Thousands of people at a Kampong Cham province garment factory reignited a strike yesterday, protesting the factory’s refusal to reinstate three fired union representatives, one of those representatives said.

Protests began last month, but there was a brief respite on January 7 and 8 when workers came in for shifts so they could collect wages, said Chorn Theang, a dismissed employee and factory president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions (CATU).

Roughly 3,000 people returned to the street outside the factory yesterday morning, said Theang, who was one of 107 people fired last year for demonstrating. All but three CATU leaders were rehired.

Even though an Arbitration Council decision last year favoured the reinstatement of the leaders – including Theang – Manhattan managers ignored it. A Manhattan official said yesterday that 2,000 people were working.