Safe industrial buildings are not enough to ensure safety for ready-garment workers (RMG) in Bangladesh, says a study. It says the issue of intimidation and violence has to be addressed, if major changes have to be brought about. A recent report by the International Labour Rights Forum (ILRF) emphasises the need to instill ‘respect for workers’ as the next step towards reforms. “Without it workers’ lives and health will continue to be in jeopardy,” says the Washington-based organisation. The study, based on interviews of more than 70 workers, says that they will not be safe, unless they have a ‘voice’ in the work place. It says the workers stressed the need to break the ‘chilling web of social relations of intimidation and violence’ that exists in factories and apparel companies and even affects their families and communities. Government and law-enforcement agencies fail to protect workers because of this ‘chilling web of social relations’. “Safety, the workers say, is fundamentally about mutual respect and consideration for their different needs,” reports a local news agency quoting the ILRF report. But interviewees reported high production targets and workloads, for which managers deny them toilet and drink breaks at work and leave to attend medical emergencies in the family. The heavy workload reflects the industry’s ‘intense price pressure and compressed production schedules’, that according to ILRF, ‘originally’ caused factories in Bangladesh to skirt basic safety measures. The US-based body says it could happen again when the world’s attention turns elsewhere. “Indeed, there is growing evidence that these production pressures are already causing dangerous delays in essential safety measures.” The ILRF says the ‘next phase’ of reforms should focus on ending reprisal against workers who raise their voices and to create an environment where factory owners and managers engage with workers in an atmosphere of mutual respect. In an effort to do so, the government must register unions as well investigate and publicly denounce factory owners, who use violence and intimidation to silence workers, the report recommends. As for the apparel brands, the ILRF says, they must reform the purchasing practices that ‘contributes to the silencing of workers’. The study said that low wages ‘trap’ workers in abusive conditions. It also said workers reported of sexual harassment and abuse, for which victims are blamed. “In a word, instead of safe working environment, they describe to us, with some notable exceptions, a state of abject powerlessness,” reads the report.
