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Trade unions, gender issues and the ready-made garment industry of Bangladesh Two points seem to be worth noting here. First, although four federations mentioned worker’s contributions and annual subscriptions as their main sources of finance, the amount, as is clear from their modes of subscription discussed below, is so meagre that it hardly accounts for their stated activities and amount of incurred expenditures. This suggests that they must be receiving funds from elsewhere that they do not want to disclose. Second, though half of our respondent federations were established through the direct initiative and support of various political organizations and their affiliated trade unions, none of them gave any indication of receiving any amount of financial help from those political organizations. When we asked them directly about the source of the money needed to meet their regular expenses, most were vague. Pressed, almost all of them mentioned that they receive, from time to time, certain amount of financial assistance from what they called “friends” and “wellwishers”. They, however, categorically refused to reveal the names and whereabouts of these donors. In order to have a clearer picture of the sources of finance of our respondent federations, we asked additional questions regarding the mode of subscription of the members of those federations. We found out at this stage that the mode of subscription varies from federation to federation. Non-registered Federation G, for example, takes Tk 10 per person as admission fee from all workers. Non-registered Federation E, on the other hand, claims that it charges a monthly subscription fee for general members. However, both the President and the General Secretary of this federation would not reveal the exact amount of the subscription, saying only that it was a “pittance”. Registered Federation B usually takes monthly subscriptions at a rate of Tk 2, but in times of any financial crisis of the workers, the federation accepts any “token amount” as subscription. Unlike these federations, registered Federation C and nonregistered Federation H do not have any hard and fast rules regarding subscription from its workers. They normally charge membership fees and a “small amount of subscription” while granting new membership to a garment worker. Although there is a provision for annual subscription afterwards, it is not binding for members. Non-registered Federation F also has a provision for an annual membership fee at the rate of Tk 10. However, its President made it clear to us that, due to the poverty of the workers, the federation hardly collects any subscription from its members. As for registered Federation A, it does not have any provision whatsoever for collecting subscriptions from workers. As its General Secretary pointed out, considering the grave 191
Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco financial conditions of most garment workers, one could hardly expect them to pay membership fees and/or subscriptions. Obviously, most of the federations are reluctant to demand significant membership fees from garment workers. Most leaders of federations are of the opinion that garment workers might consider the provisions for membership fees as well as subscriptions as added burdens on their lives which, in turn, might discourage them from seeking memberships in federations. Almost all the leaders of our respondent federations agreed that the membership fees and subscriptions in their respective federations were merely a token, which they were obliged to keep at least on paper for submitting their yearly returns as per the requirements of the Industrial Relations Rules, 1977 [Section 5 (a & b)]. During audits, we were told by those leaders, what they present as membership fees or subscriptions to the officials of the Department of Labour are actually “donations” or “help” which they receive from time to time from their “friends” and “well-wishers”. The federations normally do not keep any official document on such donations. h. Problems of formation and sustainability: Examples of our respondent federations Starting with merely nine clothing factories in 1977, the number of Bangladesh’s garment industries reached the impressive figure of 2,400 by the year 1995. However, until recently there has not been any significant trade unionism in this particular export-oriented sector, despite the fact that the Industrial Relations Rules of 1977 clearly provided a modus operandi as well as legal guidelines regarding the formation of both the federations of trade unions and their unit level representations. The reasons for this rather slow growth of unionism in the RMG industries could be numerous: lack of job security of the garment workers due to the non-issuing of proper appointment letters by the owners, the heavy workload of the workers, widespread illiteracy, lack of consciousness, particularly among the female workers regarding their legal rights, lack of professional attitude, professional background of the garment owners, and so on. In addition, as we were told by the federation leaders, numerous bureaucratic impediments make the formation of unions very difficult. In this context, they particularly mentioned the problems they faced while trying to get their federations registered. Registered Federation A, for example, was formed in 1982 but was registered as a federation only in 1984. The second oldest federation, both among the registered and non-registered categories, seems to be non-registered Federation 192
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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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Table 9: Distribution of the sample
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258 Women’s employment in the tex
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