The Work Post #2: What I’m Actually Doing

Kunthea had invited me to Siem Reap with her friends over the weekend but I stuck around in Phnom Penh because based on my first week at work I suspected that unless I came up with a strong project proposal I would spend the next 3 months sitting in an an office making a referral system about existing services for workers (read: some sort of inane booklet about stuff that already exists).  This was definitely not what I came here to do.

So I spent a good part of  Sunday coming up with a project proposal.  During the partner meeting on Friday, one gentleman had asked the presenters whether or not they had baseline information about the actual demand for the services that they were providing (such as STI checks, etc.).  None of the presenters had been able to answer concretely (it was exactly the kind of scenario William Easterly described in “The White Man’s Burden,” – NGO’s providing what they deem essential services without really asking the beneficiaries what they think is essential).  My proposal was basically that I would look at what the demand for these kinds of services is.  This would put me back on track with the kind of stuff I want to do, which is field research.  I spent a couple of hours laying out a plan, including costs, procedures and relevant literature that I had already skimmed (the only type of reading I know how to do after first year law).

I came in with it Monday morning to our meeting and walked Sophal and Undraa through the general plan.  They both thought that the research question was too broad, and not really feasible in the short time that I have.  But I think they were impressed that I had done the work, because they gave me the exact project that I proposed with a much narrower question.

What I’m doing in the end is going into 8 factories (4 from Sophal’s BFC project, 4 from SPG) and reviewing maternity leave policies.  Cambodia has laws on the book for maternity leave and BFC monitors ask questions about maternity leave on their visits to factories.  But companies also have internal regulations (these are documents that have to be approved by the ministry of labour) and policies (sometimes these are written documents, sometimes they are verbal agreements and general practices) that haven’t really been looked at in depth.  My job will be to look at them in depth.  I’ll have to go in and interview managers, shop stewards, union representatives, and workers.  Then I’ll synthesize the data into a report about how the process of taking maternity leave actually plays  out in garment factories.  I’m supposed to be on the lookout for things like discrimination against pregnant workers, or non-payment of wages during maternity leave (women are supposed to get %50 of their monthly wages), as well as things like loss of seniority status upon returning to the workplace.

I was pretty thrilled because not only would I be engaging in the kind of process I really wanted engage in, but I’d be doing work that actually needed to be done.  Sophal needs someone to review those policies and get that information – especially in light of the fact that during the economic downturn compliance with maternity leave laws dropped significantly (while compliance with most other laws stayed the same).   It’s not just busy work for the intern nobody knows what to do with.

The only thing that really worried me was that my supervisors didn’t seem to be too concerned about methodology.  There are tons of variables that could affect the answers to our questions.  One such variable is the nationality of the factory owner (the vast majority of these export factories are owned by either Chinese, Taiwanese or Korean owners).  As well there is huge variation in size, with factories as small as 300 people or as big as 3000 people.   For Sophal’s 4 factories I had no choice which ones I’d take (and two of them weren’t even garment factories,  they were shoe factories).  And Undraa didn’t seem to have any preference: she just told me to pick 4 at random.  Furthermore, even if  I could have all the choice in the world for picking factories, I’d still only be looking at 8 out of more than 300 that are registered with BFC.  With such a small value, I couldn’t see what value my report would have but Undraa and Sophal did not seem to be too concerned with that.

Then I had a meeting with Tuomo – one of the main people at BFC and he solved my problem for me.  The first thing he said when I told him about my project was, “8 factories, isn’t that a bit shallow?”  I nodded, thinking, YES THANK GOD FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE THINKS THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM!  He thought about it for a minute and then came up with a solution.  Apparently the ILO has a database with a ton of information from monitoring visits from basically the last 10 years.  From there, I could get see what the trends are in the industry for my questions over the last 6 months.  Having that information, I could then just use the 8 factories as case studies to add texture and narrative to the numbers.  I couldn’t have access to the database.  First of all I didn’t have the security clearance and the information is relatively sensitive (it’s actually owned by the factories and can’t be released without their consent).  Plus, let’s be real.  I probably would not be able to actually extract the information I need from the database.  So instead Tuomo just offered to have the ILO resident computer nerds run the data for me.  SCORE!!!!

So that’s the latest on what I’m doing.  In the next couple of weeks I should start visiting factories and speaking with management as well as setting up times when I can do focus groups with the workers.  I’ve been reading a lot about the industry, as well as social studies of the garment workers. I’ve been trying to pay a lot of attention to the methodologies of these studies (though a lot of them had a lot more time and resources than I do).  In any case, it’s kind of a relief that I’ll have all of this data for the industry.

The next step is figuring out how to get access to the factories.  For Sophal’s project it’s no problem, he just called up the ministry and they gave us permission to go in.  But SPG is not a project that collaborates with the government, so Undraa can’t just call up the ministry of labour and get them to let us in.  At the same time a lot of factory managers are generally hostile to people coming in and poking around their factories.  As a result, I don’t yet have a way of getting in to the 4 factories involved with SPG.  I have a meeting about that tomorrow with a woman from BFC who was heavily involved in doing the maternal nutrition report (which I thought I was going to do).  She will probably be able to help me with this and then I can get the ball rolling and start going to factories.

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