INTRODUCTION Before COVID-"#, workers in garment-exporting countries in Asia faced dangerous and challenging work for poverty wages without protections against discrimination, harassment, or retaliation for filing complaints or attempting to join a union. During and after COVID-"#, garment workers, including contract and informal workers, have faced mass layoffs, non-payment of owed wages, food insecurity and lack of healthcare at a time when basic social protection is more important than ever. The COVID-"# crisis illustrates that recent labour law reforms proposed in several garment-exporting countries are untenable moving forward. As this report, Garment workers under threat from labour deregulation in Asia: A review of recent labour and employment law changes in Cambodia, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, shows, in recent years, Cambodia, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka have responded to political and economic crises by deregulating labour and employment law. While new laws have adopted prohibitions on discrimination at work, overall they undermine workers’ power and increase informality by expanding legal uses of fixed-term employment, maintaining low minimum wages, hollowing out social safety nets, undermining strikes and sectoral bargaining and otherwise excluding workers from consultation. Undermining workers’ rights cannot be part of any country’s plan for post-COVID eco- nomic development. For garment workers, as for millions of low-income workers, garment-exporting countries have largely been unable to provide adequate social safety nets during this crisis. Social protection should be strengthened as we move forward, not undermined. As countries look to recover from the economic shock of COVID, they must abandon the old idea that deregulating labour and economic law stimulates economic growth.( Critically, macroeconomic studies have not shown any connection between deregulation and growth. Outside of Asia, in the United States) and in Australia*, regulation has had a moderate or positive impact on growth. In response to proposed deregulation in India and Indonesia, the World Bank has actually recommended higher wage floors, stronger enforcement and better safety nets.+ Workers have long known that more, not less, should be invested in their livelihoods, and COVID-"#$ has exposed that reality for all to see. Governments must take note and act accordingly. This report, explains the labour and employment law changes that governments initiated before COVID. For each country, a brief introduction is followed by explanations of what the changes are why they are new, and why they matter. Assume countries are signatories to the ILO Conventions discussed unless otherwise noted. 8