RMG workers deserve fair deal

Published : 21 May 2013, 11:38 AM
Updated : 21 May 2013, 11:38 AM

Garments industry mishaps have exposed the relationship between the state and capital in contemporary Bangladesh. The British social thinker Ralph Miliband surmised in the 1960s that the capitalist state works as the instrument of the capitalist class. Bangladeshi RMG tragedies testify for Miliband as the state time and again failed to pay heed to the agony of the workers.

Garments factories grew in large numbers in this country in the 1990s as a consequence of economic restructuring in western capitalist societies. After the economic crisis of the 1970s, west-based capitalists began to dismantle the manufacturing industries such as textile by outsourcing them to the capitalists in the East especially in Asian countries like China, the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh. This outsourcing on the one hand saved them from the hassle of handling workers, and on the other, offered a decent profit. Over time, Bangladesh has emerged as a prominent RMG destination after China. Numerous garments factories operate in and around the capital city Dhaka to offer garments to western consumers at the cheapest price. Superstores such as Primark, Walmart, Loblaws, and K-Mart across the Atlantic sell garments produced by the Bangladeshi factories.

The workers who are predominantly female work the maximum amount of time for the lowest possible wages. They hardly enjoy any holidays, job security or have workplace safety. In recent years, tragic large scale accidents in several factories have brought, yet again, this injustice to light. Tazreen Garments was burnt to ashes killing more than a hundred employees. Immolation of these workers showed that they worked in an unsafe place under lock and key. Many workers died or got injured by jumping out of the windows trying to escape the inferno.

The latest was the Rana Plaza disaster where a nine-storey building housing five garments factories collapsed trapping several thousand workers and killing more than 1100. These factories were built in a poorly constructed building which had recently shown cracks on its walls. Yet the factory owners, allegedly, forced the workers to join work in order to meet shipment deadlines.

While accidents like these keep taking place almost at regular intervals, the state so far has failed to ensure neither a decent minimum wage nor a safe working condition for the workers. The authorities concerned don't seem to dare to take action against any factory owners for failing to obey labour laws and the ILO conventions on workers' rights. However, it has been successful in taming agitating workers through false hopes and brutal force. It has also denied the rights of forming trade unions by the garments factory workers to bargain their rights until the AFL-CIO forced to have a law passed by the cabinet on April 22 to allow trade unions at the garments factories. The major political parties, civil society groups, human right groups and women's rights groups operating in the country too have failed to act effectively in favour of the workers. And the buyers of the Bangladeshi garments — the superstores in the western malls — have shrugged off their responsibility in ensuring the minimum wages and safe work condition to keep buying cheap products and ensuring profit for their shareholders.

The factory owners have been successful in having the state work for them, cajoling the civil society, and controlling media discourses around the issues of workers' rights. The state authority remains complacent as the industry created thousands of jobs and contributes heavily to boost the GDP growth.

But the days of inaction and rights violation are hopefully coming to an end. Supports for the deprived workers seem to increase at home as well as abroad. In recent months, we have seen how many western human rights and civil rights activists have stood in front of the superstores demanding fair deals for the Bangladeshi garments workers. Such events are set to gradually grow creating pressure on the superstores and as well as the owners and the authorities concerned.

It is indeed time the workers deserved a fair deal. The histories of industrial development in the late 19th and early 20th century Europe and North America suggest that a sustainable industrial growth takes place through a truce between the owners and the workers. The state has to mediate between these two to secure a fair deal. For the peace and sustainable development, exploitation at the garments factories must come to an end.

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Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan is the Chairperson of Department of Television and Film Studies, Dhaka University