Raising garment prices apace with rising cost of production for upgrading factories and the cost of living of workers has gone unheeded. Outcome is misery of those who make it. The call came from all stakeholders in the industry on the production side: owners, workers, their unions and civil-society rights campaigners. A survey by a reputed international NGO reveals the downside of the long-ignored urge for increasing the unit price of readymade garments and raising wages of the poor multitudes who, paradoxically though, make world-class wear for those who are on the higher plane of human society for historical reasons. Bangladesh and Vietnam, both of whom came out of wreckage of war for independence much the same time in the past century, host most of the workers drawn from the bottom strata of society. According to the groundbreaking survey conducted by Oxfam, Australian brands contributing to driving wages down. The survey reveals that the RMG workers making clothes that are sold across Australia are trapped in a cycle of poverty, no matter how hard they work. According to the survey report, released recently by Oxfam, based in Oxford in the UK, women in Bangladesh and Vietnam making clothes for the USD23 billion Australian fashion industry are going hungry because the wages are as low as 51 cents an hour. The report came when Bangladesh increased RMG workers’ wages 51 per cent, and to afford the new wage structure manufacturers are urging support from brands and buyers. Oxfam surveyors, according to the report, interviewed 470 garment workers employed at factories supplying to brands such as Big W, Kmart, Target and Cotton On, and found most of them in the two countries could hardly make ends meet. “The investigation has uncovered the widespread payment of poverty wages and the impact is cast on the lives of the workers, mainly women, making the clothes Australians love to wear”, Oxfam Australian Chief Helen Szoke said. Women who are unable to get treatment when they fall sick, workers who cannot afford to send their children to school, families that cannot make their pay stretch to put enough food on the table, people sleeping on floors in overcrowded houses, spiraling debts, mother separated from their children – these are just some of the common realities of the failure of big brands to ensure payment of living wages, the report noted. Many of the workers interviewed in Bangladesh said they could not afford enough food for themselves and their families and were forced to skip meals or go into debt. In the same country, 72 per cent of workers interviewed could not afford proper medical treatment, compared with 53 percent in Vietnam. In Bangladesh, one in three workers interviewed was separated from their children because of inadequate income. The report details the plight of a Bangladeshi 21- year-old mother, Tania, who works up to 12 hours a day in a factory that supplies clothes to brands including Kmart and earns USD169 a month, or about 55 cents an hour. She was forced to send her baby back to her village to be cared for by per parents and sees her daughter only twice a year. Another worker profiled, Chameli, earns about 51 cents an hour for her work as helper in a factory in Bangladesh that supplies clothes to brands including Big W. Her family cannot afford to send any of her three daughters to school and the eldest, aged 14, has also started working in a garment factory. The family of five lives in a crowded compound on the outskirts of Dhaka in a 3.6-metre-by-2.4-metre room, where the two youngest girls sleep on the floor. Deloitte Access Economics estimated that on average just 4.0 percent of the price of a piece of clothing sold in Australia goes towards the wages of the workers who made it. Oxfam said if brands absorbed the cost of paying of living wages, it would amount to less than one percent of the garment price. The aid group found practices by Australian companies contributing to driving wages down. “They undertake fierce price negotiation, often jump between contracts instead of working with factories over the long term, squeeze lead times for orders and operate with a separation between their ethical and standards staff and their buying teams, who negotiate directly with factories,” the report said. This survey brings to light only one segment of the buyers and consumers of garments particularly from Bangladesh. Two western groups – Accord and Alliance – are active in Bangladesh for remediation of garment factories under the move following some accidents in factories. The drive involves huge cost for upgrading the industry by way of retrofitting factories, industry sources said. Factories are also undergoing a generation change into green factories. In this context, owners and workers both are calling upon buyers to increase prices of far-better-quality RMG products so the workers could have a better life.
