Four million women work in Bangladesh’s fast fashion factories.
Awaj Foundation
What are you wearing? There’s a pretty good chance that the shirt on your back or the pants in your closet were produced in Bangladesh, whose garment factories supply many of the world’s most popular clothing brands and retailers—C&A, Target, Gap, Walmart, and others. But as the New York Times recently pointed out, one early industrial casualty of the coronavirus pandemic has been Bangladesh’s fast fashion manufacturing sector—a sector that accounts for 16% of the country’s GDP.
Now with Covid-19, the industry’s four million workers—most women—are seeing their lives upended, says Nazma Akhter, a union leader in Dhaka and founder of Awaj Foundation. She started working in Bangladesh’s garment factories when she was eleven years old. Over the decades she became a master negotiator and the architect of a new labor movement dedicated to supporting the industry’s workers.
Nazma, first, what does normal look like?Girls and young women come in from the countryside to support their families. Their living conditions are very poor. The basic wage is $95 dollars per month—they are paid once a month—and they work 10-12 hours per day, 7 days a week. Low income and difficult conditions contribute to a lot of problems in health and nutrition. The women often fall sick and lose income. There aren’t many health services available to factory workers. A few factories offer daycare, but not many. Sexual harassment is a big problem, too. Many become single mothers because they marry young and the husbands run away.
What progress have you seen?
We have succeeded in setting up unions in some of the factories, and things are better there. We have collective bargaining, and cooperation. For example, we have sexual harassment committees with representation by women workers. These new kinds of unions are run by the women and are not involved in politics like in the old days. There are fewer strikes and clashes with police and we are looking for cooperative relationships. We understand that the factory owners need to make money, and the workers want to help make the factories successful, but also safe places.
How have these last weeks been with the coronavirus?
Most brands have canceled or held or suspended their orders. A national lockdown of factories has been announced for one month in March and April. Fearing they won’t be paid for last month’s work, the workers protested and were met with violence by police. The factories aren’t really set up to protect them from viral infection. One infected person can transmit to a hundred others. So, everything is uncertain. Will the factories reopen? Will brands resume their orders? Will workers be able to survive? Will Covid infections come to the factories?
Bangladesh is a small country in terms of land area, with 160 million people; it is high density. And the garment industry is a high-density environment. There is a high risk. On top of disease, there is the risk of unemployment. There aren’t many alternate jobs available for young women. So while the pandemic is a global issue, and a crucial moment for America, Europe, Asia, Australia, our women will go hungry. If they don’t receive their back wages from March, they won’t have enough to eat. This is about survival.
In some good news, we’ve worked out arrangements with two factories that have now paid workers for March and are continuing to pay through factory closures that have been extended through April 14th. Phone hotlines have been set up that workers can call if they feel ill or need guidance. These efforts have been achieved through good faith efforts of management and workers during this very hard time.
How do you stay strong, where do you draw inspiration?
I started in the garment sector when I was 11 years old, helping my mother. When I was 14 years old, I started organizing for my union and I faced a lot of challenges, a lot of difficulties. But my inspiration is the other workers, my sisters and brothers. It’s not about my own life. This is about dignity and respect. The world looks at us as cheap labor, but we want the same things as anyone, fair treatment, safety, social security, insurance, protection.
A dire moment in Bangladesh, is there anything we can hope to learn?
I hope we can learn how unjust the power relations are between brands, suppliers and workers. The brands should be held accountable for their buying practices that push the risk on to suppliers and suppliers should be held accountable to make sure that workers are protected in crisis situations like these. Workers need paid sick leave and severance wages to help them survive during the period when they don’t have work.
Looking ahead, I am hopeful that we will begin to see that we depend on each other—the brands in Europe and America and the workers here. We need a common platform. Let’s work together to overcome the situation. We need to learn from this experience.
Nazma Akhter is an Ashoka Fellow since 2019. You can read more about her work here and here.
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