Yesterday I had a meeting with the director of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) which is a kind of think tank that works in tandem with many unions and NGOs (including the Solidarity Center and its partner organizations). As with most of my encounters here, the language is always a bit of a problem and so many of my notes include a million question marks and "I think he said..." but overall it was pretty interesting. Much of the conversation centered around the current debate about the minimum wage in the garment industry. Unlike in America, Bangladesh does not have a universal minimum wage. Instead a wage is set in each sector. In the garment industry it is currently Tk. 1662, which is about $23.00 a month. Things here are much cheaper than America (obviously) but they aren't that cheap to the point where a person can really get by on these wages. This is also the lowest (by far) in all of Asia. Much of the violence and worker unrest that has really heated up recently in the RMG (readymade garment) sector in the past few months (and actually on and off since 2006) is over wages. There are often other concerns as well, like a factory shutting down at of the blue with no notice to workers, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that the workers are not being paid enough. Even Walmart, H&M and Tesco (some of the biggest buyers) are in agreement with this and recently sent a letter to the Bangladeshi Government telling them that these low wages are unsustainable. Of course, one should take this letter with a grain of salt as these companies are clearly trying to have their cake and eat it too, because ultimately they could refuse to do business with a factory that does not pay its workers a certain wage and the whole things smacks of a P.R. stunt. Even so, the letter shows at least that pretty much everyone (government, large corporations, workers) are in agreement that this wage needs to be raised. The owners claim that a rise in wages by any amount will put them out of business, but this claim seems to far-fetched (given the amounts being considered). Workers are demanding Tk. 5000 and say this is non-negotiable. But this is Bangladesh, everything is negotiable. In 2006, in order to quell the worker unrest the goverment sent up an indpendent minimum wage board (who took 2 years to finally fix it at the current wage). They are currently in the process of setting a new one (that would ultimately go to the government for implementation.
While at BILS I got to speak with a permanent member of the wage board. He was also an Awami League (current party in power) official. Much of what he spoke about was how the current PM is a friend to the workers, but many of those in parliament are either factory owners or closely associated with factory owners so it is very hard to pass any worker-friendly reforms. He also said that the current violence is making it much harder for the worker's representatives on the board as it makes government officials more sympathetic to the owners.
What really complicates the entire situation is that the reason Bangladesh even has an RMG industry is because of the ridiculously low wages. Buyers take 3 things into account, 1) cost, 2) quality and 3) time. Since almost everything here is so ridiculously inefficient (including the running of the factories), and the lack of decent infrastructure, and the ill-health of most of the workers the only thing Bangladesh really has to compete is the low cost of labor. Ultimately the reason for this is that there are 150 million people living here, most of them in poverty. There is an endless supply of people willing to take these jobs especially because the garment industry mainly employs women, who (and this should come as absolutely no surprise) basically have no other option for employment beyond being a domestic worker or occasionally agriculture. In my opinion this is not where the conversation should stop. Just because earning $23.00 a month is better than nothing does not end the story. It is still not acceptable. The question is obviously what to do. the solution is not clear. Lets say that in a hypothetical dreamland consumers in the West put enough pressure on companies such as Walmart and Tesco to demand that workers who produce the garments sold in those stores are paid x wage (x = some kind of decent, living wage). In hypothetical dreamland implementing this is easy, and there is no issue with compliance or monitoring or any other problem. What happens? The factories are going to go to India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China etc. If the question of cutting costs through the price of labor is now equalized, Bangladesh doesn't have much else to offer.
This is why this industry is so damn depressing. The workers here are screwed in ways they can't even imagine. They are ultimately paying the price for the failure of every other institution in this country, and it is just beyond tragic. Sometimes I think the owners know this, they know that the industry here is not sustainable and this is why they are so resistant to trade unions, and paying sustainable wages, because they view it as a short term way to make a whole lot of money, not as a long-term investment. Other people think they are just completely incompetent.
Either way it sucks. I also want to make it clear that the amount that is fixed by the new wage board is not going to be driving business out of Bangladesh. We are talking a much higher increase (the kind that many NGOs would like to see happen, such as the Asian Floor Wage Campaign) in order for this to occur.
As you can probably tell I have no solution. I don't think anyone does.
No comments:
Post a Comment