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Trade unions, gender issues and the ready-made garment industry of Bangladesh E which was formed sometime in the mid-1980s. When we asked them why this federation could not get registered as a federation with the Directorate of Labour despite its formation such a long time ago, they put the blame squarely on the officials of the Directorate of Labour. On the other hand, the Labour officials claimed that it did not even try to get the registration since it did not have sufficient unit unions as required under the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969 [Section 3 (d)] for getting registration as a federation. Among the two other federations that have existed for little more than five years, the registered one, registered Federation B, has not yet completed its five years of existence “officially”, while the nonregistered one, non-registered Federation F, has been existing, as its leaders claimed, for more than six years. Here too, when we asked the leaders why it was not yet registered, its leaders cited some unspecified “procedural difficulties” but added that it would get registration soon. Of the remaining two, the registered one, registered Federation C, obtained its registration only in early 1996 though, according to its leaders, it had been functioning for quite some time before that. Non-registered Federation G, on the other hand, at first tried to form a “National Federation” combining all the federations; but its attempt failed, its leaders claimed, due to the objections of the leaders of other federations. Currently, it is in the process of forming various unit unions before it emerges as a registered federation. i. Current unit unions under each respondent federation According to the office records of the office of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Establishments, Directorate of Labour, there are more than 2,000 RMG factories in Dhaka city, while the current number of the existing unit level trade unions in Dhaka is, according to the figure provided by the office of the Registrar of Trade Unions, only 72. Assuming that there is only one trade union in each factory, this means that only around 3.6 per cent of RMG factories in Dhaka city have registered unit unions. However, the statistics given by the federations regarding their existing unit level trade unions, which is around 130, does not tally with the above-mentioned figure. Our respondent federations claim that they have around 92 unit unions in Dhaka whereas the records of the office of the Registrar of Trade Unions put the figure at around 22. One can, of course, raise questions regarding the validity of the statistics provided by the office of the Registrar of Trade Unions. There may be more than one union in some factories, since having a 30 per cent representation of workers in a factory is enough to form a unit 193
Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco Table 1: Current unit unions under each federation Name of respondent No. of unit unions that No. of unit unions as per federations federations claim Labour Office records Registered Federation A 27 11 Registered Federation B 11 5 (Altogether 17 in BD) Registered Federation C 28 6 Non-registered Federation E 13 no Office record available Non-registered Federation F 7 no Office record available (Altogether 10 in BD) Non-registered Federation G 3 no Office record available Non-registered Federation H 3 no Office record available union. There may also be some genuine unions in some factories which have not been properly recorded by the office of the Registrar of Trade Unions. Even then, the number is still quite low, given the fact that there are already quite a few garment workers’ federations operating in and around Dhaka city. This indicates that, although most of these federations maintain some contacts with garment workers in many factories, and though they might have some members and supporters in some of those factories, only a few federations have been able to muster enough support to form unit unions in those factories. However, since the federations do need to show the enrollment of some unit level unions to get themselves registered with the Directorate of Labour as federations, a few non-registered federations might be naming at the same time some unit unions as their own. j. Federation-unit union interactions: A general picture Our next area of interest during the survey was to find out how and to what extent our respondent federations were interacting with the garment workers in general and with their basic units in particular. Table 2 contains information regarding the modes of contact of the federations with their unit union. As will be evident from the table below, most of the federation leaders communicate with the workers and unit union leaders, most of whom are female, either by meeting them near their factory premises during their lunch breaks or by visiting them at their houses during their free time. However, it becomes quite difficult to meet workers and unit leaders when they work from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. In that case, the workers and unit leaders can come to the federation offices only on Fridays and other holidays. In fact, these long working 194
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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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260 Annex Table 2:Level of wages an
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