Op-Ed: Bangladesh, where the poor are robbed to deck up the rich

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Subir By Subir Ghosh Dec 23, 2010 in World 4 comments + Wage riots and workplace accidents in Bangladesh have not been making mainstream media headlines. The over-populated, under-fed country, should one be told, is caught in a vice-like grip. This stranglehold is all about the lust for fashion in the West over lives of labourers in a developing country. It is about robbing the poor to feed the rich. What Bangladesh has been witnessing for the last few weeks is a fallout of the global economic meltdown and the exigency of outsourcing, the two being quite inter-dependent and inter-related. The first put pressure on retail companies in the West to increase production and cut down on costs. To do the latter, they tightened the screws on companies they outsourced manufacturing to. Cheap products necessarily entail cheap labour. And cheap labour in a cheap country is also about cheap lives. That's what garment workers recently learnt in Bangladesh when four of their colleagues were gunned down by a repressive police during violent clashes over pay. When the strikes had first erupted in July, the police of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had resorted to batons and rubber bullets. This time they fell back on real ones. The fatal police crackdown followed a devastating fire at a garment factory earlier this month which left about 30 people dead. Safety measures had not been in place and the employers tried to cut costs till the end. Workers had to perforce jump from the ninth floor because the management had locked the exits. Does anyone remember similar scenes from 9/11? The garment industry in Bangladesh is important for both the government and manufacturers. It accounts for as much as 80 per cent of the country's exports, and was worth about $12 billion last year. The gloss, unfortunately, hides the underbelly. The going rate for a garment worker's average wage per hour is just 21 cents. In China it is 93 and in India 55. That's quite cheap labour that you have for a retail revolution in affluent countries and the affluent sections of the aspiring ones. It was, therefore, not without reason that the workers went into a strike-mode earlier this year. The deadlock was broken and trade unions settled for a deal with the government and manufacturers. The unions settled for $43 a month in a pact that was described as a sell-out. This wage, ironically, was well below the country's poverty line, but the Hasina government had no qualms about enforcing the payline. And this in a country where slightly over 36 per cent of the population ekes out a living below the poverty line.

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The garment industry in Bangladesh is women-driven. Most can't even manage the calorie intake required to work in such factories with the pittance they are given as wages. Like this image The companies did not abide by the pact. At South Korean-owned Youngone factories in the port town of Chittagong even a lunch allowance of 3.5 cents (yes, 3.5 cents) was withdrawn. the pretext was that they were now being paid more under the new wage deal. Simmering discontent among the workers spilled into the streets again. In more towns than one. The government did what it felt was justified -- it used lethal force. Four workers were killed and over 150 injured in Chittagong. Life, after all, is pretty cheap in a developing country. Hasina rubbed salt into the workers' wounds by asserting that those responsible for the unrest would be indentified and stern action would be taken against them. Her home minister even described striking workers as terrorists. In other words, this government would do anything to maintain the supply line to the West. There have been innumerable arrests already. among those being held is Moshrefa Mishu, president of the Garment Sramik Oikkya Parishad (Garment Workers Unity Council). Surprisingly, the arrest which came on December 14 was based on a complaint filed in June. But then, when a totalitarian regime is in power, logic becomes the first casualty. The very day that Moshrefa was arrested, a fire razed a garment factory in the outskirts of Dhaka killing close to 30 people and injuring more than 100. The manufacturing facility, owned by one of the country's biggest garment export companies, Hameem, that produces for global retailers including Gap, was guilty of throwing all safety precautions in the unit to the winds. Exits were locked, and workers having their lunch had no option but try to jump to safety. Many were

injured, some ended dead. Most of the fatalities were women who could not muscle their way to freedom. Hasina, however, remained unfazed. The unrest in Bangladesh's garment industry is not going to die down soon. Spiralling food prices, a recalcitrant manufacturing cartel, and a repressive government certainly won't. The quench for affordable items of fashion of Western retail giants will continue to fan this fire. Exploitation will continue, with exploitation being a situation where labour costs prevail over human costs. Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/301706#ixzz21RrBuwE0