By Jasmin Malik Chua, Source: Ecouterre

Cambodia’s garment workers are working themselves to death—literally, according to IndustriAll Global Union, a labor-rights group that supports 50 million workers in 140 countries in the mining, energy, and manufacturing sectors. Unrelenting hours, close quarters, and chronic malnutrition as a result of “poverty pay,” have contributed to a near-epidemic of mass faintings in factories across the Southeast Asian nation. Now, workers are actually dying at work, says Sokny Say, a member of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, an IndustriAll affiliate.

TO DIE FOR

“2014 is remarkable because while we have had many cases of mass faintings in the past, this is the first year that people have died,” Say says in a statement. “We must not become immune to the fact that so many garment workers are collapsing in the factories. It can be a precursor to death.”

Read more at: Ecouterre