Bangladesh's Sweatshop Boom: Misery and Danger Come With Benefits of Garment Trade
NARSINGDI, Bangladesh The fire in the garment factory
began on the fourth floor, where polo shirts, neatly folded in
boxes, made a fine feast for the hungry flames.
The factory's 1,250 workers scampered for their lives, most of
them hurrying to the stairway that led to the main exit. There, at the
bottom, was a gate. It was locked.
In panic, the trapped people spun around, rushing back up the
steps, colliding with those descending. Some people fell and were
trampled. That is how nearly all of the fire's 52 victims died, their
final breaths trampled out of them on the hard concrete of the
teeming steps. Most were young women; 10 were children.
What Bangladesh has to offer the global economy is some of the
world's cheapest labor. In return, this impoverished nation has
received an economic boost of a $4.3 billion apparel industry, and
the fuller pockets that come with 1.5 million jobs.
But that benefit comes with the horrors that arise from 3,300
inadequately regulated garment factories - some of which may be
among the worst sweatshops ever to taunt the human conscience.
The fire last November at Chowdhury Knitwears interrupted a
frantic production schedule. Finished sportswear was due at stores
in Britain.
The workers, used to a 12-hour day, were ordered to toil as long
as 18 hours. They were given a lunch break at 1 p.m., then a
shorter breather at 10 p.m., when each received a piece of bread
and a banana.
Overtime pay, a legal requirement, was a myth. Most wages
ranged from $25 to $50 a month - or as little as 6 cents an hour.
Children earned less.
In the days after the blaze, outraged politicians demanded
accountability. Such hand-wringing in a fire's aftermath is by now a
studied ritual. Bangladesh's garment industry is barely 15 years
old, but the business has grown so rapidly that it accounts for 76
percent of the nation's exports. The number of manufacturers
continues to multiply, as do the recurring nightmares: Since 1995,
there have been 30 fires, with 17 involving fatalities, according to a
labor group that has maintained a list.
The post-tragedy ritual is not a prolonged one, however. Reports
of investigators are expediently moved along the bureaucracy's
chain of command and then seemingly into oblivion.
Upset by the catastrophe and alarmed by bad publicity, leaders of
the powerful manufacturing associations met and decided to chip
in, adding a sum to the Chowdhury factory's own contribution.
Together, they pledged a death benefit of about $1,945.
At Chowdhury Knitwears, the hours may be a strain and the
wages a heartache. But ask almost anyone and they will say that
even a dreadful job is better than none.
Its garment workers take home an average monthly wage of $35
for women and $40 for men, according to Rita Afsar, of the
Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies. Those earnings are
about 25 percent higher than the nation's per capita income.
Bangladesh's garment factories run a gamut. Some seem models of
progressive management, with health clinics, day care centers and
brightly lighted lunchrooms; workers wear surgical masks to
screen out fibers in the air; and shiny red fire extinguishers hug the
walls at regular intervals.
Other factories are bleak, stuffy places with cramped aisles that
dead-end into haphazard heaps of fabric; guards are stationed at
locked gates; and fire prevention largely consists of empty red
water pails.
"Inhuman things do go on, and it's horrible, horrible," said
Kutubuddin Ahmed, the newly elected president of the
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association,
the biggest of the three textile associations. "That Chowdhury fire
business, this was horrible."
Mr. Ahmed said that perhaps the time had come for rigorous
inspections, to find out what factories were in "good order,
semi-order and no order," and that the worst of the lot might face
a suspension of their export privileges. "But we don't want to
threaten our members or create a panic," he added in afterthought,
cautiously moderating his zeal.
Recently, the biggest force for reform has come from big retailers
worried about the bottom line. Some, like Gap and Wal-Mart,
were embarrassed by links to Third World sweatshops. Some
major companies now issue codes of conduct and send inspectors
into their suppliers' factories to enforce the rules, counting fire exits
and auditing overtime records.
These controls are imperfect and a few critics even deride them as
farce. And they do not greatly increase the pay. At Shanta
Apparel Ltd. in Dhaka, which has manufactured goods for Tommy
Hilfiger, J.C. Penny and Gap, an average employee earns $42 a
month, the manager said. But the factory supplies its workers with
purified water, clean bathrooms and a doctor on the premises.
Doors stay unlocked and there are fire exits.
"That's the wave of the future, buyers who order you to put in two
more toilets and place more space between the machines," said
Monjural Hoq, president of one of the other manufacturing
associations. "That's all fine, as long as they pay us more to get it."
Most factories do not work with major Western retail stores that
might influence working conditions in a suppliers' factory. And in
Bangladesh there is motivation for owners to gobble up maximum
profits before it is too late.
For all the garment industry's success, its future hangs by a thread.
Nearly half the exports go to America, where a quota system on
imported clothes has favored Bangladesh, limiting some of its
biggest competitors to a smaller share of the U.S. market.
But those quotas expire on Jan. 1, 2005. After that, the lure of
cheap labor may not be enough.
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