Employment relations and political transition in Cambodia

Abstract

Literature to date on employment relations in Cambodia has focused for the most part on the emergence of the labour legislation and third-party monitoring mechanisms in the context of export-oriented manufacturing in the 1990s. This article builds on these analyses to consider the state’s political transition and the role of external influences in this process. It explores the relationship between political transition and the development of Cambodia’s employment relations framework, arguing that deep contradictions between a formally progressive framework of labour regulation and the regime’s ideologies and interests continue to shape employment relations practice. These contradictions are evidenced by the obstacles posed to comprehensive implementation of the labour law by the need to accommodate international interests, facilitate prescribed forms of citizen participation and maintain ruling elite power and privilege. Despite these tensions, regulatory reform and the corresponding civil society developments have succeeded to the extent that workers are able to act in response to the limitations of the system and continued attempts by the state to control them.

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