Social compliance becomes a household word

In 2006, a group of Bangladeshis who had all been involved with the readymade garment sector in one way or another for years were recruited by a Bangladeshi-German project to design and implement a social compliance training course and manual reflecting the reality of the Bangladeshi garment industry and in line with the Bangladesh Labour Law 2006. The result was a path-breaking action-learning programme that has transformed “social compliance” from an esoteric foreign concept into a household word.  by Marianne Scholte

Women playing Ludo at Awaj Foundation Women's Café

Saifullah Khawaja, former Director of the Liaison Office for Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, explains how he got involved in social compliance: “In 1992, the Bangladeshi garment factory I was working for made me responsible for compliance. The first thing that happened was we failed an audit conducted by a brand called Tommy Hilfiger. We didn’t know anything about compliance; no one did. When I got the report I started studying things and tried to work it out. Then GAP came and my factory passed. That is how it started.”

Md. Manjur Morshed was one of the people carrying out social compliance audits for major European and US apparel brands. He inspected hundreds of garment factories in Bangladesh, but grew increasingly frustrated with the limitations placed on him as an auditor. As he explains, “Even by the mid-2000s, no one knew what social compliance was. But it was a conflict of interest for me as an auditor to advise the factories. I could not tell them how to improve their violations, never suggest anything, not even training. And in any case, the only social compliance training available was outside the country and it was costly. I wanted to contribute more.”

Shatil Ara worked part-time as a third-party auditor in order to finance her university studies. Like Morshed, she found that most companies had no idea what social compliance was. Two Korean companies for whom she carried out audits asked her to translate their code of conduct and Bangladesh’s labour laws into Bangla and to design a training programme to help companies comply with these. “My training programme was totally bookish,” she admits.

In 2007, Saifullah, Morshed, and Ara were among the people recruited to develop a comprehensive social compliance training programme for the Bangladesh readymade garment (RMG) sector – a programme that is today used throughout the sector by RMG factories, trade associations, NGOs, training institutes, and universities and has played a key role in raising awareness and improving working conditions throughout the sector.  

Md. Manjur Morshed: "I wanted to do more."

The training programme was developed by a project initially titled PROGRESS and later PSES (Promotion of Social and Environmental Standards in the Industry) – a joint undertaking of the Bangladesh Ministry of Commerce and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It is being implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. 

 PROGRESS was not a new project – in the period leading up to the expiration of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement in January 2005, there had been great concern that the end of the global quotas that had for 30 years governed textile exports from developing countries to developed countries would severely damage Bangladesh’s textile industry. PROGRESS had therefore worked to improve the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, in an effort to create alternative employment opportunities for those who might be displaced from the garment industry.

However, it soon became apparent that the pessimists had been spectacularly wrong. Growth in RMG exports from Bangladesh in fact accelerated in the late 2000s to over 20% a year. At the same time, however, the looming problem of social compliance issues took on greater prominence. In April 2005, the highly publicized death of 64 workers and injury of over 70 others due to the collapse of the Spectrum Sweater factory outside Dhaka highlighted the hazardous conditions under which many workers labour.

Then in May 2006, garment workers took to the streets demanding maternity leave, one day off per week, overtime payment, and the end to restrictions on trade union activities as well as a significant increase of the monthly minimum wage from the level of 930 takas (10.5 euros), where it had remained for the preceding 12 years. Dozens of factories were torched or damaged, production was halted for days, and deliveries were delayed.

Clearly, the major threat to the sector was not the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement, rather unresolved social compliance issues. PROGRESS therefore moved quickly to refocus its activities. It gathered together an impressive group of local experts and international consultants. Kristina Kurths, an economic geographer with a background in both private sector development and social policy, headed the team. She not only contributed crucial expertise regarding the design of interactive adult education programmes; she also helped her Bangladeshi colleagues navigate the mysterious world of development jargon and reporting.

Case studies instead of lectures

The project conducted its first training of trainers in March 2007. Over the next three years, some 300 master trainers were trained – inspectors from the Bangladesh Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE); compliance officers from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA); instructors from the MoLE’s Industrial Relations Institute, the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, the Bangladesh Institute of Management, and the Chittagong BGMEA Institute of Fashion & Technology; managers and compliance officers from RMG factories; business consultants from local consulting firms; auditors for international apparel companies; and labour rights activists.

The basic social compliance modules were conducted by Saifullah, Morshed, and Aminul Hasan, a Bangladeshi labour standards expert who had worked for the International Labour Organization. Victor Biswas, the former general manager of a large garment factory in Bangladesh and an expert on environmental compliance, conducted the module on environmental standards. The master trainers all completed the basic five-day course, and many also attended advanced courses in eco-efficiency, energy saving measures, environmental management systems, and social compliance held by renowned international experts.

At the same time, the project developed a comprehensive training manual covering the entire process of garment production, working conditions, occupational health and safety, and the provisions of the Bangladesh Labour Law 2006. Each module contains a trainer’s guide, learning exercises, background material, and hand-outs – in English and in Bangla. The entire training programme was placed on CDs to make it easily transportable and widely available.

The result is an extraordinary set of interactive training materials that dispenses with frontal, lecture-style instruction and instead invites small groups to analyse case studies taken from actual factory life and to hone their negotiation and presentation skills through role-playing exercises. Participants learn how to assess health and safety risks in the workplace by analysing chemical storage and handling, electrical and fire safety, noise, dust, and light levels, and proper signage. The groups analyse case studies to determine whether firms are complying with provisions of the Bangladesh Labour Law 2006 covering, among other things, minimum wage, wage discrimination, maternity benefits, paid leave, and prompt salary payment – and then draw up and present a recommended course of action.

Master trainers spread out across the entire RMG sector

Armed with these innovative training materials, the master trainers spread out across the entire Bangladeshi garment sector. BKMEA and BGMEA set up compliance cells in their organisations, each with 16 trained compliance officers, who continue to visit dozens of factories each week. They have trained thousands of factory supervisors and workers. The two associations have thus steadily and systemically upgraded the compliance level of their members over the last five years.  

When the BKMEA compliance cell began work in 2007, it rated almost 900 of its factories at the “D” level – meaning that they found very serious labour rights and/or health and safety violations. Today it places only a small percentage of its factories in this category. According to Md. Sharif Hossain, the Head of Social Compliance at BKMEA, “The level of awareness among factory owners is now completely different. When we started, the word compliance was unknown to some factory owners. Now this is so much easier to address.”

Diploma courses and board games

The first training of trainers courses in 2007/08 included four instructors from the Bangladesh Institute of Management (BIM) and one each from the MoLE‘s Industrial Relations Institute and the Chittagong BGMEA Institute of Fashion and Technology. These three organisations went on to develop their own courses on labour law and social compliance.

The Bangladesh Institute of Management (BIM) now offers day and evening certificate courses and advanced training on social compliance for trainers, public officials, NGOs, and textile firm managers, as well as a six-month diploma course, which has already graduated several hundred students. A similar six-month training course was developed with the BGMEA University of Fashion and Technology (previously the Chittagong BGMEA Institute of Fashion and Technology). In addition, BIM is also launching a diploma course on productivity, quality improvement, and lean manufacturing. 

The original master trainer courses also included labour activists from NGOs deeply involved in educating female garment workers about their rights. These NGOs went on to train around 30,000 cell leaders in labour law and negotiating skills. The cell leaders, in turn, have taken their knowledge into the factories, not only reaching several hundred thousand garment workers, but also successfully negotiating with management on behalf of workers. 

However, Shatil Ara, who quickly saw that the interactive social compliance training programme was a vast improvement over the “bookish” training programme she had written during her days as a third-party auditor, was looking for something even better – a training programme for workers that did not look or feel like a training course to the tired, overworked women who filed out of the factories every night. Ara developed a board game that teaches garment workers about labour rights.

LUDO is similar to the American Parcheesi: players roll dice, move chips around the board, and answer question cards: “What is the legal wage for a senior sewing machine operator? How is overtime pay calculated? When do wages have to be paid?” 

Four NGOs – Awaj Foundation and Karmojibi Nari in Dhaka and OWDEB and Agrajattra in Chittagong –set up 42 women’s cafés in urban areas where garment workers live and work. The cafés are open every evening. Garment workers sip tea, munch snacks, and play LUDO. Most know all the answers by now and are every bit as informed about the key provisions of the Labour Law 2006 as the graduates of the six-month diploma courses.