Methods of decision-making

Essay by Varvara Bolshakova, BGU206

Theme: “Using the “adjusted winner” procedure to Bangladesh factory workers

protest in 2013”

There is no doubt that Bangladesh is mostly famous for its leading global role in

garment manufacture, ranked in 2020 as the third of the world's most clothes

exporters, yielding only to China and the EU. International companies like GAP,

H&M and Walmart have a huge part of their factories located in the country.

However, the success comes with the price: working conditions in the industry

are quite poor. Factories hire underage workers, some of which are as young as

10 and 12 years old, who work 12 hours a day till the sunset using old

equipment, and the minimum wage is at its lowest point, barely reaching 1-2

USD a day. Unsurprisingly, Bangladesh soon also became a leader for the

number of strikes, happening almost every year all across the country. The essay

will focus on one in particular led by RMG (Ready-Made Garment) workers of

Dhaka region in 2013.

The spark which ignited the protests were two tragic factory incidents: the

Tazreen factory fire and the Rana Plaza factory building collapse. During the

night of 24 November 2012, a fire broke out in the Tazreen Fashions factory,

located in the nation’s capital city of Dhaka, causing 111 deaths and more than

300 injuries. Casualties count was predominantly the result of both unhuman

decisions made by factory managers to continue working and blocked

emergency exits and windows. In days after the fire garment workers of the

region led street protests, blocading main roads across Dhaka and demanding

from the company higher wages and safer working conditions. Faded in

February by political reasons, in spring protests at Bangladeshi factories

increased in response to the Rana Plaza tragedy, in which a company building

collapsed, killing 1134 people and injuring thousands. With the new protesters

new demands were made, including paying 1200 USD for victim families and

legal actions towards the directors of Plaza, especially Sohen Rana, the owner.
As protests continued, eight workers’ organizations organized a day-long strike

that paralyzed the city in May. Both the strikes and the protests caused the

temporary shutdown of factories due to the lack of workers and factory

equipment damage caused by them.

The first step to a solution was made in summer, when the Bangladesh Center

for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) with the help of US citizens pushed US companies

to address the poor working conditions and low wages of Bangladeshi factory

workers. So on 27 June, the United States suspended the Generalized System of

Preferences policy it had made with the country, in response to which,

Bangladesh passed a law designed to support trade union development. By

September, the government had finally organized a wage board that would hold

discussions on minimum wage increase. Yet factory owners announced the will

to increase the wages only by 20%, causing new protests across Dhaka, starting

on 21 September 2013.

Thus the question was raised: what should the increase be to satisfy both

workers and owners? I decided to take the role of a researcher to try and

calculate the winning alternatives to all demands stated during the Bangladesh

protests using the “Adjusted winner” procedure. Therefore I put all demands and

preferred solutions to them to a table, ranking each one with priority points (P1

for workers, P2 for owners). Let’s apply the procedure:

Goal Workers P1 Owners P2 maxP\mi

nP

Minimum 170% 45* 20% 25 4\3

wage increase

Construction of Yes 5 No 10* 1

fire emergency
exits and
stairways

Available exit Yes 5 Yes 5 1

doors

Trade Union Yes 25* No 5 3

 Goal Workers P1 Owners P2 maxP\mi
nP

Minimum 170% 45* 20% 25 4\3

wage increase

development

Money paid for 1200 USD 15 0 USD 35* 1.5

victim families

Legal 100 people 5 15 people 20* 2

consequences

Workers (W) will have: 45+25=70 points (minimum wage and trade union).

Owners (O) will have: 20+35+10=65 points (victim money and legal

consequences).

As fair division criteria states, their points should be equal.

The most discussed topic: minimum wage increase (column “maxP/minP” has

minimum for it).

x - part of increase to workers, 1-x - part to owners, so W: 45x+25; O:65+(1-x)25.

45x+25=65+25-25x

70x=65

x = 0.929 - to workers 66.78 points total

1-x=0.071 - to owners 66.78 points total

So the minimum wage rise should be

170*0.929+20*0.071=157.93+1.42=159.35%

However, the Bangladesh government didn’t use that method, and in the end

decided to increase the minimum wage by 77% (only a half of those proposed by

the adjusted winner). Not all workers were satisfied: the raise was less than a

half of the demanded one, so the protest continued, decreasing soon in

response to police violence towards protestants. On December 1 the

government officially accepted the wage board’s proposal and increased

minimum wage to 5,300 taka (51 USD). Even though the highest wage limit

wasn’t achieved, we might still call the garment factories workers’ strikes

successful. Besides the raise, legal actions were taken against the owners of

Tazreen Fashion factory and Raha Plaza, accused of homicide for the deaths of

111 and 1143 workers respectively, but only two years after in 2015.

sourse:

https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/bangladesh-factory-workers-protes

t-higher-wages-and-better-working-conditions-2013