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ABSTRACT
The ready-made garment (RMG) sector in Bangladesh was especially hard hit during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as consumer demand for apparel plummeted, leading to global retailers cancelling orders and revising their sourcing strategies. To situate the adverse impact on workers in the industry during this global pandemic, I draw some lessons from the aftermath of the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013. I focus specifically on the distorted notions of what constitutes safety for workers, primarily for female garment workers and how this has influenced key programmes and interventions designed to keep workers safe. This article draws on evidence from a survey with Brac University, Bangladesh where we interviewed 1,057 garment workers to understand how the pandemic had impacted their lives.Footnote1 I argue that we need to examine our notion about the level of safety that is acceptable or required through both a gender and a class lens, in order to understand how the cycle of labour violations for these women who work at the very bottom of global supply chains are perpetuated, despite significant attention to worker safety over the last decade.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Rabbani, Saxena, and Islam, “The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Workers.”
2. The ready-made garment (RMG) sector in Bangladesh accounts for approximately 80% of Bangladesh’s total exports ($34.13 billion in 2018–19) and is the world’s second-largest exporter of RMGs, which go to 132 countries. Exports doubled from 2010 to 2015 and will nearly triple by 2022 (Saxena, Mullins, and Tripathi, The Weakest Link in the Supply Chain).
3. Bangladesh’s RMG sector employs more than 4.4 million people, a large majority of those employed in this sector are women (Ibid).
4. Ashraf, H. “Beyond Building Safety,” 254.
5. Brown (Citation2021) includes a comprehensive literature review about women workers during Covid-19.
6. The Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, collaborated with the James P Grant School of Public Health (BRAC JPGSPH) at the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Development (CED) at BRAC University in Bangladesh to conduct this survey.
7. Given the lockdown situation during the survey period, it was not possible to visit factories and interview workers in-person. This survey was carried out by CED using alternative research methods by successfully collecting workers’ names and contact details through various channels in their network. We were able to collect the names and phone numbers of RMG workers from factories in Dhaka city, Ashulia, Savar, Dhamrai, Tongi, Gazipur, Narayanganj, Tangail, Chattogram and Mymensingh. Using this method, we were able to retrieve the contact details for 2,500 workers. Enumerators called the workers from the list and collected answers to our questions over the phone in a 35-minute interview and entered the responses using Kobo Tool Box. Out of the 2,500 workers on the original list, researchers successfully surveyed 1,057 workers.
8. Rabbani, Saxena, and Islam, “The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Workers”.
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety, Accessed January 2, 2021.
10. The authors argue that in some cases of rape, the victim’s parents are more concerned about the damage to the family’s reputation, rather than about the physical and emotional impacts of the crime itself.
11. Quoted in: Phadke, Khan, & Ranade, Why Loiter?, 114.
12. Hewamanne, “Toward Meaningful Health and Safety Measures”.
13. Ashraf writes that the term ‘garments-er-meye’ (garment girls) is said to be demeaning or derogatory: ‘One male line supervisor commented, “If you think freeing yourself from the fabric dust, tidying up your hair, and then walking on the street hanging a bag from your shoulder would give you an aura of a versity girl [university girl], you are wrong. You are a garments-er chemri [garment girl] and that is what you will remain. They would not recognize you as a madam [respected lady]”’ (Ashraf, ‘Beyond Building Safety,’ 258).
14. Hewamanne, “Toward Meaningful Health and Safety Measures,” 233.
15. Ibid.
16. Ashraf, H. “Beyond Building Safety,” 264–5.
17. Siddiqi, “Afterword: Politics After Rana Plaza,” 275.
18. On 1 June 2020, via a Memorandum of Understanding reached in May 2019 between the Accord Steering Committee and the garment and knitwear manufacturers associations in Bangladesh (BGMEA, BKMEA), the in-country operations of the Accord transitioned to the RMG Sustainability Council (RSC). The RSC is a Bangladesh company created by the Accord signatory brands, Accord signatory unions, and the BGMEA and BKMEA.
19. This narrow definition of‘safety,’ as defined by the Accord, is called into question by Huq (‘Opportunities and limitation of the Accord,’ 2019), when she asks, “ … what purpose does the uncritical, technocratic use of the word safe or safety serve and whom does it benefit? This notion of safety, as defined by the Accord as being the number of factories inspected, allows for market promotion as part of corporate responsibility program rather than actual holistic health and safety from workers’ perspective or norms set by ILO. When viewed from the norms established by ILO that discuss workers’ rights and evidence on workers’ actual working conditions, workers have not been made ‘safer.’ https://bangladeshaccord.org, Accessed December 10, 2020.
20. Anner, Binding Power.
21. Winterbottom and Baumann-Pauly, Estimating the True Cost of Remediating.
22. Schüßler, Frenkel, Ashwin, Kabeer, et. al, “Garment Supply Chains since Rana Plaza.”
23. Saxena, (ed.) Labor, Global Supply Chains, and the Garment Industry; Oxfam ‘Made in Poverty’; Reinecke, Donaghey, Bocken, and Lauriano, ‘Business Models and Labour Standards’; Arengo,‘Future of Fashion’; OECD ‘OECD Due Diligence Guidance’; Anner, Binding Power; Barrett, Baumann-Pauly, and Gu, Five Years After Rana Plaza.
24. Ashraf, H. “Beyond Building Safety,” 251.
25. Saxena, “Façade of workers’ safety.”
26. Locke, The Promise and Limits of Private Power.
27. Bhattacharjee, “Fast fashion, production targets.” also discussed by other authors, notably Mezzadri, (Mezzadri, The Sweatshop Regime) and Prentice & De Neve (Prentice and De Neve, eds. Unmaking the Global Sweatshop).
28. Bhattacharjee, “Fast fashion, production targets.”
29. Reinecke, Donaghey, Bocken, and Lauriano, “Business Models and Labour Standards.”
30. These risk factors for violence stem from the structure of garment supply chains, including: asymmetrical relationships of power between brands and suppliers; brand purchasing practices driven by fast fashion trends and pressure to reduce costs; and proliferation of contract labour and subcontracting practices among supplier firms.
31. Women of all classes are subject to gender-based violence in both home and the workplace, but for working class women, the violence in the workplace is endemic in the structure of factory work. This was made worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.
32. Kabeer, Haq, and Sulaiman, “Multi-stakeholder initiatives in Bangladesh.”
33. This will be discussed in more detail in the next section.
34. Emphasis mine.
35. “COVID-19 Impact on selected RMG factories” The Daily Star. October 24, 2020.
36. Clean Clothes Campaign estimates global loss of wages to be between $3.19 billion and $5.78 billion.
37. Anner, Binding Power.
38. Rabbani, Saxena, and Islam, “The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Workers.”
39. The WRC, in collaboration with the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR), launched the COVID-19 tracker webpage with regular updates on buyers who were not honouring their contracts.
40. The Clean Clothes Campaign contacted 100 apparel companies since June 2020, demanding that workers receive the wages, benefits, and back pay that they are owed.
41. In October, 2020, the #PayUp campaign resulted in the next phase of PayUp Fashion, described as, “a campaign to overhaul the apparel industry, pass much-needed laws and regulations, fight for better wages, purchasing orders, and contracts – and above all put workers at the center of a stronger, more equitably fashion industry.” See https://remake.world/stories/news/introducing-payup-fashion-why-the-future-of-any-fashion-sustainability-efforts-must-be-worker-centric/, Retrieved October 25, 2020.
43. Jackson, Judd, and Viegelahn,“The supply chain ripple effect.”
44. Siddiqi, “What the Pandemic Reveals.”
46. We see this playing out again during second COVID-19 lockdown in Bangladesh from July 1, 2021. As infections and hospitalisations have increased throughout the country, the government declared a nation wide lockdown. Garment factories were initially exempt from the lockdown and many workers travelled to the factories (with limited transportation options) in order to continue working, despite the increased health risks. According to the Dhaka Tribune, from July 23, however, garment factories will also remain closed until August 5, 2021. The hope is that this time, even with a two week closure, orders will continue and workers will get paid their wages in full (https://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2021/07/13/factories-ordered-to-close-from-july-23).
47. Tanjeem, “Spotlights of Transnational Labour.”
48. Jackson, Judd, and Viegelahn, “The supply chain ripple effect.”
49. Khan, Misha, Murshid, et. al, “The wellbeing of garment workers.”
52. This was also noted in Khan, Misha, Murshid, et. al, ‘The wellbeing of garment workers.’; Preetha (‘Innocent until found protesting.’) cites studies which discuss how much workers need to spend to meet their mandated nutritional intake: ‘Another survey of 200 workers conducted in 2018 by Bangladesh Garment Sromik Samhati, a Dhaka-based labour-rights group, found that an average garment worker has the ability to spend BDT 1110 (USD 13) per person per month on food. However, the study found that a worker must spend at least BDT 3270 (USD 39) per month to meet the calorific needs, as determined by the Institute of Nutrition and Food Science at Dhaka University. This caloric requirement excludes food with higher nutritional value, like meat or fruits.’ (https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/the-sound-and-the-fury/news/ethical-business-not-one-way-street-1935149).
53. Schüßler, Frenkel, Ashwin, Kabeer, et. al, “Garment Supply Chains since Rana Plaza.”
54. Khan, Misha, Murshid, et. al, “The wellbeing of garment workers.”
55. The Daily Star, 2020.
56. Sakamoto, Begum, and Ahmed, “Vulnerabilities to COVID-19 in Bangladesh.”
57. Khan, Misha, Murshid, et. al, “The wellbeing of garment workers.”
58. The main duties of the Safety Committees, as indicated on the site, are to: “Conduct factory inspections to identify safety hazards; Respond to workers’ health and safety complaints; Actively communicate about safety and health issues to workers; Review company accident reports to learn how such accidents can be prevented; Aim to meet regularly, at least once every three months.
59. Schüßler, Frenkel, Ashwin, Kabeer, et. al, ‘Garment Supply Chains since Rana Plaza.’; Kabeer (Kabeer, Haq, and Sulaiman, ‘Multi-stakeholder initiatives in Bangladesh’) find low union penetration in garment factories in earlier studies including a CPD RMG survey of 3596 workers carried out in 2016, where only 3% reported a trade union in their factory (Moazzem, 2018). In our survey, only 3% of respondents were a part of a union and less than 1% stated that trade unions were active during the COVID-19 pandemic (Rabbani, Saxena, and Islam, ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Workers’).
60. Ashraf, & Prentice, “Beyond factory safety.”
61. Bair, Anner, & Blasi, ‘Sweatshops and the Search for Solutions’ In Prentice and De Neve, Eds. Unmaking the Global Sweatshop, 47.
62. To answer ‘which bodies were active during Covid-19,’ 9% said workers’ associations, 30% said none, and 20% said they didn’t know (Ibid).
63. Ashraf, “Beyond Building Safety.”
64. Siddiqi, “What the Pandemic Reveals” Ashraf & Prentice, ‘Beyond factory safety’; Preetha, ‘Innocent until found protesting.’
66. US Government Publishing Office, “Seven Years After Rana Plaza.”
67. Also see: Ashraf & Prentice, “Beyond factory safety.”
68. Freedom of association and collective bargaining are essential rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
69. Saxena, Made in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka.
70. Ruwanpura, “Garments without guilt?”
71. Ward, “Does third-party monitoring improve labour rights?”