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Trade unions, gender issues and the ready-made garment industry of Bangladesh that their jobs would be restored should they decide to come back to the factory again. d. Federations’ and unit unions’ opinions regarding linking wages with labour productivity According to the leaders of our respondent federations and unit unions, wages in the private sector are supposed to be fixed through the collective bargaining process. However, due to the inadequacy of the collective bargaining procedure in the RMG industries, wages must be fixed by the Minimum Wages Board (MWB) established in 1957 and reconstituted in 1961. Most of our respondent federations and unit unions did not object to the idea of linking the wage structure to the labour productivity ratio. But they emphasized that one of the preconditions for that would be to ensure first of all that the garment workers are paid what they called a “fair wage” which should on no account be less than the minimum wage. In other words, while the lower limit of the “fair wage” must be the minimum wage, the upper limit could be determined by the level of efficiency of the workers on the one hand, and a fair return on capital to the management on the other. It is only within this framework that they are willing to accept wages on an “out piece” basis. III. Battling the hydra: The owners’ response to unionization in the RMG sector It goes without saying that the structure of ownership and management determines both the structure of trade unions and the mechanisms for resolving industrial disputes. In the emerging formal private sector of Bangladesh, particularly in the field of RMG industries, the owners, who generally tend to be patrimonial as a class, still try to resolve industrial conflicts through autocratic and unilateral decisions. One reason for this could be a historically sustained inbuilt authoritarianism in all spheres of Bangadesh’s entrepreneurial class. The earlier dominance of the semifeudal and large land owners has influenced the attitudes of most of the industrialists of Bangladesh in their dealings with subordinates and workers. Just as the agricultural workers were treated as virtual serfs on the landed estates of jamindars a few decades ago, so workers in the RMG enterprises, with a few exceptions, are still dealt with by a mixture of authoritarian and paternalistic managerial practices. Against such a backdrop, it is no wonder that most garment factory owners do not have a positive 203
Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco attitude toward unionization in the RMG industries. The industrialists’ apprehensions are also based in part on their perceptions of industrial conflicts in the public sector, particularly in terms of the workers’ organizational strength and the militancy of some of their professional trade union leaders, which is in turn linked with these leaders’ political aspirations. It would not be inappropriate to mention here that the workers and their unions in the public sector industries of Bangladesh often display the characteristics of early industrial development, including multiplicity of unions, serious interunion rivalries, and allegiance of workers to different unions (Khan, 1986). But then, the reason for the multiplicity of unions as well as inter-union rivalries may partly lie, as Khundker correctly points out, in the management structure of the public sector industries, which is often centralized and is normally in the hands of civil servants. Civil servants are generally perceived as being unsympathetic to labour causes by union leaders. And this, along with a somewhat restricted collective bargaining mechanism — since wages and other benefits are determined by National Pay Commissions (for government and public sector employees) and National Wages and Productivity Commissions (for industrial workers in the public sector) — influence the trade union leaders to rely heavily on political parties in pursuing their objectives (Khundker, 1997). There is also another factor which one needs to take into consideration in discussing the state of affairs of the unions in both public and private sectors — their lack of funds. In Bangladesh, workers generally pay their union dues only at those times when their demands are being raised. Some union leaders therefore try to raise disputes simply for the purpose of refurbishing their union funds. At any rate, in order to cross-check the information provided by the federation and unit union leaders regarding the issues related to unionization, as well as to get an impression of their possible response in this sensitive matter, we tried to interview the owners of all of our 28 respondent factory units. However, we were able to interview only 11 garment factory owners. Ten owners flatly refused to give any appointment for interviews. Nor were they interested in either contradicting or confirming the information provided by the federation and unit union leaders regarding industrial disputes in their respective factories despite our sending that information to them in writing. Two owners indirectly refused to give interviews by not keeping appointments. Five owners were out of the country during our survey and could not be contacted. 204
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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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