Starting Work (for real this time)

I started work today for real. Last week most of the people in my office were out of town so I spent my time doing background reading on the Bangladesh Labor Code. Today I met Mr. Nasim who is the program director (the person below the Country Director) and who is one of the top labor lawyers in the country. He gave me some more reading to do about the labor rights in Bangladesh's Export Processing Zones (EPZs) which are basically areas the government has created that are designed to be make the country even more attractive to foreign investors and so have minimal customs restrictions, and are not governed by the same labor laws as the rest of the country. In the rest of Bangladesh workers have most of the same rights that Americans do with regards to the right to unionize (and in some cases the law here is better for workers, the main difference being that employers here are forbidden from hiring workers to replace those on a legal strike, which they can do in American and which severely lessens the effectiveness of such a strike).
Up until 2004 workers in EPZs had absolutely no right to organize, which is actually a violation of certain International Labor conventions that have been ratified by Bangladesh. Due to pressure from Europe, the U.S. and labor NGOs (like the Solidarity Center) in 2004 Bangladesh passed a law that purportedly allowed workers in EPZs to form workers Associations (not unions, but for the most part are the same thing) but basically the country has done nothing to enforce these laws (including creating an EPZ labor court where all the grievances must be heard so there is basically no way to even try to go about addressing grievances). The government is starting to face a lot of pressure again because of this, and I think a lot of my work here will involve this issue.

I am also doing research about violence in the Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry. Basically, these workers are making next to nothing, work in horrible conditions, and are often not paid on a regular basis, and things are reaching a boiling point. I have written before about how volatile things are here (for example the guidebooks warn that if there is a car accident you should leave the scene as soon as possible as crowds will gather and often turn violent) and this extends to RMG fa%ctories. A few times a month workers at RMG factories, in various parts of the country, riot. Sometimes they burn the factory down other times the violence has spread to outside. It has gotten to be such an epidemic of violence that nearly everyone is in agreement that the government needs to step in and do something. The question, of course, is what.

After work I took a rickshaw home by myself for the first time. It was definitely more frightening and I felt that I attracted even more attention than normal. The rickshaw driver took me on a very roundabout way around the city, and I had to point him in the right direction. He also changed the fare from 50tk to 100tk upon arrival at my house, which annoyed me, but I had planned on paying him 100tk anyway, as it was the smallest bill I had on me so I didn't argue. (To be honest, I probably wouldn't have argued anyway, as getting into a disagreement with a strange man in a language I don't understand over what would amount to $.70 is not really good idea.)

On the apartment front there are some historic Bengali animosities being played out right in my very own kitchen. I noticed a few days ago that my landlord, Mr. Dhar (who is deserving of his own post, he is such a character), and my cook, Ayub, seemed to not like each other. I wasn't sure what the exact reason for this, as all their interactions are in Bangla. Ayub had told me at one point he didn't like Mr. Dhar, and made a gesture like he was crazy. Today we learned that Mr. Dhar is Hindu, (which did a lot to explain the bottles of Smirnoff Vodka in his office, and the fact that he offered to get beer for us). This made me wonder if some of the animosity between them was due to the historic tensions between Muslims and Hindus. (Hindus comprise about 12% of the population, Muslims over 80% and even higher in Dhaka.) My instincts, for once, were right on. Later that night Charlie asked Ayub if he was Muslim, and then mentioned that Mr. Dhar was Hindu. Ayub made a face and said that in Bangladesh Muslims and Christians are good, but Hindus are very low, and that he didn't like them. Comments like these always catch me off-guard, and I never know what the right response is. (Especially here.)


Tomorrow I am going to Chittagong for work, for 3 days. I will be attending meetings with union organizers, business owners and others. Not sure exactly what this all will entail, but I'm really excited about it.

I don't know what my internet situation will be, so I may not update for a few days. I hope you can all contain your disappointment.