The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Cambodian Garment Workers, 2020-2021

Covid-19 has severely impacted employment opportunity and earning potential for workers in Cambodia's garment and footwear sector. Manifesting initially as an economic crisis, the impacts of manufacturing shutdowns and consumer lockdowns around the world slowed the garment sector's output. This led to employment suspensions and terminations affecting hundreds of thousands of workers in Cambodia alone. For two years, the ReFashion study has uniquely tracked the impacts of the pandemic on a cohort of 200 female workers in Cambodia, from January 2020 through to December 2021. The study combines a quantitative survey of female workers to measure monthly trends in employment, household finances, and wellbeing, with qualitative interviews to explore emergent themes in greater depth. Each of these components is repeated with the same cohort of participants at strategic intervals. The research methods are designed to capture an in-depth and long-term understanding of women workers' lives through the pandemic. Our findings indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated a crisis of over-indebtedness for workers in the garment industry, with severe consequences for the short and long-term health and wellbeing of workers and their families. Over-indebtedness is reached when a credit borrower 'is continuously struggling to meet repayment deadlines and has to make unduly high sacrifices related to his or her loan obligations'. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, credit borrowing had become commonplace among low-income households in Cambodia, which has one of the largest microfinance industries in the world in terms of borrowers per capita. This widescale borrowing enables households to temporarily deal with the lack of social protection and public services in the country, allowing them to meet costs of health care and invest in housing in times of urgent need. High levels of borrowing by garment workers specifically, as evidenced in the ReFashion study, indicate that flagship efforts to foster 'Decent Work' in the garment sector in Cambodia have not precluded the need for some workers to take on significant loans to supplement their low wages and fill the gaps in social protection provision. During the COVID-19 pandemic, garment workers' 'financial inclusion' became even more vital to their ability to cope with the economic emergency they faced, by using access to credit to smooth short terms gaps in income caused by employment suspensions. Yet at the same time, reduced earning capacity hindered workers' ability to make existing loan repayments. To meet outstanding commitments, many resorted to reducing daily expenditure on necessities including food. Most workers reported their household food intake as inadequate and many reported experiencing hunger during the pandemic. Such unduly high sacrifices are neither just nor sustainable.

新冠疫情（COVID-19）严重冲击了柬埔寨服装与制鞋行业劳动者的就业机会与收入潜力。疫情最初以经济危机的形式显现，全球范围内的制造业停工与居家令令柬埔寨服装业产能大幅下滑，仅该国就有数十万劳动者面临停职或解雇。过去两年来，ReFashion研究项目对2020年1月至2021年12月间的200名柬埔寨女性劳动者队列进行了独家追踪，记录疫情对其生活的影响。该研究结合量化调查与质性访谈：通过面向女性劳动者的量化调研，按月衡量就业、家庭财务与福祉的变化趋势；通过质性访谈深入挖掘涌现出的核心议题。两组研究均在固定时间节点对同一队列的参与者进行重复调研，旨在全面、长期地理解疫情期间女性劳动者的生存状态。研究结果显示，新冠疫情加剧了服装行业劳动者的过度负债危机，对劳动者及其家庭的短期与长期健康福祉造成严重影响。过度负债指信贷借款人持续难以按时还款，且不得不为偿还贷款作出过度牺牲。早在新冠疫情暴发前，柬埔寨低收入家庭就已普遍使用信贷借贷——该国按人均借款人规模计算，拥有全球最大的小额信贷（microfinance）行业之一。这种大规模借贷帮助家庭暂时应对国内社会保护与公共服务的不足，使其在紧急时刻能够承担医疗费用、投资住房。ReFashion研究显示，服装行业劳动者的高借贷规模表明，柬埔寨服装业旨在推动'体面工作（Decent Work）'的标志性举措，并未完全消除部分劳动者为弥补低薪、填补社会保护缺口而背负高额贷款的需求。新冠疫情期间，服装行业劳动者的'金融包容性'愈发成为其应对经济危机的关键：他们借助信贷渠道填补因停职导致的短期收入缺口。但与此同时，收入能力下降又阻碍了劳动者偿还现有贷款的能力。为履行未清偿的债务承诺，许多劳动者不得不削减包括食品在内的日常必需品开支。多数劳动者表示家庭粮食摄入量不足，不少人坦言疫情期间曾经历饥饿。此类过度牺牲既不公平，也不具备可持续性。