Garment Industries, Unions, and the State.

Cambodia is a country experiencing the classic destruction of the commons. It’s disheartening in the extreme (though not surprising) to discover every day that although this process has been repeated and research extensively in nearly every country where capitalism touches down, it is denied wherever capitalism is currently doing its work of reorganization.

The enclosure movement which privatizes the commons and forces rural peasants to seek wage labor was a key point in Marx’s Capital. After it took place in England, this process was repeated throughout the colonial world: Africa, the Americas, and all of Europe (oh yes, Europe was one of the first victims of colonialism, my friends; it’s just that it was also europeans who were the first beneficiaries, and as the central point in an expanding system, they cut a separate, racially-based deal with their own citizens, much as happened in the US).

The appropriation of the most important natural resource in mainland Southeast Asia – water – is perhaps the most important story going. The constant damming of the Mekong and other river systems means that less and less water comes downstream. Given that over two-thirds of Cambodia’s entire protein intake comes from fish (and specifically, from the Tonle Sap lake, which is fed by the waters of the Mekong river), this is a complete and total disaster.

In a country which the UN already lists as one of the world’s top twelve “Hunger Spots”, the food resource base is being further rapidly eroded. See here:

A million Cambodians face hunger, says UN agency (and original)

Instead of evaluating the food needs of Cambodians and others in planning such water dam projects, the forces of transnational capitalism are instead offering paltry alternatives to the food-base that will be destroyed. “Oh, we’ll destroy your food base? Try eating rabbit!” That’s the response of SWECO Groner, a consultancy firm which examined the effect of planned Vietnamese dams on the Srepok river system. Sounds suspiciously like “Let them eat cake.” See here:

CAMBODIA: No Fish? Eat Rabbit Instead (and SWECO‘s own page)
Of course, the real alternative is presumed to be wage labor. But these options are bad for any number of reasons. One point is that ever since the end of the MultiFiber Agreement (which was ameliorated only temporarily by a bill passed after the Indonesian Tsunami), garment factories have been getting ready to head to countries with even less protections for their workers – countries like Vietnam and China. See this article:

Trouble looming ahead in the garment industry?

The earliest forms of wage labor are really to be found in the rubber plantations. They don’t offer better conditions to their workers either: the plantations are controlled by politically-connected gangs which act like the worst capitalist bosses. See here:

Ratanakiri Rubber Workers Want a Fair Wage

The garment industry is in danger, despite growing business. The factory owners are taking advantage of the end of trade quotas to threaten unions. The big problem with getting newly-proletarianized peasants to work in factories is to get them to do so in a docile manner. In the US, we tend to simply see our workplace docility as the price of eating. Not so in many other places, where it is demonstrably the price of eating, but where that price sometimes still seems too high. The response from the factory owners is to threaten starvation by moving out of the country, through asking the government to use violence against unions, and by intimidating workers in the factories themselves. See here:

Cambodian garment exports jump 17 per cent in 2006: manufacturers

And the state is more than willing, in almost all cases, to do just this. The Garment Factories are demanding that the government ban street demonstrations. See here:

Get Strikes off Streets, PM Urged
The prime minister seems perfectly willing to continue cracking down on any non-CPP demonstration. When I was in Cambodia, they routinely used cattle-prods and nightsticks on young female unionists who wanted only to march peacefully into the city. The PM also seems to think it’s his job to defend the garment factory owners against complaints that they don’t obey the basic worker-rights restrictions. See here:

Cambodian leader slams ILO for ‘untruthful’ reports about garment factories

And of course, all this comes to a head when prominent unionists are murdered. The still-rankling assassination of the most beloved union leader in Cambodia, Chea Vichea, happened immediately after I arrived in Cambodia, and remains on of the biggest stories in the nation. Nobody believes that the two arrested for the murder had anything to do with it, and yet they’re still being held, three years later. See here:

Amnesty International: The Murder of Trade Unionist Chea Vichea: Still No Justice

Of course, the Cambodian Unions (the real ones) don’t believe these two guys are the culprits either. They see the writing on the wall, and accuse the government. How long until Chea Vichea’s union and family are the next victims? See here:

Union Leader Claims Government Involvements in Murder Case

Something has to give. Will Cambodia become the next Bangladesh? Could be.

UPDATE: Just today, David Cohen over at The Oil Drum (a forum dedicated to discussing peak oil theories and responses) posted an excellent article on the rising demand for Palm Oil as a biodiesel fuel. These supposedly more eco-friendly alternative fuels have become the next great hope for those of us who don’t want to change our lifestyles and consumption but who recognize that petroleum won’t be around forever. The problem as Cohen cogently points out, with the help of none other than the Wall Street Journal, is that the production of Palm Oil has serious effects on local ecosystems. Sure, the burning of Palm Oil as biodiesel harms the environment in which it’s burned much less. But it makes the situation where the palm oil is produced even more desperate than it was before. Palm Oil plantations certainly aren’t doing the Cambodian ecosystem any more favors than the clearing of Mangroves for shrimp production has. Check out this quote from the WSJ:

“Let’s be brutally frank: (The push for alternative fuels) is going to cause significant changes for the environment,” says Sean Darby, an equities analyst and expert on alternative-energy companies at Nomura International in Hong Kong. He is most worried about the strain on water resources caused by accelerated crop production. Water, he says, is “just as precious” as oil.

More here.

UPDATE: And another story about the WFP and the nearly 750,000 Cambodians suffering acute food shortages.

UPDATE: And another story about the rubber workers fleeing the Solidarity groups

UPDATE: And yet another story on the rubber plantations.