Paradigm Shift or Business as Usual? Workers’ Views on Multi‐stakeholder Initiatives in Bangladesh

Naila Kabeer,Lopita Huq,Munshi Sulaiman

doi:10.1111/dech.12574

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe scale of the tragedy at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, in which more than 1,000 garment factory workers died when the building collapsed in April 2013, galvanized a range of stakeholders to take action to prevent future disasters and to acknowledge that business as usual was not an option. Prominent in these efforts were the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (hereafter the Accord) and the Alliance for Bangladesh Workers’ Safety (hereafter the Alliance), two multi‐stakeholder agreements that brought global buyers together in a coordinated effort to improve health and safety conditions in the ready‐made garment industry. These agreements represented a move away from the buyer‐driven, compliance‐based model, which hitherto dominated corporate social responsibility initiatives, to a new cooperation‐based approach. The Accord in particular, which included global union federations and their local union partners as signatories and held global firms legally accountable, was described as a ‘paradigm shift’ with the potential to improve industrial democracy in Bangladesh. This article is concerned with the experiences and perceptions of workers in the Bangladesh garment industry regarding these new initiatives. It uses a purposively designed survey to explore the extent to which these initiatives brought about improvements in wages and working conditions in the garment industry, to identify where change was slowest or absent and to ask whether the initiatives did indeed represent a paradigm shift in efforts to enforce the rights of workers.

Highlights

The collapse of the Rana Plaza Tower on the outskirts of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, in April 2013 killed 1,134 and injured many more of the garment factory workers who were in the building at the time
The industry benefited from the efforts of successive governments to provide incentives to local capital as part of its drive to increase the country’s export earnings. These efforts were reinforced by the early emergence of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) in the 1970s as a powerful lobby for employers’ interests
Could any differences that we found be attributed to the efforts of the two initiatives?. Our analysis explored these questions using objective indicators of wages and working conditions along with subjective indicators of workers’ views and perceptions of these issues, including their views on whether and what kinds of changes had occurred in the aftermath of Rana Plaza

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The collapse of the Rana Plaza Tower on the outskirts of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, in April 2013 killed 1,134 and injured many more of the garment factory workers who were in the building at the time. Barrett et al (2018) support the former position They argue that both initiatives emerged as ‘innovation out of crisis’ (ibid.: 11) and functioned in much the same way: their inspection teams examined whether conditions in firms supplying the signatory brands complied with the country’s building code and drew up corrective plans where necessary to be implemented by managers within a prescribed time frame. Both agreements provided for the setting up of Health and Safety Committees in factories and for training in worker safety. In May 2019, it came to an agreement to continue its work for another 281 working days after which a national council would take over

Methodology and Description of Sample

Findings

CONCLUSION