The final death toll from the collapsed eight-story Rana Plaza building in Savar, Bangladesh, stands at 1,127, making it one of the worst industrial disasters in recent times. Housing several factories producing garments for major western companies, the building had been declared dangerous just days before the catastrophic collapse. Yet the owner and managers refused to shut down operations and reportedly threatened workers with pay cuts if they didn’t show up to work. Sadly, this tragedy is neither new to Bangladesh nor to the rest of South Asia.
In recent decades Bangladesh has become a major player in the global garment industry. Yet, this achievement comes at a heavy cost: Garment workers earn some of the lowest wages in the world, making the country a choice destination for major corporations.
Nevertheless workers over the last two decades vigorously campaigned for wage increases, registering some moderate successes despite intense hostility and repression from their employers and the corporate-friendly government. With about 5,000 factories employing 3 million directly, and 20 million indirectly, the garment industry accounts for more than 80 percent of the country’s exports, and roughly half its GDP. Aside from agriculture, it is the single most important source of employment for many poor rural and urban Bangladeshis, the vast majority of whom are young women between the ages of 18 and 32.
Some observers point to this as a sign of upward mobility for women, while in fact employers prefer younger women due to their presumed docility and willingness to bear the strain of hard work. Poorly educated and unaware of their rights as workers, these women are routinely exploited by their mostly male employers. Employers routinely violate the country’s labor laws, denying state-sanctioned maternity leave and benefits, for instance, resorting to physical harassment, verbal sexual abuse, and frequent threats of pay cuts for even minor infractions. Talking on the job, attempting to organize, being late, or failing to meet production targets can result in harsh pay cuts. The latter constitutes the single most effective tool by which workers are forced to work overtime without compensation. Set by global retailers, production targets and related shipping deadlines pressure local companies to squeeze as much as they can from their workers.
One of the great myths of the global garment industry is that global retailers have little control over happenings on the shop floors of third-world countries. Some influential observers argue the tragedy in Bangladesh is the responsibility of local, not global actors — that globalization and its primary corporate beneficiaries are beyond blame. An examination of the global commodity chains connecting rickety shop floors to pristine mall shelves reveals, however, that corporate profitability is inextricably tied to the grim practices of wage suppression, violation of safety standards, and the general repression of workers. Since the 1990s the expansion of global brand manufacturers into South Asia was aided by subcontracting to locally owned companies. Once orders are placed, local manufacturers are expected to meet production deadlines, with small profit margins afforded to them. Any break in the production cycle can have far-reaching consequences, hence the rush to keep production lines moving regardless of the consequences.
This arrangement is immensely useful for global corporations since they can claim to be separate from the actual local entities that hyper-exploit their workers. Yet, by imposing stringent production targets and offering relatively paltry profit margins to their local partners, these global corporations create and sustain practices that would be otherwise deemed illegal and unethical. Unless global players are held responsible for their role in perpetrating such practices it makes little sense to assign all the blame to governments. For corporations, lax labor and environmental laws, few protections for workers, and official antipathy to organized labor represent optimal conditions for profitable investment.
Challenging the status quo, therefore, in Bangladesh as elsewhere, would inevitably require addressing workplace safety, wages, and protections under the rubric of labor rights, precisely those rights that corporations tend to see as inimical to their pursuit of profits. In a recent effort led by European labor groups, several European companies involved in the garment industry signed a legally binding accord committing them to improving fire and safety regulations in Bangladesh. Two major American companies — The Gap and Walmart — refused to sign on, saying they would do their own inspections, a move critics say is yet another “business as usual” response.
RAJA SWAMY IS AN INSTRUCTOR IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS. HE IS STUDYING THE EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION AND HUMANITARIAN “SOFT POWER” ON THE PRIORITIES AND DYNAMICS OF GOVERNANCE IN THE THIRD WORLD.