The government needs to define a wage level that can help satisfy the basic needs of workers in the readymade garment industry and periodically review it to adjust it with the real prices, according to a new report. “Only through sufficient inspection and legal capacities decent payment can be enforced,” Nazma Akter, General Secretary and Executive Director of the AWAJ Foundation, said quoting the report titled ‘The Workers’ Voice Report 2016′. The report that focused on the working conditions in Bangladesh’s RMG industry after Rana Plaza said the government had to make greater efforts to rigorously enforce the existing labour laws if Rana Plaza should be the turning point, reports UNB. The Workers’ Voice Report 2016, published this month, is the result of a joint project of Awaj Foundation and Consulting Service International Ltd. Nazma, also president of Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation, said the Workers’ Voice Report 2016 showed that the conditions of work in Bangladesh’s RMG industry continue to be “unacceptable” for most of the workers. The focus of the reforms after Rana Plaza was directed on factory safety, the report mentioned in its concluding part. Nazma thinks the efforts made have not been enough to improve the overall working conditions. She said more initiative from all stakeholders were needed to create a decent work environment. The report said that it is important for them to understand that productivity and efficiency improvements can only be addressed in alliance with labour standards. “Here’s where solutions have to focus on.” It is important to bring all the stakeholders together and identify their responsibilities and roles in improving working conditions, the report mentioned. The government, employers, workers and international buyers need to jointly address the manifold challenges in eliminating work deficits, providing a more effective regulatory environment and establish institutionalised multi-stakeholder cooperation, the report notes. The survey revealed some challenging working conditions in the factories, which can only be addressed through a multi-stakeholder approach. There has been progress in some of the indicators in comparison to 2013, however, the much-invoked paradigm shift after Rana Plaza did not materialise, it said. With the gap between male and female workers laid bare in this study, gender equality analysed as a crosscutting objective has been identified as the primary challenge. Private governance based on voluntary external audits and internal codes of conduct has proven ineffective to substantially change the conditions in Bangladesh’s RMG factories. The Accord on Fire and Building Safety operated by mostly European retailers and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a group of North American retailers, have been conducting a series of inspections with little progress though as confirmed by other studies. “Such initiatives will only be successful if they achieve to inspect and monitor the entire of the export-oriented factories including their subcontractors,” Nazma said quoting the report. Buyers and retailers need to collectively support the workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining in their supply chains, the report suggested. “More pressure from them is required to push factory owners towards compliance with national labour laws. It is about time to change the mind-set of employers. Producers see workers largely as a cost that must be kept down,” the concluding part of the report reads. They could be more profitable if they had paid higher wages and provided a better work environment, it said, adding satisfied employees are more productive and contribute greater returns to the companies. Bangladesh’s RMG industry faces a number of challenges to remain competitive in the global market. However, it is the workforce they depend on and whose capital it compromises. International buyers appreciate the combination of moderate prices at reasonable quality for very large quantities in the low and mid-market segment.
