16 Sept, 2010
REUTERS
PHNOM PENH - More than 200,000 Cambodian garment workers demanding higher wages halted a strike on Thursday after the government proposed talks to end the deadlock, a union leader said.
Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (CCAWDU), told workers to suspend their strike action and work normally from Thursday.
Faced with a crisis in a sector that is the impoverished country's third-largest currency earner, Cambodia's government called for an end to the stoppage that began on Monday to avoid huge losses to the economy, the workers and their families.
Social Affairs Minister Ith Sam Heng said Prime Minister Hun Sen had recommended the government host talks between the unions and employers on Sept 27.
'Our society has faced a world economic crisis that has affected the garment industry and it is only just recovering,' Mr Ith Sam Heng said in a statement.
Unions said the number of striking workers had risen to 210,000 from 95 factories, representing two-thirds of the estimated 300,000 Cambodians employed in the sector.
Worker disputes in China, mostly at foreign-owned factories, have raised questions over whether other low-cost Asian manufacturing centres would also have to pay higher wages as their workers became more assertive.
The CCAWDU, representing about 40,000 workers, was seeking a US$93 monthly wage, a 50 per cent increase from the US$61 agreed in July under a four-year pact between the government and several unions. That was up from a previous monthly wage of US$56.
Cambodian garment exports rose 12 per cent in the first half of 2010 from a year earlier, hitting US$1.25 billion, according to the Economic Institute of Cambodia, an independent think tank. Big Western brands such as Gap Inc and Nike Inc sell the clothes made by the Cambodian workers.
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