Unrest in RMG: Is there a conspiracy somewhere?

As I write this, I’m wearing a thin winter vest which I bought from a well-known clothes store in Toronto. It is only after I tried it on again at home that I realized that it was a “Made in Bangladesh” jacket. This really doesn’t come as surprise anymore because we know that a good percentage of the international garments trade belongs to Bangladesh. And it is a matter of considerable pride for me, as it is for many Bangladeshi shoppers. We know that for at least three decades or more, the garments industry has been an extremely important part of our economy and that we simply cannot afford to see it lose ground, become unstable, start unraveling, as it seems to be doing now.

I have just been reading reports about garments workers spilling out in the streets in Narayanganj, in Tongi, in Ashulia and in Gazipur. In fact, everywhere where there are garments factories. They are clashing with the police and other law enforcing bodies. Naturally, there are arrests and injuries. And there are fears that these demonstrations are being infiltrated by different interested parties.

This is very worrisome for the entire industry because November and December are the peak months for the completion of contracts and the delivery of products. Workers usually work the hardest during these months and earn the most, factory owners count their own high profit margins, and lay the grounds for more contracts for the following year.

I think that the workers’ demand for higher wages is always legitimate even if the demand for a monthly wage of 30,000 taka is more than 140% of the current minimum wage of 12,500. It is unlikely that the newly formed Wage Board which has been discussing this issue even before the agitation started will accede to the workers’ demand of 30,000 taka pm. But somewhere between 20,000-25,000 seems reasonable to me. Nobody can deny that the prices of essential commodities like chal-dal-tel and rent for living space in a bastee has tripled in the last ten years and 12,500 taka can simply not be enough. Even if they take home a bit more (17-18 thousand with overtime, as one garments owner told me today) this is simply basic subsistence level income.

The surplus value that the workers create is only reflected in the extravagant lifestyles of the captains of industry. And I’m often tempted to ask what is the net average income/profit of a medium-size factory owner. But this is a longer and more complicated discussion for another day.

Right now the agitation must stop before the talks can proceed.

What workers and owners must do

The workers must go back to work and ensure that they get their salaries for the month and next. Their demands are just and legitimate and they must be listened to with sympathy. I was a bit surprised to read in social media that fresh university graduates who earn as much, or even less, than what the workers are demanding, are outraged. Let them launch their own movement and not be outraged by the workers.

The factories’ owners must shed their defensive and self-serving accounts of how they have uplifted thousands, perhaps millions, from the gutter and given the workers well-defined identity and skills, how they have themselves endangered their own health to set up their factories (they all have stents), and other self-pitying narratives. They typically play the victim-card when the workers rise up in rebellion.

The onus is on the government, to bring the two parties together and come to a reasonable solution. It is easier said than done, but it must be done.

Damage control

Most importantly, it may be once again useful to remember how important the garments industry is -- the backbone of our economy, as the Nutshell put it, in an earlier report. And there are jealous neighboring countries eager to have a bigger share of the pie. Bangladesh now has a 19.5% share of the EU garments market; India has only 5%. India has reportedly signed a zero tariff deal with the EU commission. If this is a fact, it certainly serves India’s purpose to create instability in the Bangladesh garments market in November and December to enable it to make inroads into the EU in the coming months. This doesn’t seem like an unlikely scenario.

The government must look into this and forestall more damage than has already been wrought.

Shawkat Hussain is a retired Dhaka University professor of English.