Women's Employment - United Nations Research Institute for Social ...

Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco
For most of the factory heads, training on the job is fundamental
and should be done inside the factory. The apprenticeship period is
thus also a period of “discipline”. The young woman learns to follow
the rules and regulations of the factory and, having learnt the craft,
she becomes indebted to the firm. Apprenticeship and on-the-job
training are also ways of delaying the moment when the employees
have to be given the statutory minimum wage. This is seen by factory
heads as being a probationary period which gives the firm an
opportunity to select their employees at the same time as having them
work for low wages. Even if a girl has a dress-making diploma, she is
paid Dh 600 a month for a period that lasts from six months to two
years.
According to some factory heads, in any one group of women
workers recruited, half of them are dismissed after six months of
training because they have not given satisfaction and have not adapted
to the working conditions. By using probation as part of this selection
procedure, the firms save money on wages. At the same time, this
system means that the qualifications and diplomas obtained in the
schools and training centres are devalued. The main reason given by
factory heads is that the knowledge that comes with a diploma does
not correspond to the needs of the firm. Experience is valued more
highly than qualifications and is used as the basis of promotion.
This emphasis on experience rather than qualifications puts the
factory head at an advantage in selecting workers and fixing their
wages. Factory heads thereby gain the flexibility they need to organize
the development of the women workers and to decide the level of
skill (experience) they have acquired, as well as their wage level. It
should be noted as well that the qualification given by a diploma can
lead to collective bargaining to link qualifications to salary levels,
whereas the criterion of experience and the capacity or incapacity of
the worker to learn quickly results, at best, in individual bargaining
where the factory head and his supervisors have the power to evaluate
the experience of the women workers.
The low education levels and poor on-the-job training methods
mean that the training period for women workers in the garment and
knitwear sectors goes on for some time. During this period, their work
is not officially recognized as it is not remunerated at the
minimum wage level. Some factory heads take advantage of the low
wages during the training period and try to prolong it for as long as
possible.
Although the factory heads complain about the lack of education,
in practice they seem to choose employees who have education but
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