Global retailers fleeing China’s rising labor costs now find themselves facing growing pressure for higher wages in countries from Bangladesh to Cambodia, Vietnam, India and Indonesia.
The latest sign that workers are becoming more militant in their demands for a larger share of the region’s economic success came in Cambodia last week, when tens of thousands of workers went on strike.
The mass protest rejecting a proposed 20 percent pay increase crippled export-orientated garment industry, which produces items for renowned brands including Gap, Benetton, Adidas and Puma.
PHOTO: AFP
The strike followed a deal between the government and industry that set the minimum wage for garment and footwear staff at US$61 a month. Unions want a base salary of US$93.
“Workers are having difficulties surviving on their low wages,” said Kong Athit, secretary general of the Cambodian Labour Confederation.
The Cambodian action came just weeks after Bangladesh’s 3 million garment workers, who make Western clothes for the world’s lowest industrial wages, spurned an 80 percent pay hike, attacking factories and burning cars.
PHOTO: AFP
Tens of thousands of workers who sew clothes for brands such as H&M and Tesco went on the rampage over the 3,000 taka (US$43) monthly minimum wage offer, then staged wildcat strikes protesting a four-month delay in implementation.
“It is not a living wage,” said Shahidul Islam Sabug of the Garment Workers Unity Forum, which wanted 5,000 taka a month to help workers cope with sharp increases in the cost of living, including near double-digit food inflation.
Earlier this month, Bangladesh said exports leapt more than 25 percent year on year in July, with manufacturers linking the jump to a shift in orders from China.
In China itself, workers scored major victories this year at companies such as Japanese automakers Honda and Toyota and Taiwanese information-technology giant Foxconn, which were all forced to hike pay in the so-called “workshop of the world.”
In an effort to ease worker concerns, most Chinese provinces, regions and municipalities have raised official minimum wages this year, with Shanghai atop the list, offering monthly pay of at least 1,120 yuan (US$166).
“Costs are going up in places like China, so you are getting a move to Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and this is good for these countries,” said Robert Broadfoot of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.
And even if manufacturers are now facing wage pressures in the new manufacturing centers, they are on a different scale.
“China is getting more expensive. To be sure, less developed countries are too, but the gap between per capita incomes in places like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam and those in China will continue to widen going forward,” Broadfoot said.
“Wages of workers in these countries are unlikely to go up in absolute terms step for step with China’s wages,” he said.
In Cambodia, union leaders called off the strike last Thursday after the government stepped in and arranged talks with both manufacturers and unions for later this month.
Cambodia’s garment industry is a key source of foreign income for the country and employs about 345,000 workers.
Cambodian Social Affairs Minister It Samheng warned that further stoppages could “affect benefits for the workers, employers, and our nation that is facing the impact of the global financial crisis.”
Bangladesh’s protests, which raged for days until a massive police crackdown restored calm, were the most violent of a string of recent strikes in Asian countries.
In Vietnam, where independent trade unions are banned and inflation is running at some 8.75 percent there have been 139 strikes in the first five months of this year, the Vietnam Confederation of Labour said.
The bulk of the protests concern low pay and poor conditions, with many of them hitting foreign-owned factories. Tens of thousands of workers at a Taiwanese-owned shoe factory in southern Vietnam went on strike in April.
In Indonesia, where three powerful trade unions represent the vast majority of the country’s 3.4 million unionized workers, there is also mounting pressure to raise the minimum wage.
Garment factories in particular, including some that are foreign-owned, have been hit by strikes and disputes over long hours and low wages.
The minimum wage is not set in Jakarta and varies from district to district. In 2008 the highest minimum wage was US$123 a month in Papua province and the lowest US$60 in East Java, according to the manpower ministry.
Tens of thousands of workers protested for minimum wage levels to be raised during May Day demonstrations in Jakarta this year, until riot police stepped in to quell the unrest.
India, which has a highly vocal workers’ movement, has also seen recent disputes over pay and conditions at companies such as mobile handset manufacturer Nokia, car maker Hyundai and the technology and services group Bosch.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS