Successful Remediation at Cambo Yon Xing Garment (Cambodia)

Please find here a report on the Worker Rights Consortium’s successful remediation of labor rights violations at Cambo Yon Xing Garment Co., Ltd., an apparel factory located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that closed on February 7, 2016. The resolution of these violations secured the payment, in August 2016, of nearly $91,000 in legally mandated compensation to 75 employees – an average of eight months’ wages per worker.

Cambo Yon Xing is a subsidiary of Reliable Source Industrial (Cambodia) Co., Ltd., an apparel manufacturer that supplies collegiate licensed apparel to Hanesbrands that is sold under the latter’s Under Armour by Gear for Sports label, as well as non-collegiate apparel to other apparel companies, such as VF Corporation, Lulu Lemon, Marks and Spencer, and New Balance.

Workers from Cambo Yon Xing and their union representatives, along with a local partner NGO, the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL), contacted the WRC after the plant’s closure, when Reliable Source refused to provide the factory’s more senior employees with severance benefits required under Cambodian law, and then refused to comply with an April 2016 arbitration award ordering payment of these funds to workers.

After the WRC engaged with Hanesbrands, Under Armour, VF Corporation, and New Balance concerning Reliable Source’s denial of legally owed compensation to these workers, however, the factory agreed to provide the nearly $91,000 in payments required under the arbitration award . These funds provided workers with significant compensation which they not only were legally owed, but also desperately needed, after the factory’s closure.

This successful outcome would not have come about without the engagement of multiple parties with which the WRC worked closely in resolving this dispute, including the workers’ union, a Cambodian NGO known as CENTRAL, and several of the factory’s buyers, in particular, Under Armour, Hanesbrands/Gear for Sports and VF Corporation, which are licensees of many WRC-affiliated universities and colleges, as well as New Balance. All of these parties played important roles in ensuring that an outcome was achieved that protected the rights and welfare of the Cambo Yon Xing workers and ensured compliance with Cambodian labor laws and university and college codes of conduct.

Scott Nova
Executive Director
[email protected]