In recent years, the Cambodian government has intensified its crackdown on workers’ right to freedom of association by colluding with factory employers to repress workers’ efforts to form independent unions. This collusion has implicated international apparel and footwear brands in serious human rights violations when their supplier factories have caused worker leaders to be jailed and prosecuted on baseless and retaliatory criminal complaints.
Currently, the most egregious example of such retaliation is the Cambodian factory, Wing Star Shoes, which supplies the Japanese footwear brand, ASICS. Since February 2024, Wing Star has had its worker, Chea Chan, who is a leader of a recently formed independent union at its factory, jailed for more than 120 days, prosecuted on obviously false and retaliatory criminal charges, and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment—all while ASICS has openly refused to require its supplier to cease this gross abuse of human and labor rights.
In addition to its persecution of this employee, Wing Star has unlawfully threatened other worker leaders with imprisonment and tried to bribe the leaders of the labor federation (Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions, “CATU”) to which the new union is affiliated. Yet ASICS—which claims to uphold, as “an important corporate responsibility”, its duty “to respect the fundamental human rights of people working for … its supply chain [and] … to ensure their .. well-being and safety” —has consistently refused to intervene to stop this gross violation of those rights by this supplier.
Workers Making ASICS Shoes Form Union at Factory to Stop Abusive Practices
On January 10, 2024, workers at the Wing Star factory, which is in Kampong Speu province and employs a workforce of over 20,000, established an independent union to address poor working conditions and treatment, including, among other abusive practices, restrictions on workers’ basic access to use the toilets. Workers elected an employee named Chea Chan as the new union’s president.
ASICS Supplier Responds to Workers Forming Union by Having Worker Leader Thrown in Prison
Wing Star’s management responded to its workers forming the new union with a brutal campaign of retaliation, including, most egregiously, causing police to arrest and jail the worker union leader, Chea Chan, on entirely fabricated charges.
Shortly after workers elected Mr. Chan as president of the newly formed union, the factory management began pressuring him to stop his associational activities. When this failed, a former factory manager, apparently acting at the company’s behest, attempted to bribe the CATU labor federation to withdraw its support for the workers’ organizing efforts.
When Mr. Chan, along with his coworkers, persisted in exercising their basic labor rights, Wing Star’s management filed a false criminal complaint against him, causing him to be arrested and jailed. On February 14, 2024, police, who had been called to the factory by the management, violently assaulted and seized Mr. Chan, without an arrest warrant, and took him to jail—where he has now been for the last five months.
Mr. Chan’s arrest is not the first time that police in Kampong Speu province have jailed garment worker leaders on baseless criminal complaints from factory owners. In 2020, police in the province detained for more than 40 days a garment worker leader at the Superl factory, a handbag supplier to Kate Spade and Michael Kors, in response to a criminal complaint brought against her for posting on Facebook that Superl had unlawfully fired pregnant workers.
ASICS Factory Has Worker Leader Falsely Imprisoned for Not Reporting ‘Theft’—But Does Not Charge Supposed ‘Thief’ or Accuser who Admitted Committing Same ‘Offense’
In the current case, police charged the Wing Star worker leader, Mr. Chan, with the preposterous charge of “conspiracy to steal”. According to the criminal complaint brought by ASICS’s supplier, the substance of Mr. Chan’s supposed ‘offense’ was that, two years prior, in 2022, he allegedly witnessed another employee taking some parts from a broken sewing machine and failed to report this at the time. His accuser was a third employee who supposedly remembered this two-year-old incident, only after he, himself, had just been caught taking equipment, in a separate incident, by company security.
Revealingly, Wing Star’s management did not file a criminal complaint against the worker who allegedly stole the machine parts two years before, and did not have that other worker arrested, despite the fact that this other worker was still working at Wing Star Shoes on the day of Mr. Chan’s arrest.
Even though Mr. Chan was arrested without a warrant—making the process against him invalid on its face under Cambodian law—the country’s courts had him held in jail for more than four months and let the ‘case’ against him proceed to trial. To make the proceedings even more farcical, the employee who accused Mr. Chan of witnessing the alleged theft, and who was, himself, an accused thief, appeared at the trial as a ‘witness’ against Mr. Chan, without also being charged with the same offense—witnessing a theft without reporting it.
Furthermore, it emerged at the trial that there is no evidence that a “theft” had even occurred. Mr. Chan’s accuser was able to recall neither when the alleged theft happened, nor if he ever witnessed anything being taken from the factory, only that the alleged perpetrator, a mechanic at the factory had disassembled a sewing machine—which, given his job, was not evidence of an act of theft.
In other words, one month after being elected union president in the factory, Mr. Chan was violently arrested and charged with “conspiring to steal” items that had minimal economic value (parts from a broken sewing machine), in an incident where (1) there is no claim that Mr. Chan was involved at all in the alleged “theft”, (2) there is no evidence of any “theft” being committed at all, (3) the actual alleged “thief” was not ever arrested or charged, (4) Mr. Chan’s accuser only came up with the accusation after being caught stealing himself, and (5) that accuser committed the same ‘offense’ but was not charged.
It is hard to imagine a more blatantly fabricated and retaliatory allegation. Yet, despite the outrageous nature of this case, ASICS refused to require its supplier to withdraw the fabricated criminal complaint, as a condition of continued business, so that Mr. Chan could be set free.
Following Mr. Chan’s arrest, another worker at the factory who is active in the new union, Moeun Leangheng, was also detained by the police, under similarly dubious circumstances, but was later released. Moreover, in the weeks after Mr. Chan’s arrest, Wing Star managers threatened other worker leaders, telling them they must resign from the new union or face similar consequences.
ASICS Refuses to Require Supplier to Withdraw Baseless Criminal Complaint against Worker
On May 26, 2024, the WRC communicated to ASICS our finding that its supplier, Wing Star, had caused the baseless jailing and prosecution of the worker leader, Chea Chan, in retaliation for his associational activities and that the factory had committed other acts of threatened and actual false arrest, detention, and bribery against other worker leaders. As the WRC informed ASICS, this brutal campaign of retaliatory arrest, threats, and detentions severely violated the workers’ rights under Cambodian law and international labor and human rights standards—as well as ASICS’s supplier code of conduct.
The WRC called on ASICS to take immediate action to require Wing Star, as a condition of continued business, to withdraw the fabricated criminal complaint against Mr. Chan, secure his prompt release from prison with dismissal of all charges, provide him reinstatement to his former position at the factory, and pay him back wages and compensation for months of false detention at the factory’s instigation. We also urged ASICS to demand that Wing Star cease its other violations of the associational rights of the rest of its workforce.
Unfortunately, ASICS refused to take any meaningful action to stop the egregious labor and human rights violations being committed by its supplier. Unlike the brands, Kate Spade and Michael Kors, which, in 2020, intervened with their supplier, Superl, to secure the release of the worker leader who was arrested for her Facebook posts, ASICS refused to require that Wing Star withdraw its clearly fabricated criminal complaint against its employee, Chea Chan.
ASICS Abandoned Worker Leader to Imprisonment on Fabricated Charges, Allowed Supplier to Deny 1,000s of Workers Making Its Shoes Their Basic Rights
On June 20, 2024, the Cambodian court found Mr. Chan guilty as charged and sentenced him to one year’s imprisonment, with six months as a suspended sentence. As a result, the worker will likely spend 180 days behind bars, simply for the ‘crime’ of incurring the wrath of his employer by forming a union.
Shamefully, ASICS, despite its claims to be committed to ensuring respect for human rights in its supply chain, willfully abandoned Chea Chan, a worker who made its footwear, to persecution and false imprisonment at the hands of its supplier and the repressive Cambodian state. By doing so, the brand also has spoken loudly and clearly to the thousands of other workers who make ASICS footwear at Wing Star about its lack of concern for their rights as well.
ASICS must act, now, to demand that its supplier, Wing Star secure Chea Chan’s immediate release from prison and provide him with reinstatement to his job and full compensation for the months of imprisonment the factory caused him to suffer, not to mention his loss of income. It must also require Wing Star, as a condition of further business, to stop its campaign of terror against workers in the CATU-affiliated union and, instead, recognize and deal with the new union as a legitimate representative of workers’ interests. ASICS says its name stands for anima sana in corpore sano (“a sound mind in a sound body”). Yet, unless the company acts to protect the basic rights of the workers who make its products at Wing Star, it is clear that, ethically speaking, ASICS does not stand for anything at all.