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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS