The Effect of the Ready Made Garment Industry on the
Standard of Living of Bangladeshi People.
To what extent has the standard of living of Bangladeshi people changed as a result of the introduction of the ready made garment factory labor industry?
World Studies
Health and Development
History and Economics
Word Count: 3957
Table of Contents
Title Page…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..1
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..2
Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………………………..3
Introduction/Background……………………………………………………………………………………4-6
Current Low Standard of Living………………………………………………………………………..6-11
Objective Standard of Living Measurements…………………………………………………….12-15
Low and Unreliable Wages…………………………………………………………………….
Unsanitary and Unsafe Conditions…………………………………………………………..
Factory Fires and Collapses………………………………………………………………….
Absence of Unions………………………………………………………………………………..
Impact on Women……………………………………………………………………………………………..16
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………..16-18
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………19-21
Introduction and background
As a resident of the United States who shops on a fairly low budget, I am frequently exposed to businesses selling products created in sweatshops. When I first realized that many of the stores I patronized used unethical labor practices to manufacture their products, I stopped shopping there and looked for alternatives. However, I have since realized that the global sweatshop situation is far more complicated than simply “sweatshop labor is bad”, and that shopping at businesses that manufacture using factories in these countries may, in the long, run help the workers in those factories.
In low income countries, labor is option cheap with few regulations, frequently resulting in the presence of sweatshops. Though less developed countries often vary significantly because of factors such as climate, history, and resources, sweatshops are a common theme. An industry where this is particularly clear is the ready made garment (RMG) factory labor industry. This industry and a focus specifically on Bangladesh lead me to my research question: “To what extent has the standard of living of Bangladeshi people changed as a result of the introduction of the ready made garment factory labor industry?”
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the term “standard of living” refers to “the necessities, comforts, and luxuries enjoyed or aspired to by an individual or group”. It is most commonly economically measured by factors such as a nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), life expectancy, education, per capita income, poverty rate, and quality and affordability of housing. This essay will examine this question using the disciplines of history and economics. Using history it will look at the state of the country and the standard of living of its residents prior to the RMG industry. Using economics it will look at the current state of standard of living in Bangladesh and how it has changed as a result of the RMG industry. It will use the differing source types of historical accounts of pre-RMG Bangladesh, in addition to objective economic measurements of standard of living such as GDP and life expectancy, journalism written or photographed on conditions in Bangladesh, and personal stories from factory workers themselves. These varying perspectives, as well as the disciplines of history and economics, will allow for a more balanced examination of the research question.
For nearly 25 years, Bangladesh was under Pakistani control. Before this period the country depended heavily on agriculture and its population lived mainly in rural areas, causing a low standard of living for many. Under Pakistani control the country began to industrialize. Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971 and adopted a socialist structure. The structure and economy of the country fluctuated over the next ten years, and eventually enterprises were returned to the private sector and the apparel industry was introduced in the early 1980s. The first RMG factory in Bangladesh was opened in 1978 by the late Nurool Quader Khan.
Bangladesh is now the second largest apparel producer in the world. Both number of factories and employees have grown rapidly over the last few decades, with approximately 120,000 employees in 1983, around 1 million in 1993, and close to 4 million currently. With a combination of extremely low wages, a disregard for worker safety, and suppression and discouragement of unions, Bangladesh has managed to become one of the cheapest places in the world to produce ready made garments. These outstandingly low costs are what has allowed Bangladesh’s industry to flourish in the present day, because they appeal to western brands that want to sell clothes for as cheap as possible. Those controlling the industry and factories in Bangladesh today know that if they raise their prices or regulations, they could lose western business.
Overall, the Bangladeshi standard of living has improved as a result of the introduction of the RMG industry, because it has allowed the country to industrialize. This has brought more money and resources to the economy, in addition to lowering rates of young female marriage and childbirth, and raising rates of female education. However while the industry has had an overall positive effect in this regard, the standard of living of the current RMG factory workers show that this positive effect is only to an extent. As there are currently over 4 million workers in the RMG industry, and they are the group most directly impacted by said industry, it is important to acknowledge that their standard of living is still low. Factory workers are paid unreliable and low wages, their working and living conditions are often unsanitary and or unsafe, factories catch on fire and collapse, and unions are suppressed.
When looking at a place like Bangladesh from the perspective of someone living in the first world, it is easy to assume that because of the sweatshop conditions, the RMG industry has only negative affects. However, while the conditions of the workers themselves are still not perfect, the standard of living in Bangladesh as a wholehas improved.
The Current Low Standard of Living of Ready Made Garment Workers
The average standard of living held by Bangladeshi RMG workers is not high. Wages are low and unreliable, working and living conditions are unsanitary and unsafe, factories catch on fire and collapse far too frequently, and unions are suppressed.
Low and Unreliable Wages
The wages paid to workers in factories are low and undependable, and promised paychecks or raises to the already below living wage salary are sometimes never delivered. This often prevents workers from being able to afford a decent standard of living, including sanitary or convenient housing.
Merriam Webster defines a living wage as “a wage sufficient to provide the necessities and comforts essential to an acceptable standard of living”. A report prepared in May 2016 for the Global Living Wage Coalition estimated a conservative living wage for someone living in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, that is over two times the current prevailing wages in the RMG industry. As the workers are not paid living wage, they cannot maintain a decent standard of living.
Female Bangladeshi garment factory worker Shuma Sakar, who has been working in the industry since she was 13, states that “…Because of the meager salary I receive I am unable to afford decent housing. I am forced to live in a slum which is extremely unhygienic and causes many problems. The salary which I live on it is not possible to change housing…” Another says that “I have been working here for so long and they say they are going to raise our salary and increase our overtime pay. They make promises and give us hope but don't follow through. I cannot meet my expenses even though I am there at work rain or shine.” A third says that “I don't live closer to the factory because rent is too high. I can’t afford it. What should I do? Stay here and be able to eat, or not?” Despite working in the industry and factories constantly for a long period of time the workers are still unable to enjoy basic needs such as living with their children, meeting their expenses, or living near their job, demonstrating their low standards of living.
Unsanitary and Unsafe Conditions
The conditions that the RMG workers live and work in are often unsanitary and unsafe, with problems such as overcrowding, cruel authority figures, and high working pressure.
Worker Shuma Sakar speaks about how “The factory I work in the conditions are very poor. The bathrooms are unclean, the drinking water is bad. The pressure of production is so high that the workers are unable to drink water… [causing] a lot of the workers to fall ill. Some of the girls get jaundice, kidney problems, and other illnesses… the eyes of many workers [are affected]… a lot of workers to suffer hearing problems… [there is] no air ventilation…” In addition to low salaries, employee Mohammad Helal Uddin reports that workers often do not get paid for working overtime, or receive promised annual raises or holidays.
Beyond uncomfortable and unsafe conditions, workers report being treated disrespectfully and violently. Uddin describes being forced at gunpoint to resign from his job because of his union work, and cellphone videos of factories show police officers beating workers with canes and shooting them with rubber bullets. “‘They treated workers as if they were not human beings,’ one worker said.”
In addition to paying workers inadequate and unstable wages, the RMG factories are often neither safe nor healthy workplaces, which contributes to the low standard of living held by the workers.
Factory Fires and Collapses
An especially dangerous aspect of RMG factory work are the factory fires and collapses, which take place because of low quality buildings, overcrowding, and negligence. Factory workers frequently are injured or die as a result, which can derail their lives, put them in very difficult positions, and dramatically lower their standards of living.
In 2013, a building housing multiple factories in the Rana Plaza in Dhaka collapsed, killing around 140 people and injuring over 1000. Cracks were found in the foundation the day before but not reported, and the top four floors of the building were later found to be illegally constructed. See two photos of factory fires below.
Civilians trying to extinguish a fire on February 1, 2006.
An injured worker is carried out of a factory fire in Savar on December 14, 2010. At least 24 others were killed and hundreds were injured.
Shila Begum, a victim of the collapse of the factory in Rana Plaza, says that “…I injured my right hand and arm when the building collapsed and I was brought to a medical clinic… I was operated [on]… I am getting treatment every day… I am living with my younger sister who is working in another garment factory, she supports me and gives me some money, that’s how I survive: in hardship…” Reshma, a 20 year old victim of a building collapse in Tazreen, states that “When the Fire broke out… my right leg was fractured and I hurt my hip and spine very badly. I was operated upon my leg twice and can still not walk properly, it still hurts and the doctor advised me not to work due to my spinal problems… My husband used to work at Tazreen too, we used to be able to run the family but now we are in dire conditions and it is very hard…” Jorina Begum, a 25 year old Tazreen collapse victim, says that “When fire started I… broke my leg and hurt my spine… I started talking again in the trauma hospital, before that I couldn't. Doctors told me to go home and advice me not to work, not to take heavy load work up again… My two older brothers died during the fire and left 4 children… My husband is unemployed now so can't help me…”
As a result of the negligence and disregard for workers’ safety resulting in these collapses, the victims are now left with few options and a very low standard of living.
Absence of Unions
Unions can be an incredibly helpful tool for bettering the conditions in factories. They can equalize power between workers and employers, by providing workers with leverage via strength in numbers. However the Bangladeshi military banned trade unions in 1976, and only in 2004 did Parliament, pressured internationally, allow worker associations at individual factories. Despite this many factories still suppress attempts to unionize, firing or threatening workers who participate. Nurum Nahar, the Vice President of the National Garment Workers Federation, talks about how “trade unions are not accepted. I was fired from my job because I was participating in trade union activities… workers are fired when they join a union.” The Dhaka Tribune states that “Trade union offices have been ransacked and vandalised, leaders arrested and imprisoned and organisers have gone in to hiding for fear of retribution.”
Without the tool of unionization to gain a voice and better their working experience, RMG factory employees lack a crucial component of a decent standard of living. Though the legalization of unions was a step in the right direction, the union situation in the RMG factories still needs a great deal of improvement.
Overall, the RMG factory workers hold a low standard of living. The pay is inadequate and unreliable, living and working conditions are unsanitary and unsafe, factory fires and collapses are frequent, and unions are suppressed. However despite these current conditions, the standard of living in Bangladesh overall has in fact improved since before the garment industry was in place, as shown by a comparison to pre-RMG industry Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Before the Ready Made Garment Industry Before the introduction of the RMG industry, and Bangladesh’s industrialization process in general, the Bangladeshis had a very low standard of living. The nation was dealing with the aftermath of war, newfound independence, vast inequality, overcrowding, and poverty, and was overwhelmingly rural, which will be examined below using data from multiple sources, largely including information originally found by the Federal Research Division of the US Library of Congress. The introduction of the RMG industry later allowed much to change in Bangladesh, as can be seen when comparing the standard of living before and after it.
After gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh was disorganized and struggling to rebuild their nation. Though there was a considerable work force, the large majority were illiterate, untrained, and jobless; with very few trained white-collar workers. The country’s transportation system was in ruins, and the banking system was unreliable. There was an absence of external markets or industrial resources, there were critical food shortages, and inflation ran up to 400 percent. Famously called the “basket case” of South Asia by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Bangladesh depended on foreign aid to stay afloat, because of the general disarray and lack of resources in the country.
In the 1970s and 1980s, women remained vastly unequal to men, especially in terms of educational and job prospects. Their limited access to resources such as education, health care, and markets lead to high birth rates; putting strain on Bangladeshi families and contributing to the poor health of children. Female literacy was at only 18 percent, half that of the male literacy rate. In the 1980s, around 82 percent of women lived in rural areas. The majority worked as laborers, others relied on irregular sources of income such as begging, and the remaining minority did not work outside the home. Women working in cities historically relied on domestic and traditional jobs, but in the 1980s, as the RMG industry began to grow, they increasingly worked in manufacturing. As a resuly, between 1974 and 1984 the female labor force participation rate doubled. However before the RMG industry, females had high birth rates, little education, and few job opportunities.
Additionally, Bangladesh was crowded and flooded with refugees. In the late 1970s, over 200,000 Rohingya from Myanmar fled to Bangladesh, and between 8 and 10 million people who had previously fled to India also returned to Bangladesh around this time. Refugees put economic and social burdens on local communities, and combined with the returning Bangladeshis they contributed to Bangladesh’s serious problem of overpopulation. In the 1980s Bangladesh was one of the world’s most densely populated countries, with the globe’s highest rural population density and an annual population growth rate of almost 3 percent. Bangladesh was stuck in a cycle of growing population and poverty with 50 percent of the population in extreme poverty, too poor to buy food necessary for a reasonably active life.
Closely linked to the problems of overcrowding and poverty, as well as many of its other issues, in the 1980s Bangladesh was one of the most rural third world countries. 82 percent of the population lived in rural areas. In 1981 only around 20 percent of the population was literate, with the rural literacy rate half of the urban rate. Around this time, villagers began to move to cities to escape rural overcrowding and pursue steadier employment, as urban centers grew in number and population. The introduction of the RMG industry would later contribute to this process of urbanization and industrialization.
Before the introduction of the RMG industry, Bangladeshis had a lower standard of living. This is shown in the disorganization, shortages, inequality, overcrowding, and poverty of the time, all closely tied with the country’s vastly rural population. The RMG industry was and is critical to Bangladesh’s industrialization process, and has allowed for the changes in standard of living apparent from a comparison of the past standard of living, detailed above, and the present, explained below.
Current General Standard of Living in Bangladesh
Though the standard of living held by RMG factory workers currently is low, as shown by factors such as low pay and unsafe working conditions, in Bangladesh in general it has improved in the past few decades. Despite factors such as political instability, poor infrastructure, and corruption, Bangladesh’s economy has grown around 6% each year since 1996. Exports from the garment industry make up 80% of the country’s total exports, and over 18% of its GDP. The World Bank reports that since 1960 Bangladesh’s GDP has grown exponentially, and that total population has grown steadily.
Life expectancy raised by nearly 15 years between 1980 and 2012, as reported by the Human Development Report of 2013.
Bangladesh’s Human Development Index, a statistic from the United Nations combining life expectancy, education, and per capita income, has steadily gone up since 1990.
According to a report by Basharat Hossain, the national poverty level in Bangladesh reduced by 55.8% between 1971 and 2013.
In addition to the improved standard of living for the overall population of Bangladesh, the situation for women has changed especially dramatically. A study found that living near a garment factory lowers a female’s likelihood of being married by 28%, and likelihood of having children by 29%. In addition, women who live near a factory have on average 1.5 more years of education than women living in villages farther away from factories. Another study, conducted by Mobarak and Heath, concluded that “As factories open up and economic opportunities reach villages, households decide to invest in the education of daughters, due to the perceived increase in returns from schooling in the labour market. Furthermore, as girls find jobs in the garment sector, they tend to postpone marriage and childbirth.” Mobarak and Heath also found that around 14.8% of the national gain in female enrollment during the period studied could be attributed to the growing garment industry. Without the RMG industry these factories would not be present to make a difference, showing that it has made a significant positive impact on the standard of living of women living and working around the factories.
As stated in the introduction, the factors commonly used to indicate standard of living are GDP, life expectancy, education, per capita income, poverty rate, and quality and affordability of housing. In addition to these, in this circumstance inequality is important to consider because of the impact on women’s lives. As shown in the data above despite bad conditions currently, all of these factors except housing have improved since the introduction of the RMG labor industry, therefore showing that despite still low conditions, the standard of living in Bangladesh in general has improved.
Conclusion
Based on observations and reports of the lives of the workers in RMG factories, their standard of living is still severely lacking. The wages paid to factory workers are inadequate and unreliable, the conditions in the factories are unhealthy and dangerous, the housing available is inadequate and expensive, disasters such as fires and collapses in the factories are common, and unions, a vital tool to help solve these problems, are suppressed. This shows that the RMG industry’s effect on standard of living in Bangladesh has been positive only to an extent, as the workers in the industry, those most directly impacted by it, still hold a low standard of living.
Despite this low standard of living held by workers, in Bangladesh overall the industry has led to an improvement. In the 1980s, Bangladesh had both a rapidly growing population and 50% of the population in extreme poverty, unable to afford enough food to live a reasonably active life. At this point 82% of the population lived in the countryside, making Bangladesh one of the most rural Third World countries. Even by the start of the 2000s, according to the World Bank, Bangladesh was one of the poorest and least-developed economies in Asia. Before the RMG industry, the standard of living in Bangladesh was not high. Bangladesh is a radically different place now, as a result of its industrialization. According to the World Bank, 35% of Bangladesh now lives in cities, a huge growth from a couple decades previous, and the current generation in Bangladesh is about twice as rich as the preceding one. Standard of living in the country as a whole has grown, which is apparent from both the way Bangladeshis used to live and from the current economic state of the country.
Therefore, as a result of the introduction of the the ready made garment factory labor industry, the standard of living of Bangladeshi people overall has risen, while the conditions for the factory workers themselves are still lacking.
Looking Forward
As someone who has grown up middle class in the United States, when I see the conditions in the factories and cities around them such as Dhaka I am appalled. At first glance the Bangladeshi factory labor situation seems negative in every way, because of how different it is to the first world. However despite this, in the big picture of the country and its history, progress is being made.
As people in a position of privilege and power in the United States and places like it, there is not a clear path of how to help the people working in these factories and Bangladesh in general. Some choose to not shop at businesses manufacturing there, to avoid monetarily supporting sweatshops. However this also takes away business from the industry, minimizing its positive impacts on the country. What I believe is the key, to bettering the standard of living for RMG factory workers and continuing the progress that has already been made in Bangladesh, is being a conscious consumer. Despite the international attention on the sweatshops and disasters such as the Rana Plaza collapse, so many shoppers simply shop wherever is convenient and attractive to them, ignoring the impacts of their actions. There is no right answer of the steps to be taken to better the situation, no handbook of the right way treat this issue, but being mindless and passive is the opposite of the solution. If consumers in places like the United States did a little bit of research and thought hard about what types of businesses and industries they want to support, we would be closer to a better Bangladesh and a better world.
As for next steps on a bigger scale, there again is not a simple answer. If the United States or countries like it chose to stop importing from Bangladesh, they would overall harm the country and its garment industry by depriving it of business.
A possible way to raise the standard of living in cities like Dhaka is for the public to put pressure on brands to manufacture their products ethically. This has worked in the past to cause brands to make positive changes in their factories, however still may cause businesses to decide to simply stop manufacturing in Bangladesh altogether, without the current incentive of few regulations.
Binding agreements applying only to Bangladesh have been successful in the past. An example is the Accord, an agreement between brands and trade unions to prevent fires and other building-related problems. However, most businesses choose to manufacture in Bangladesh because of its low prices and lack of regulations. Therefore if only Bangladesh changed these factors, they might lose their business and as a result the overall beneficial garment industry.
Possibly the most promising solution is to internationally attempt to improve wages, safety, and accountability in factories and manufacturing industries. For example, the United Nations program the International Labor Organization has made progress throughout the world on eradicating issues like child labor. If the worldwide standards were bettered then Bangladesh could still compete, while significantly raising the standard of living of its inhabitants.
One of the only clear and agreed-upon thing about this issue is that it is vastly complex. It is further complicated by the global capitalist structure and the fact that Bangladesh needs to compete in it with cheap manufacturing, in order to keep the RMG industry. However with collaboration and possible solutions like conscious consumerism, pressure on brands to manufacture ethically, and both national and international binding agreements, the future of Bangladesh can be bright.
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