a pledge not to join a union, an international observer who has long followed the case said. The company then began firing the union officials and organizers, the observer said.
Employees complained to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which in turn wrote a letter to the factory asking it to rehire the workers, a ministry official who asked not to be named confirmed Tuesday. But the factory ignored the order, and attempts to mediate the dispute failed, the official said.
Ministry officials usually prefer to act as mediators in labor cases, even though they have the right to make enforceable rulings, Judd said. And workers often lack the funds to pursue the cases in court.
“Usually the ministry refuses to make a ruling, the workers get tired and hungry and take settlements [from the factory],” he said.
Often the courts delay labor case until they are settled, said An Nan, a legal assistant at the Cambodian Labor Organization, a local NGO which assisted the workers. Sometimes judges take payoffs, An Nan said.
But these workers persisted in their case and received help from Legal Aid, an NGO that assists the poor. The US Embassy also became interested in the case. An embassy representative appeared in court during the hearing last week.
The US has pledged to make its quotas on Cambodian apparel imports dependent on progress on workers’ conditions and rights. The case was a test of the courts’ commitment to the labor law, embassy First Secretary Bruce Levine said Tuesday.
The ruling marks a great step forward for workers’ rights in Cambodia, Levine said.
“This should be encouraging to workers, to know that they court system is there to protect the rights they have under the labor law,” he said.
