Heng Sour, secretary of state and spokesperson for the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training, on October 13 detailed how the Committee for Strike and Demonstration Resolution has played an important role as an additional mechanism for resolving labour disputes.

“According to the labour law, when there is a dispute, we first resolve it at the company level and the department or ministry level. Failing that, it goes to the Arbitration Council and, as the last resort, the court.

"But for cases that would lead to strikes or demonstrations when there is no solution, the committee has the role of coordinating negotiations by calling all parties in for meetings to reconcile and find a solution, which can happen at any stage during the strike or demonstration,” he said.

Even if the labour dispute case reaches the Arbitration Council or court, each party can still return to mediation by using the committee mechanism, Sour explained.

However, Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR), said she had observed that mostly whenever labour dispute cases occur, there was participation from organisations or trade unions to find resolutions rather than the labour ministry. And unless their intervention was demanded by the unions, only the relevant committee of the ministry would participate.

The unions say the labour ministry’s committee has had little influence in resolving labour disputes, while senior labour ministry officials say the committee is still needed for serious cases.

On October 13, Yang Sophorn, president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions, said the ministry’s committee had not had any fruitful results in resolving labour dispute cases.

"From my observations, and I’ve been working in this sector, the committee has been involved very little in this work and don’t know much about its facilitation methods. This committee has played some role perhaps, but not a comprehensive one yet,” she said.

Ath Thorn, president of the Cambodian Labour Confederation (CLC), said the committee was less effective than other bodies.

"We see that some disputes were sent to the Arbitration Council when it was not possible to resolve them, and then they were sent to the committee, meaning that the labour ministry duplicated the efforts for resolving the case,” he said.

Thorn called for elimination of the committee’s role. He said it was not necessary and instead efforts should be made to strengthen the role and transparency of the Arbitration Council in labour disputes to make it more effective.

Regarding the rights to freedom of assembly and protest in the labour sector, Sopheap stressed that there were still restrictions by the authorities and by the labour ministry. She called on the relevant institutions, especially the committee, to give workers full rights to freedom of assembly and protest in cases of labour disputes, as stipulated in the existing labour law.