Cambodian trade unions have collaborated with Clean Clothes Campaign to urge manufacturers and brands to urgently address the issue of wage theft in Asian garment factories. In response, several brands have played down their individual responsibility to ensure proper payment to all workers in their supply chain, often hiding behind international multi-stakeholder initiatives such as the ILO ‘Call to Action’, which have thus far failed to ensure wage payments throughout the pandemic.

The factory assessment shows notable factory-level differences in wage payments during the recent lockdown. The majority of manufacturers only paid workers their regular wage for the days when factories were in operation, providing only a small payment, or no payment at all, for the lockdown period. Only 12 manufacturers ensured that workers’ earnings did not fall below minimum wage when the factories were closed. This reveals the initial successes of trade union struggles to safeguard wages and demonstrates that individual companies can choose to take action to mitigate the financial impact of the crisis on workers.

Cambodian garment workers producing goods for international fashion and sportswear brands, such as Adidas, VF, Target, Nike and Gap, were deprived of an estimated US$ 109 million in wages during the April and May 2021 national lockdown, according to calculations by Cambodian trade unions and the Clean Clothes Campaign. This figure is a projection based on a comprehensive assessment of 114 factories conducted by trade union federations. Combined with outstanding wages and severance pay from the first 13 months of the pandemic, the total amount owed to garment workers in Cambodia is estimated to be a total of $ 393 million.

Adidas is linked to the largest wage theft in the factory sample: the losses inflicted on 30,190 workers across eight Adidas supplier factories since the beginning of the pandemic adds up to $11.7 million, or $387 per worker. Other brands linked to the largest amounts of wage theft in the sample are VF Corporation ($7.7 million), Target ($7.6 million), Nike ($7.5 million), and Gap ($6.7 million).