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Trade unions, gender issues and the ready-made garment industry of Bangladesh 6Trade unions, gender issues and the ready-made garment industry of Bangladesh Shamsul I. Khan 1 I. Introduction Various studies have pointed out that there has been a considerable expansion in female employment in Bangladesh during the last decade (Paul-Majumdar and Chaudhuri-Zohir, 1993; Bhuiyan, 1991; Wahra and Rahman, 1995). Female employment, due to both “push” and “pull” factors, has expanded in an unprecedented manner in the formal export-based sectors, particularly in ready-made garment (RMG) manufacturing. In July 1996, 2,357 garment factories were registered with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) (Nahar, 1996). The growth has indeed been phenomenal, since the ready-made garment industry began modestly as late as the 1970s. However, the rapid growth in these female-labour-dominated, export-based manufacturing industries is now also raising new issues and concerns about evolving industrial relations in the RMG sector and their possible future consequences for wages and labour productivity in general and changing working conditions for the female labour force in particular. One particular reason for this concern is the possible organizational impact of the phasing out of the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) on the workplace environment of the factories by the year 2005. One of the crucial factors behind the 179
Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco boom in ready-made garment manufacturing in Bangladesh was the search by mostly East Asian countries, mainly in the late 1970s, for ways around the MFA. Through the MFA — first introduced in 1974 under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) — the United States, Canada and some West European countries sought to protect their own garment industries from cheap imports of garments from the developing countries. Bangladesh, however, was able to escape the MFA import quotas because it was not perceived to be a particular threat to the industries of those countries. As a result, many East Asian firms, unable to export to countries like the US because their countries’ quotas had already been exhausted, simply relocated to Bangladesh, either in the form of foreign direct investments (FDI), or as joint ventures, or even as “buying houses”. Instead of establishing backward linkages or developing indigenous raw material sectors, most of these firms preferred to import almost all their raw materials from their own countries. In other words, they used only the amply available cheap labour force of the country. These garments were then exported to the United States, Canada, and some West European countries as Bangladeshi goods, thereby avoiding import restrictions placed on goods from East Asian countries. The owners of these enterprises utilized informalized labour recruitment and workplace policies, which included recruiting workers without proper “appointment letters” and providing the supervisory staff full authority to hire and fire semi-skilled casual workers (from other factories or unemployed) whenever necessary. Such practices enabled the owners to maintain their strong grip over management and labour relations and sought to rule out any kind of unionization. Around the mid-1980s, when a new generation of Bangladeshi entrepreneurs — a majority of whom started operating primarily as local suppliers of these “buying houses” — joined the RMG manufacturing sector, they followed suit in terms of labour practices. With the exception of a few relatively new garment manufacturers, all preferred cheaply available imported raw materials. All of them also employed mainly unskilled teenage girls or young women, drawn primarily from the rural areas. There were three main reasons for this deliberate feminization of the work force: 1) it was perceived by the garment factory owners that, as Standing has already pointed out with reference to export-led industrialization in other Asian NICs, these poor women had been socially and economically oppressed for so long that they were certainly to have low “aspiration wages” when 180
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Women’s Employment in the Textile
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This United Nations Research Instit
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Acknowledgements Many people have b
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notwithstanding the inertia of the
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Carol Miller is a policy analyst on
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xii VII. Contribution of different
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Introduction 1 Introduction 1 Shahr
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Introduction Table 1: Basic indicat
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Introduction women have been tradit
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Introduction The chapters on Bangla
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Introduction occurs, on average, at
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Introduction women workers related
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Introduction in low-income countrie
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Introduction by repaying their “d
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Introduction participate in labour
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Introduction their bargaining power
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Introduction processing zones hypot
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Introduction IV. The case studies T
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Introduction experience in garment
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Introduction V. Conclusion Although
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Introduction improved technology. T
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Introduction References Afsar, R. (
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Introduction Household Power Relati
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Wage discrimination by gender in Mo
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Gender and employment in Moroccan t
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Gender dimensions of labour migrati
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Table 1: Total number of male and f
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260 Annex Table 2:Level of wages an
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