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June 19, 2003
Over the past forty years, the AFL-CIO has established several regional institutes to promote
democratic, independent trade unions in Asia, Africa, Eastern
Europe, and Latin
America. The institutes’ work has focused on assisting unions to develop
their capacity to advance workers’ rights and interests, and part of that
capacity is organizing. In 1997, under the leadership of President John Sweeney, the four institutes were consolidated into the
American Center for
International Labor Solidarity (Solidarity Center). Reflecting the new domestic agenda of the
Sweeney administration at the AFL-CIO, the Solidarity Center’s work began to
focus increasingly on organizing activities in conjunction with its overseas
partners around the world.
In part, this shift in focus is a direct effect of globalization, which
demonstrated with increasing impact the seamlessness of markets that once
existed within nation-states and now operate worldwide. Right-to-work states in
the American South once put downward pressure on labor wages and standards in
northern, heavily unionized states; now the same process is happening on a
global basis. This can create perceived tension between unions in developed and
developing countries. Organized workers in Europe and the U.S. fear job loss to
countries with much lower standards and weak enforcement, and workers in
developing countries are unsure whether efforts to improve conditions by
organizations such as the Solidarity Center stem exclusively from protectionism.
The Solidarity Center’s work in Cambodia helps to illustrate these tensions
and how the Center has overcome them. In this case, a strong focus on
organizing, coupled with provisions of a unique trade agreement that rewards
compliance with international labor standards, has shown Cambodian workers that
American labor is interested in providing assistance in order to improve working
conditions while providing more access to the American market for Cambodian-made
garments. While organizing is essential, countervailing pressures on economic
globalization through a variety of additional mechanisms, such as a
U.S.–Cambodia bilateral trade agreement, are key to ensuring the success of
organizing drives. Several factors form the underpinning that makes progress on
labor rights—in concert with assistance, international solidarity, and ILO
conventions—more achievable in Cambodia than in many other developing countries.
The Solidarity Center’s work in Cambodia dates to 1994, when it instituted a
program to assist the Cambodians in revising their labor law and began to work
with nascent Cambodian labor organizations. Five years ago, Cambodia barely had
a garment industry, much less the promise of independent unions or collective
bargaining. Now Cambodian workers are using a unique confluence of forces,
assistance, and mechanisms—domestic and foreign, governmental and
nongovernmental, and trade and labor rights–based instruments—to organize. Like
many of its neighbors, Cambodia has very little tradition of democratic
development, extremely weak rule of law, corrupt government institutions, and is
subject to the pressures of globalization. Without the ability to organize real
unions, workers have practically no means to secure their rights or redress of
grievances.
The Solidarity Center is working with labor groups in Cambodia to maximize
the forces and mechanisms critical to gaining and sustaining strong labor
rights. One type of assistance Cambodian workers are utilizing is technical
expertise that various labor bodies, including the Global Union Federations,
individual unions, and union centers from America and Europe, provide to help
build unions’ capacities to organize, defend their legal rights, and bargain for
better wages and working conditions. Jason Judd, the Solidarity Center field
representative in Cambodia, estimates that, of the 200 garment factories in
Cambodia, a large proportion appear to have real independent unions.
A second tactic is solidarity work by U.S., European, and increasingly, other
developing country unions in order to put pressure on specific companies. When
workers at the Korean-owned Sam Han garment factory in Phnom Penh
tried to build an independent union in July 2002, Soum Tola, the president of
the union, was savagely beaten three times by company thugs. He quit his job out
of fear for his life. Neither the police nor the Ministry of Labor took any
interest in the case. Support from the U.S. garment union UNITE, labor education and
assistance from the Solidarity Center, and a story in the San Francisco
Chronicle captured the attention of The Gap, one of the
factory’s biggest buyers. A problem that was unresolved for two months was fixed
in two days. The management at Sam Han has stopped the harassment and offered to
reinstate Mr. Tola. In another case, two union leaders from the Taiwanese-owned
Tommy Textile factory were imprisoned for five months on false charges drummed
up by the management and the police. With support from the Solidarity Center, as
well as pressure from U.S. unions and the U.S. government, lawyers from the NGO
Legal Aid of Cambodia
freed the union leaders. After their release in November 2002, the company began
to bargain with the union for the first time.
The most important tactic being used in Cambodia is the unique U.S.–Cambodia
Textile-Apparel Trade Agreement, signed in 1999, which links access to the U.S.
market and garment quota levels to the respect for core labor standards,
particularly ILO conventions 87 and 98 (freedom of association and the right to
bargain collectively), as well as compliance with Cambodia’s own labor laws. If
Cambodia enforces its laws and core labor standards, it stands to gain higher
levels of garment exports to the United States.
Other elements that follow from this agreement are key not only to making the
agreement work, but also to maximizing the impact of the other forces and
assistance mentioned above. First and foremost is the growing labor movement,
and the protection for organizing and bargaining rights that the agreement and
work by the Solidarity Center help provide. The unions’ success will ensure
sustainable worker protection.
The U.S.–Cambodia Textile-Apparel Trade Agreement has also led to the
creation of a unique ILO program (funded by the U.S. Department of Labor) that monitors nearly
all 200 garment factories for labor law violations, makes recommendations, and
reports publicly on the progress, factory by factory. In order to qualify for
the increased quota shipment to the United States under the Textile-Apparel
Trade Agreement, a factory must participate in the ILO’s monitoring program.
Another element essential to the efficacy of the agreement is the role that
the U.S. Department of State, Department of
Labor, and the U.S. Trade Representative play
in pressuring the Cambodian government to implement the labor rights provisions
of the trade agreement. This pressure produces an ongoing engagement between
Cambodian and U.S. government agencies, as well as more engagement between the
Cambodian government, unions, and the garment manufacturers.
The significance of the multilateral approach is that all players have a
stake in the outcome of the process. Cambodian workers benefit from this
approach because their unions are strengthened. American workers are aided
because they assist in putting brakes on “the race to the bottom”—the lowering
of wages and standards in a global marketplace. In the process of putting
pressure on manufacturers, American workers and their unions also establish
relationships that can lead to their own negotiations. Close communication
between the ILO program, Solidarity Center partners, the Cambodian labor
ministry, and UNITE results in speedier resolution of many particular cases of
labor rights abuse. As a result of this experience, the Solidarity Center and
its partners in Asia and around the world are looking at all issues that affect
labor rights and conditions. This comprehensive approach has resulted in more
coalition-building, more cross-regional initiatives, and a more inclusive view
of our work with our partners.
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