Labor Leader Cautions Against Hun Sen Intervention
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| Chea Mony, president of Cambodia's Free Trade Union of Workers. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS) |
Washington, D.C Friday, 01 October 2010
“If I'm a worker, I'm happy when an employer wants to file a complaint but where the prime minister asks that it be stopped.”
The intervention this week by Prime Minister Hun Sen in a series of labor disputes could please workers but upset investors, a trade union representative said Thursday.
In public statements on Wednesday, Hun Sen urged the courts to drop a number of cases brought by factories against labor leaders, following a general strike in mid-September. The factories had been insistent on charging some union representatives for the strike, which managers called illegal.
“If I'm a worker, I'm happy when an employer wants to file a complaint but where the prime minister asks that it be stopped,” said Chea Mony, president of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, as a guest on “Hello VOA.”
“But if the courts say they are independent, they can't accept the prime minister's request,” he said. “That's the problem.”
