Propitious (Cambodia) Garment Ltd.

The apparel industry’s chronically low wages left most garment workers with no savings on the eve of the Covid-19 crisis. Since most governments in apparel exporting countries provide little or no unemployment benefits, the only thing standing between an out-of-work garment worker and immediate poverty for her family are the legally mandated severance benefits that most garment workers are due upon termination.

Research by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) reveals that many garment workers who were fired during the pandemic have been denied some or all of this essential compensation, in violation of the law and the labor rights obligations of the brands and retailers whose clothes they sewed.

Propitious Garment is one of the 31 export garment factories identified in the WRC’s report, Fired, Then Robbed: Fashion brands’ complicity in wage theft during Covid-19, which still owed workers legally mandated terminal compensation as of April 2021.

In April 2020, Propitious Garment dismissed 2,400 workers. As of April 2021, these workers were still waiting for $3,432,000 in legally owed compensation.

Propitious (Cambodia) Garment Ltd., located at St.21, Phumi Thmei, Takhmao town, Kandal Province, Cambodia, is associated with Tak Fook International Trading Ltd., a Hong Kong-based garment wholesaler. Import records indicate shipments to Vancouver-based Artic Imports Ltd. from January to September 2020, Carter’s (OshKosh B’Gosh and The Genuine Canadian Corporation) in January and April 2020, and PriceSmart in January 2020.

Read More:

• Fired, Then Robbed: Fashion brands’ complicity in wage theft during Covid-19 – April 2021