Labour and Electoral Politics in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

In 2013, the Cambodian People’s Party faced two major threats: a near loss at the ballot box in the national election and large-scale demonstrations by garment workers dissatisfied with the minimum wage. Unsurprisingly, the government responded by cracking down on the opposition, the independent media and civil society groups. Labour leaders were persecuted and legislation passed that undermined unions’ ability to organise and register. Less predictably, this crackdown was accompanied by an attempt to woo garment workers through policies that delivered tangible benefits to them as individuals. There was a marked shift in the party’s focus from its traditional rural constituency to the urban working class. In this article we examine how labour acts collectively to shape politics within authoritarian regimes. We do this by interrogating labour’s role at a time when the state was clearly shifting towards hegemonic authoritarianism. By re-assessing the 2013 and 2018 national elections through this lens, we demonstrate the bidirectional nature of state–labour relations even in authoritarian regimes. We conclude that, even where election results are largely predetermined, elections can provide opportunities for workers to strengthen their position by prompting shifts in not only in patronage but in policy.

KEY WORDS:

• Trade unions
• workers
• authoritarianism
• elections
• labour policy
• labour protest

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Yon Sineat for research assistance in Cambodia, William Conklin and anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this article, and staff of the Solidarity Center for their support in arranging fieldwork.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Interviews and focus groups were conducted in 2013, 2017, 2018 and 2019 with 43 garment factory workers. Interviews were also conducted with 44 representatives of independent, pro-government and pro-opposition unions, labour non-governmental organisations (NGOs), labour institutions, apparel brands and other support organisations including nine who participated in repeat interviews. Nineteen of the 2017 interviews were conducted by Michele Ford and Michael Gillan for another project (see Ford, Gillan, and Ward 2020).

² By early 2020 the garment sector employed almost 941,000 workers (World Bank 2020).

³ Dozens of adjectives have been ascribed to authoritarianism. We have chosen to use competitive/hegemonic in this article because they have been widely used in the literature of Cambodia. On definitional issues, see Levitsky and Way (2002; 2010).

⁴ Elections for the National Assembly are held every five years. Commune elections are also held every five years, between national elections.

⁵ Hun Sen was the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, which was renamed the State of Cambodia in 1989. The Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party was renamed the Cambodian People’s Party in 1991 as part of the UN-sponsored peace process. Hun Sen has led the party since that time.

⁶ A second factor was that the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was pushing for a coalition government to maintain its legitimacy. UNTAC’s mission had been chaotic and a peaceful and successful election was one way to show its relevance and capacity to guide Cambodia through this momentous period of change.

⁷ Hughes (2006, 472) and Craig and Pak (2011, 225–234) give specific numbers of infrastructure projects built during various election campaigns that the CPP initiated, and which were marked with CPP logos and the names of high-ranking party members. Of the 21 projects that Hughes mentions from the 2003 election, four were funded by bilateral aid from the Japanese government. Craig and Pak also highlight that some members of the CPP’s Working Party in one district were particularly good at securing funds from international NGOs to fund schools and roads, while in another the Working Party secured funds from the World Food Program to pay local people to build irrigation canals that the party was unwilling to fund due to the expense. Voters often are unable to discern between which projects are funded by donors or the government.

⁸ Data on provincial factory registration for 2013 is not available. In 2017 the total number of factories monitored by the ILO’s Better Factories Program was 558. Factories in these five provinces accounted for 91% of factories in operation throughout the country.

⁹ Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union, National Independent Federation of Textile Unions of Cambodia, Collective Union of the Movement of Workers and Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions.

¹⁰ Although the CPP retained the majority of Commune Chief seats, they gained 1,789 fewer seats than in the 2012 commune council elections. Moreover, an unprecedented voter turnout of 93% showed that the CPP’s control over the countryside was clearly diminishing.

¹¹ Some of the larger independent federations in garments, construction and entertainment receive considerable financial support from international NGOs and the Global Union Federations, allowing them to employ a range of staff to support enterprise unions including legal officers, organisers and administrative staff. Staff numbers range from 5 to 20 paid positions, in addition to elected leadership positions (Interviews, union leaders, January 2017, August 2018 and December 2019).

¹² Demonstrations continued in the year to follow with strikes involving tens of thousands of workers in a special economic zone in Bavet (The Phnom Penh Post, December 11, 2015). Although the focus of these demonstrations was on the minimum wage, they signalled that workers – and their unions – continued to constitute a political force to be taken seriously, even in the wake of the state’s attempts to silence them.

¹³ This trend has been recognised elsewhere. Ou (2020) notes that, although the government has become more authoritarian, growing discontent among voters has led to major policy reforms and concessions including increases in wages for public servants and garment workers; however, he neglects to mention the role of organised labour.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DP180101184] and a Sydney Southeast Asia Centre Cluster Research Grant.