Lee Thai Khit, the managing director of June Textile Co Ltd, says he doesn’t recognize his garment factory in the tabloid headlines and television broadcasts emanating from Britain.
“This just isn’t true,” he said, as he pored through the transcript of the BBC television news show “Panorama,” which aired Sunday night in Britain.
The report alleged that June Textile, Cambodia’s oldest garment factory, employs “child labor” to make high-profile, high-priced Gap and Nike sportswear.
The allegations ignited a media firestorm in Britain, which was already abuzz over Nike’s signing of a $200 million advertising contract with the champion Manchester United football team.
To Western minds, it’s an irresistible mix: big money, glitzy ads, and two companies that piously claim to eschew sweatshops exposed as hypocrites.
In Cambodia such issues barely register. Here, concern most often centers on finding and keeping a job that pays a living wage.
June, with its atrium full of plants, its air-conditioned sewing room and international codes of conduct posted everywhere, provides some of the better working conditions in Cambodia.
“It’s easy work. The conditions are good,” said Chok Chanthur, 23, who has worked at the factory for three years. “That’s why I work there.”
She was interviewed, not on the factory floor, but at a fruit stand on Pochentong Boulevard, during her half-hour lunch break.
Other workers said that, on the whole, June is a good employer. But several said workers who turn down overtime more than three times are fired, a charge management vehemently denies.
Lee Thai Khit said it’s true that Nike has put the company on probation for excessive overtime. But, he said, workers are now complaining that there’s been virtually no overtime in the last month.
He said some of June’s workers may have lied about their ages to get jobs, and that the company will try harder in the future to verify ages.
But, he said, other allegations in the broadcast are demonstrably untrue, and he doesn’t understand why the BBC aired them.
For example, Sun Thyda, who told the BBC camera crew she is 12 years old, held a press conference Oct 4 in Phnom Penh to say she had lied and she is 18.
Lee Thai Khit said his lawyer wrote to the BBC, explaining those circumstances, and received a letter in return from Karen O’Conner, a deputy editor at “Panorama,” dated Oct 13.
In it, she wrote, “We fully accept that Sun Thyda declared to the factory and on her documentation that she was 18,” but that the BBC would stick with its version. “Both points are included in the film,” she wrote.
But there is no mention in the transcript of Sun Thyda retracting her story, Lee Thai Khit said.
Lee Thai Khit and his general manager, CK Chang, also said it is not true that workers must work weeks on end without a break, or routinely work 14-hour days.
They said many people did work long hours in the six weeks after the one-week labor strike in June, because the factory fell behind. But, they said, overtime is voluntary.
“People sign up for it,” and there is rarely a problem finding volunteers, Chang said. “Why would we want someone to work 14 hours? They wouldn’t do good work.”
As the public relations war rages, the Gap and Nike have not said if they will place more orders with June.
Lee Thai Khit said June hired an additional 200 workers two weeks ago from 1000 applicants. The company has 3,800 workers.
One Western observer said it will be a shame if the companies decide to abandon Cambodia, with its nascent workers-rights movement, for a country like Vietnam, where worker complaints will simply not be heard.
