The needs of the garment workers should have priority

Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmmed, Assistant Executive Director of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS Projects), discusses compensation for Rana Plaza victims, factory safety and labor unions in Bangladesh. In his view, while a lot of money is being spent for seminars and consultants, little has actually improved for workers in the factories.              by Marianne Scholte

Dhaka, 24 September 2014

Scholte: A lot has happened since Rana Plaza. What is the situation in the readymade garment sector and for its workers and labor unions now?

Sultan Ahmmed: There have been endless discussions, nationally and internationally, seminars and conferences in New York, in Brussels, Dhaka, everywhere. Enormous resources have been used, but personally, I don’t feel there has been much improvement on the ground.

Scholte: But what about the compensation being paid by the Rana Plaza Claims Administration? What about the factory inspections by the Accord and Alliance, the remediation going on, the new health and safety committees? Over 200 new labor unions have been registered with the government. All this doesn’t constitute progress?

Sultan Ahmmed: To some small degree, yes. But it is not what it should be. Take compensation. Some victims got support from individual donors; some got support from the Prime Minister’s fund, but one year and five months after Rana Plaza, the Rana Plaza Claims Administration has not been able to disburse compensation to the victims. It is terribly late, terribly late.

Scholte: Why has it taken so long?

Sultan Ahmmed: Because of the assessment criteria – they are complicated and took a long time. This is a huge challenge for the committee. And then there is the problem of non-availability of sufficient funds: we have only enough funds to disburse 40% of the calculated amount.

Scholte: But even that 40% has not been disbursed. How much has been disbursed?

Sultan Ahmmed: Only 50,000 taka per person plus 45,000 taka from Primark. So all together 95,000 taka (960 euros) per person has been disbursed. I am a member of the Rana Plaza Claims Administration, so it is also my failure.

Scholte: How long will it take until the compensation is disbursed?

Sultan Ahmmed: This month, 40% will be paid to the first batch (editor’s note: 1552 members of deceased workers' families and 35 injured workers received a first installment on 2 October 2014).

Scholte: Still, this is the first time that compensation has been systematically organized for the victims of an accident in the RMG sector. Will the Rana Plaza Claims Administration set a precedent for future accidents?

Sultan Ahmmed: It should function as a precedent. But we need to develop a national standard for compensation, and we need to push the government to incorporate these things into law.

Scholte: What about the factory inspections by the Accord and Alliance and the remediation going on? Surely making factories safer for workers is a good thing?

Sultan Ahmmed: We claim that we woke up, that we want to improve working conditions and prevent a future disaster like this. But to achieve that, we need to strengthen the Department of Inspection of the Bangladesh Ministry of Labour and Emplyoment and empower workers.

Safety cannot be donor-driven. It is a human right, and the government and the employers have the obligation to ensure it. The inspections are being done by the Accord and the Alliance. But they should be under government authority, under public authority.

Someone from outside Bangladesh cannot come with complete authority and say that they would like to inspect the factories. Sure, they say that they are only making recommendations, that there is a government Review Panel, etc. But in actual fact, they are inspecting the factories with foreign experts. We need our own government inspection system with the capacity and authority to do the job and with accountability to the people. The Accord and Alliance have no accountability to us; they also have no legal authority.

Furthermore, in the name of improving the situation, they are creating panic. Factories are closing or reducing their workforce. Workers are extremely anxious that they could lose their job at any moment. Particularly the small subcontractors are being hard hit. But if you subcontract your inspection system to the Accord and the Alliance, then why can’t you allow subcontracting of production? You need to help these small firms to improve or at least you need to have a safety net. For example, we could identify 500 subcontracting companies that should be taken over by the big factories, while ensuring workers’ job security. This needs to be addressed.

Scholte: But let me ask you this: As you said, factory inspection and safety enforcement is the responsibility of the government, but the government has not been able to do it effectively. So what do you do in this situation? What should the buyers and the development partners do?

Sultan Ahmmed: They should push the government and help the government. They are spending lots of money on their engineers, their inspections. If they provide this support to develop the government‘s expertise, that would be far more sustainable. The way things are going now, we are in danger of losing our ability to improve the situation ourselves. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but this is how it seems to me. With all the theoretical discussions, all the conferences and so on, there is very little change on the ground.

Scholte: Do you think that the work of the Accord and the Alliance will make factories safer for the workers?

Sultan Ahmmed: Yes, I think it will make the supplier factories safer. But unless workers are empowered, this is not sustainable.

Scholte: The amendments to the Labour Act in July last year included a provision that there will be a health and safety committee in each factory with 50% worker representation. That is surely a step towards empowering workers.

Sultan Ahmmed: There has been a lot of talk about creating an atmosphere where workers can raise their voice, but after one and a half years, the rules for the health and safety committees have still not been issued, so that workers still do not have a forum where they can raise safety issues.

I am a member of the committee that drafted the rules for the health and safety committees. We submitted a draft to the government six months ago. And they accepted it. But then they started delaying, delaying, delaying. Where are the rules?

Scholte: There is a lot of pressure from the Accord and the Alliance on the government to issue the rules.

Sultan Ahmmed: The commitment of the Accord and the Alliance alone is not enough. There should be commitment by the government and the employers. The rules will be issued at some point, but they may not be what we expected. And after the rules are issued, we need to ensure the proper functioning of the health and safety committees.

Scholte: There has also been a rapid increase in the registration of factory-level unions. Isn’t that worker empowerment?

Sultan Ahmmed: After the disaster, the government wanted to prove that they were making some changes and so they accepted a lot of new unions, over 200, in fact. Now it is slowing down again.

The problem is that 95% of these unions are in small factories because of the requirement that a union has to sign up 30% of the workers in a factory to apply for registration. In big factories, you cannot reach 30%. Furthermore, there still is no protection for labor union office bearers. If a factory fires you, you lose your union position. We have experienced a lot of this in the last six months. Many officer bearers have lost their jobs.

Scholte: How many?

Sultan Ahmmed: I cannot give you the exact number, but union officials were fired in at least 20% of these unions. We are getting these complaints all the time.

Scholte: So the barriers to forming a labor union are still very high.

Sultan Ahmmed: Absolutely. Our demand was that these types of clauses be removed from the law. But they weren’t. There was only one real change: Earlier when the ministry received the petition for registration, they reported the names on the list to the employer. This clause was removed. They now make an enquiry instead, but that enquiry is not always fair.

But still it is a small improvement. And it is good that there are new factory-level unions in 200 factories. And it is good that local activists now have the confidence that they can organize. But the fact that union officials are being sacked sends a very wrong message. That is the first thing.

And the second thing is the panic I already mentioned. Sometimes they intentionally create panic, saying that the factory could close and workers could lose their jobs, in order to discourage unions.

Overall, I see a small positive development. Before people thought they could not found a union in RMG at all. Now at least they know that they have the right to form a union. Some people got registration, some did not, but the ball is rolling, so that is a good thing. Earlier the government and owners had an alliance to keep unions out; now, at least, many of the government policy makers accept that we need unions, we need room to talk.

Scholte: So there is a slight shift in attitude?

Sultan Ahmmed: Everyone understands that the safety conditions were unacceptable and that we have to do something. People are beginning to view these conditions as a criminal offense. So that is improvement. A proposal to form safety committees, initiatives for forming unions – that is all improvement.

What we now make of these improvements depends on many things. The international involvement with our attempts to cope with this disaster – if you formulate it in a positive way – that is also a unique challenge. Suddenly everyone, development partners, international journalists, etc., wants to know about our union activities. This is also new. So we talk to them and try to present the real picture with real figures. But in some ways this has also kept us from doing our job. Now instead of working on the ground, in the factories, we are often busy attending seminars. 

Today huge resources are flowing in, but most of the time it is for some type of discussion, round table or dialogue. There a lot of paperwork, a lot of projects. But organizing is not project-based work. It is political, ideology based work. So that is another thing that has hampered development. There is more planning than implementation, more discussion than organizing. But the needs of the workers should have priority!

Scholte: What do you see as the way forward in this very difficult reality?

Sultan Ahmmed: First of all, you need to build the confidence of the workers that the union is with them. Mobilizing workers requires mass confidence, which depends on unity and our efforts to protect workers when there is a problem in their factory.

Instead of spending a lot of money for seminars and consultants, we need to set up some basic services for workers in every area. Workers feel so helpless. They don’t know what to do if the factory guard simply turns them away. They need to know that there is a place to go. I have never been in a hospital, but I know that there is a hospital if I need one. So that gives me more confidence.

We should help the area-based unions set up an area-based labor center, where workers can easily go and get help. Put two lawyers in each center. All the unions working in a particular area would be completely welcome there. You would then have a common place to sit, a common place where workers can come and get legal advice, legal protection. Also some paralegal training for the activists – that will help.

Scholte: Even with these 200 new unions, the percentage of people who are organized in the garment sector is still miniscule, right? And the labor movement as a whole remains fragmented. Has there been any improvement in this situation since Rana Plaza?

Sultan Ahmmed: No, there has been no consolidation. In fact, there is more competition between the various labor federations because of the opportunity to get more international support.

It seems to me that the international community should not just support their own constituency. IndustriALL, the ILO, the Solidarity Center, they all support their own affiliates/associates, but there are many people outside that. This promotes competition among the unions and leaves those outside these networks without any support at all. This is the really unfortunate part.

The labor movement should not be a donor-driven thing; it should be based on the demands of the workers. We blame the government and others, but it is our duty as unions, as activists, to organize, to work together and to focus on our workers. But unfortunately it is not happening.

Scholte: Thank you so much

Sultan Ahmmed: Thank you.

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