024. On Local Legal Contexts, Trust, & Worker-Management Relations with Matthew Rendall

In this episode we are extremely lucky to be joined by Matthew Rendall, a senior partner at ZICO law in Cambodia. Matthew has been in and out of Cambodia since 1994. He is a specialist in Cambodian labor law. With his help, we look at the particularities of the Cambodian legal system, and how the Cambodian labor law as we know it today came into existence. We then look at how this history has affected trust in the legal system, and how this, in turn, shapes relationships between workers and factory managers in Cambodia. This prompts Kim to candidly share a bit about the contentious relationship she had with her production staff back when she was a factory manager.

Want to dig deeper ?

Read Kim’s highly personal piece on her sometimes -contentious relationship with production staff and her conviction that singular narratives about worker-management relations fail us.

The truth is, our experience within the fashion supply chain has been full of ambiguity, or anecdotes and stories that seem to contradict one another. This journal article was particularly helpful for making sense of all.

Here’s a snippet: “supply chains…team with politically ambiguous, liminal figures, caught within the contradictions between varied forms of hierarchy and exclusion. I suggest that we pay attention to these figures, rather than rejecting them as flawed protagonists.” Don’t let the fact that it’s an academic piece put you off! It’s well worth the effort