After months of delaying compensation payments to laid off workers, Giant Ibis Transport again pushed back a previously agreed upon deadline to finish negotiations, a union leader says.
The 30 laid off unionized employees had said earlier this month they were giving the company “one last chance” to finalize the compensation payments they say are owed to them after their employment was suspended indefinitely in April 2020. The deadline of June 23 passed without result, union leader Siem Morady says.
The Labor Ministry, which is mediating the negotiations, appealed to the union to wait until after the July 23 national elections to complete negotiations, Morady says. But the union did not agree to those terms and demanded a June 30 deadline for a final settlement.
“We see that the mediator appears to be biased towards the company and they did not practice proper authority to take the matter seriously,”said. “The [Labor] Ministry side did not use labor law to judge and solve the problem for us.”
A Labor Ministry document obtained by CamboJA states that after the June 23 meeting, the company and the union “still did not agree on the calculation of wages and the conditions under which former employees need to be paid based on legal terms.”
“Both parties must continue to negotiate internally as much as possible until reaching mutual calculation,” the letter added.
The company and the union must notify the Labor Ministry’s Department of Disputes following the scheduled June 30 meeting, the letter states.
Labor Ministry spokesperson Heng Sour did not respond to requests for comment.
The union claims each worker is owed between $7,000 and $8,000 in severance and seniority payments. The union signed a contract with the company promising not to protest during negotiations, documents shared with CamboJA show.
The original deadline for the company to present its compensation calculations had been set for May 22.
“The company has breached the contract for their own interests, speaking in hypocrisy,” said union leader Siem Morady. “He [company’s representative] signed off the agreement to compensate on the agreed deadline [since 22 May], but he reneged his promise.”
Giant Ibis representative Ou Phanny did not respond to requests for comment.
Giant Ibis is allegedly owned by tycoon Kith Meng, whose Royal Group conglomerate launched the bus company in 2011. Meng and the Royal Group did not respond to requests for comment.
“We were reluctant to push back the meeting again, but we decided to negotiate with the company one last time, if not we will continue to protest or file a complaint to court desperately,” said Morady, echoing his promise of “one last time” from earlier this month.
Cambodian labor law states that suspensions more than two months require permission from the Labor Ministry. It is unclear if the company received permission to suspend the workers years beyond the legal limit, but Morady says the company’s actions have been “totally illegal” and “resulted in the loss of benefits” for workers.
Ath Thorn, president of the Cambodian Labor Confederation, which helped the Giant Ibis employees unionize in 2020, said that the company’s claims of repeatedly miscalculating the severance and seniority payments for laid-off employees was an excuse. He believed the company had violated the law and the Labor Ministry was not doing enough to make the company comply.
“The workers have agreed to take the money, although they are not taken back to normal work, because they want to end the dispute,” Thorn said. “When the employees mount protests, the company always says the union provokes interruptions.”
“The Labor Ministry has full jurisdiction to enforce the law against the company,” he added. “But in this case why did they not do that and delayed in deference to the company?”
