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Trade unions, gender issues and the ready-made garment industry of Bangladesh people who were involved with the management in RMG enterprises, namely, the owners; the third comprised the officials of the Labour Directorate who were responsible for both monitoring and implementing various labour institutions and employment-related acts, as well as resolving those industrial disputes which could not be settled through collective bargaining procedures; the fourth comprised people from the compulsory dispute resolution machinery of the state who were primarily responsible for both arbitration and adjudication through formal judicial procedures; and the fifth comprised the “interested outsiders” who held positions of leadership in different working-class organizations. These organizations were found to be largely front organizations for various political parties. After carefully weighing all the merits and demerits of different kinds of interview techniques, we finally settled for non-formal interviews at each of the stages with different check-lists of queries. The interview process was concluded in October, 1996. 3. Plan of the study This chapter consists of five sections. Following the introductory section, section II summarizes the history of the unionization process, the basic ensemble of the federations, as well as the role of the garment federations and their basic units in promoting the causes of the predominantly female labour force. Section III analyses general views as well as responses of the owners of various RMG enterprises to the initiatives of either the federations or of some workers in their respective factories for unionization. Section IV evaluates government policies towards labour in general, and towards the formation of federations of workers union and/or unit unions in particular. It also makes critical assessments of procedural activities as well as monitoring policies of both the offices of the Registrar of Trade Unions and Federations of Trade Unions, and the Chief Inspector of Factories and Establishments of the Directorate of Labour. In this connection, it also describes the legal framework for handling disputes with particular reference to the unionization process and issues related to the dismissal or other punitive measures taken against the office bearers of unit unions. The somewhat ambivalent relationship existing between the federations of the garment workers’ unions and the structured trade unions — meaning labour front organizations of various political parties — are illustrated in section V. Finally, section VI wraps up the study by bringing together the main conclusions derived from the previous sections. 185
Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco II. David versus Goliath: Workers’ mobilization and the unionization process 1. Review of the federations of the garment workers’ unions a. The registered garment federations in Bangladesh As far as the office records of the Directorate of Labour is concerned, there should now be four registered federations of garment workers unions operating in Bangladesh. However, despite the existence of four federations on paper, our investigation suggested the existence of only two federations in reality, which we designate here as registered Federation A and registered Federation B in order to protect the confidentiality of our respondents. Registered Federation C is only partially active and is characterized by certain irregular labour-related activities, while registered Federation D seems to be defunct. It should be mentioned in this connection that after repeated attempts we failed to locate even the office of registered Federation D from the address that was submitted to the office of the Registrar of Trade Unions while applying for registration, and we failed to find out the whereabouts of its office bearers. All of the three active registered federations claimed to have sufficient numbers of unions at the unit levels. Most of the unit unions, they claimed, were established with their direct support. They extend, they stressed, all kinds of legal support to the workers of their unit unions in case of dismissal or any other wage or work-related disputes. They also claimed to have negotiated with the owners of some factories on behalf of their unit unions. Registered Federation A and registered Federation B further emphasized that they also provide paralegal and other jobrelated training to members and supporters at the unit union level. b. The non-registered garment federations in Bangladesh Beside the above-mentioned registered federations, we found from different sources, including newspaper reports, the names of 10 more non-registered federations which were purportedly involved with garment workers. However, we found that, among these 10 federations, only the one we designate non-registered Federation G was active on almost a full-time basis with various female labourrelated activities — for instance providing medical facilities to female garment workers, running night and weekend schools, conducting paralegal and socio-political awareness-building programmes, extending legal support to individual workers and its affiliated unit 186
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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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