GMAC Urges
Factories to Resist New Monitoring
The
Cambodia Daily - October 1, 2013
Following
the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) announcement that its Better
Factories Cambodia (BFC) program will from January name and shame firms that
contravene Cambodian labor laws, the Garment Manufacturers Association in
Cambodia (GMAC) has urged factory operators to refuse entry to ILO monitors,
unless they have government officials in tow.
Ken
Loo, secretary-general at GMAC, said that BFC’s reluctance to involve his
organization in discussions, and its haste to implement the new monitoring
standards, had led him to tell factories that any factory inspections must
include government officials, a directive that he claims is part of the
original agreement between stakeholders.
“BFC
has gone beyond its mandate,” Mr. Loo said. “Their job is to monitor and
report, not to enforce; that is the government’s job.
“And
now they are going ahead and trying to implement new practices without
involving two of the three stakeholders. We feel like it is being shoved down
our throats.”
“The
only mechanism we have to express our displeasure is to call on factory owners
to demand that the government and GMAC are involved whenever Better Factories
comes for an inspection.”
Mr.
Loo claims that the initial memorandum of understanding (MoU) on factory
monitoring completed and signed by the government, GMAC and ILO specifies that
all parties be involved at all stages of discussion and implementation, but
Jill Tucker, chief technical adviser at BFC, claims the opposite.
“[To
have government officials involved in factory inspections] doesn’t conform to
our role as an independent and neutral body that operates without
interference,” Ms. Tucker said. “The government is supposed to play an advisory
role only.”
And
“[having government officials involved in inspections] contravenes the
[separate] MoU that all garment export factories have signed [with the BFC],”
she said.
BFC
announced last week that in January it would start to publicly disclose the
names and details of legal indiscretions by factories that do not comply with
Cambodian labor laws and international standards.
The
move followed after Stanford Law School researchers in February released a
report that concluded that BFC had failed to improve wages and standards for
workers in the Cambodian garment sector. The scathing Stanford report said the
BFC’s lack of transparency had actually set back industry standards for
Cambodian workers compared to those in China, Indonesia and Vietnam—none of
which had an ILO-backed factory-monitoring program at the time.
Sat
Samoth, undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Labor, said that he was working
to bring BFC and GMAC to the negotiating table in order to once again make
factory conditions the top priority.
“I
have taken consultation with the unions, BFC, GMAC and the U.S. Embassy and
drafted a new MoU and sent it to the parties [Monday] morning,” Mr. Samoth
said. “We will set up a task force to solve the issue and then have until
January to agree to a solution.
“It
seems that everyone wants disclosure [of legal noncompliance by factories] but
have lost the ability to communicate with each other,” he added.
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