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Trade unions, gender issues and the ready-made garment industry of Bangladesh though it claims to be a champion of an open market policy. Consequently, most of the country’s structured trade unions — which are essentially front organizations of various political parties, and are active mainly in the public sector — are still figuring prominently in the calculus of Bangladesh’s domestic power politics. Since most of these front organizations have yet to take cognizance of the phenomenal growth of the RMG industries with their predominantly female labour force, they have not been able yet to formulate a coherent policy on industrial relations in this particular sector. It is no wonder then that, although political connections play an important role in the life cycle of most of the garment federations, they still do not enjoy high esteem in the political hierarchy of structured trade unions. The reason for this comparatively low esteem in which garment federation leaders are held could be that most of the leaders of major structured trade unions still take pride in controlling the largest enterprises of the public sector. Furthermore, it became obvious to us during our survey that most of the politically connected garment federations leaders actually come from the lowest strata of the structured trade unions. In other words, the advent of the garment industries provided some of the marginalized leaders of the structured trade unions with new opportunities to rise into political prominence. Although the structured trade union leaders do not take the garment federation leaders seriously, they do not mind bestowing on them their political blessings, because they think that it could benefit them in the long run. In a sense it is a kind of marriage of convenience for both parties; for the federation leaders, the support of the structured trade unions is important because it will provide them with the political clout that will enable them to prevail upon the garment factory owners, whereas for the structured trade unions this relationship marks a turning point in broadening their sphere of influence in a hitherto uncharted territory. VI. Conclusion The salient points that emerge from the foregoing discussion are: 1) in Bangladesh, industrial conflicts in the private sector, particularly in the RMG industries, have so far been resolved through autocratic and unilateral decisions of garment factory owners; 2) there has not been a healthy growth of trade unionism from within the RMG industries, and this has led to the creation of a pervasive patronclientelist nexus of interested male outsiders and mostly female 213
Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco garment workers; 3) although the existing male-dominated garment federations have not been successful in addressing the main concerns of the female workers — such as, for example, the calculated exploitation of the societal vulnerability of female labourers in order to undermine existing labour standards, the lack of security both in and outside the workplace and sexual harassment — the female unit union leaders and workers have so far generally failed to launch their own women’s unions; 4) despite the fact that labour laws are generally not observed by most employers in the garment industries, and in some cases the laws themselves have become outdated and hence inadequate, the Bangladeshi state apparatus, increasingly driven by export-oriented economic policies, has kept its role limited to watching from the sideline. As is obvious from the points mentioned above, most Bangladeshi garment factory owners have failed to see any causal connection between labour standards and productivity outcomes. Therefore, for many of them, being competitive has so far meant being “cost effective”, mainly by lowering labour standards and taking advantage of opportunities for low-wage employment due to the abundance of a young female labour force. As a consequence of their economic priorities, many of them have become virulently anti-trade union because, according to them, as “market distorting entities” trade unions would not only raise production costs and create industrial disorder, they would also eventually offset Bangladesh’s comparative advantage by dismantling the low-wage employment structure of the female labour force. However, the contention of this chapter is that the position taken by most Bangladeshi garment factory owners on the issue of unionization in the RMG industries is too simplistic and destructive. Contrary to their arguments, there are numerous examples establishing a causal connection between labour standards and productivity outcomes where standards enhanced productivity and encouraged the adoption of new technologies (Çagatay, 1996). There is also clear correlation between unionization and productivity and gender equity. In an example from the industrializing economies, Standing has found that in Malaysia the unions have contributed both to productivity enhancement and a narrowing of the gender gap in wages (Standing, 1990). Unionization and on-the-job training can also be helpful in checking high labour turnover in the RMG industries. There is evidence from Malaysia that unionized firms had working environments that encouraged trained workers to stay and to undertake further training and productivity improvement (Standing, 214
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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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Becoming a garment worker 5Becoming
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Becoming a garment worker garment w
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Becoming a garment worker Table 1:
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Becoming a garment worker that time
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