Can the garment workers be subdued?

The day aggrieved garment workers in Dhaka took to the streets last week protesting the recently announced minimum wage for them, BBC World News ran a segment showing similar protests in Cambodia, where garment workers, mostly women, were demonstrating demanding raising their minimum wage from the current $54 a month salary to $60.

In Bangladesh currency, their minimum wage is Tk 3,780 and they want it increased to Tk 4,200.

Yes, you got it right. They are garment workers from Cambodia, a country that is certainly not more developed or richer than Bangladesh.

Now compare it with what our garment workers are being paid at the moment as minimum wage—Tk 1,662.50, which is less than $25. The minimum wage recently announced for our workers has now been set at Tk 3,000, an increase of more than 80 percent.
On the surface, the raise is substantial. But even with that raise the amount, just about $40, is far less than what the Cambodian workers are currently getting — $54.

So it came as no surprise when the garment workers went on a rampage, venting their pent-up anger against the revised pay scale and vowing more protests if their original demand of setting the minimum wage at Tk 5,000 was not met.

You actually do not need to be a Harvard economist to realise that in this market even Tk 5,000 is not enough to meet the basic needs of a small family.

The garment industry, often touted as the backbone of the economy accounting for over 80 percent of the country's export earnings, has never been fair to the workers who toil day in and day out to keep the industry going even amid global recession.
I have done several stories on the industry and in the process have gained some firsthand knowledge about the workers' pitiable condition.

A young woman I interviewed in a slum in Khilgaon years ago gave me the first taste of what they endure every day. It was subhuman!

When I told her that despite all the sufferings the garment job had given her freedom and she could call herself independent, she looked puzzled.

"Freedom! Independence!" she repeated, asking, what that meant.

"I work from morning to midnight; seven days a week", she said, her voice choking. "What kind of freedom is this?"

From that day I get really mad whenever I hear politicians, social scientists and self-proclaimed pundits trumpet about the women empowerment the garment industry has brought to our society.

In fact, I'll call it a new form of enslavement.

Back to minimum wage. I was very encouraged to hear prime minister Sheikha Hasina making a public comment about the garment workers, calling their wages 'inhuman' only days before it was announced.

That comment naturally raised some hopes that this government was serious about delivering a modicum of respectable wage structure for the workers.

As negotiations dragged on between the government, workers and garment owners some well known factory owners like the smooth-talking Annisul Huq, former BGMEA president, openly threatened to shut his factories if the minimum wage was set at Tk 5,000.

Although the labor minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain reportedly favoured the workers' demand initially, he subsequently sided with the owners for some inexplicable reasons.

The garment owners, of course, argued that it would ruin their industry and force them out of business.

I must confess I haven't done the math but it's hard to imagine that Tk 5,000 minimum wage would have done such great harm to an industry that earns billions of dollars in revenue.

What the owners were perhaps afraid of was that it would have forced them to slightly cut back on their obscenely extravagant life style.

Let me tell you story, which a friend and neighbour told me recently. He had a guest from Bangladesh, a garment factory owner, who was visiting with his wife and two children.

They were actually on a world tour and were travelling first class. By the way, a first-class roundtrip ticket between Dhaka and Washington costs $9,000. Accordingly, he paid $36,000 for four first class tickets. In Bangladesh currency, that amount translates to Tk 2.52 million. Just to remind you, that's only the cost of the air ticket for Dhaka-Washington-Dhaka and do not forget he was on world tour with his family.

Let me ask a very simple question. How uncomfortable would it have been if the garment owner and his family would have travelled business class. The amount of money he could save would have been more than enough to take care of at least 20 of his workers and their families for a whole year.

It is unlikely that the current unrest in the garment sector would die down any time soon. No amount of force or threat or the conspiracy theories would make the situation better.

Force can subdue the smouldering movement for now, but it would erupt again with the slightest provocation. After all hunger has its own force and it will rear its head once the stomach is empty.

The sooner the owners realise this simple truth, the better it is for all of us. After all, a happy contented worker is most certain to be more productive.

Productivity tells the story. Increases in the productivity of workers are supposed to go hand in hand with improvements in their standard of living. That's how capitalism is supposed to work. That's how the economic pie expands, and we're all supposed to have a fair share of that expansion.

P.S: I just thought of a proposal, which could resolve the current crisis. I propose prime minister Sheikh Hasina and some garment factory owners like Salam Murshedy and Annisul Huq would live in a slum with garment workers for a week. And they will be given Tk 750 (one-fourth of the minimum wage) for expenses. If they can survive with that money for a week, the workers will blithely accept the minimum wage.