Commentary: Anne Elizabeth Moore on Cambodia’s Striking Garment Workers

Commentary: Anne Elizabeth Moore on Cambodia’s Striking Garment Workers

Commentary: Anne Elizabeth Moore on Cambodia’s Striking Garment Workers

Anne Elizabeth Moore argues that if the international business community can’t support the workers in Cambodia’s garment sector, maybe young women around the world can.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Earlier this week, workers in Cambodia’s garment industry walked off their jobs over stagnant wages and the exploitative business practices of their employers. Sixty thousand began the strike Monday. Twice as many Tuesday. By Wednesday, labor leaders were estimating that 210,000 workers had walked out of 95 factories in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. By Thursday morning, a meeting was set to renegotiate wages.

Approximately 346,000 people are employed in the nation’s garment sector— making sports shoes and clothes—and the industry is the country’s third largest. Ninety percent of Cambodia’s garment workers are female, and less than three percent of them ever make it to management. Girls are sent from the provinces to work in the factories by families who can’t make ends meet farming. Their income directly supports, according to the UN, 1.6 million of the nation’s 14 million people.

Author Anne Elizabeth Moore argues that if the international business community can’t support the workers of Cambodia’s garment sector, maybe international young women can.

The Nation on GRIT TV is a weekly video collaboration between The Nation and GRIT TV with Laura Flanders. Watch for Monday briefings, Wednesday commentaries, weekend conversations and more at TheNation.com. For full half-hour episodes of The Nation on GRIT TV, or local television air times visit www.grittv.org.

Be part of 160 years of confronting power 


Every day,
The Nation exposes the administration’s unchecked and reckless abuses of power through clear-eyed, uncompromising independent journalism—the kind of journalism that holds the powerful to account and helps build alternatives to the world we live in now. 

We have just the right people to confront this moment. Speaking on Democracy Now!, Nation DC Bureau chief Chris Lehmann translated the complex terms of the budget bill into the plain truth, describing it as “the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history.” In the pages of the June print issue and on The Nation Podcast, Jacob Silverman dove deep into how crypto has captured American campaign finance, revealing that it was the top donor in the 2024 elections as an industry and won nearly every race it supported.

This is all in addition to The Nation’s exceptional coverage of matters of war and peace, the courts, reproductive justice, climate, immigration, healthcare, and much more.

Our 160-year history of sounding the alarm on presidential overreach and the persecution of dissent has prepared us for this moment. 2025 marks a new chapter in this history, and we need you to be part of it.

We’re aiming to raise $20,000 during our June Fundraising Campaign to fund our change-making reporting and analysis. Stand for bold, independent journalism and donate to support The Nation today.

Onward, 

Katrina vanden Heuvel 
Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x