Abstract
The economic relationship between Japan and Bangladesh has grown stronger since the global financial crisis of 2008, with Bangladesh being identified as ‘China plus one’ by the Japanese companies. These companies have accordingly begun transferring the capital from China to Bangladesh to avoid political and social risks in China. This article examines the skills, wages, and householding of female Bangladeshi readymade garment workers, focussing on a Japanese multinational company’s international transfers and business activities in Bangladesh since the global financial crisis. This study yielded three main findings. First, it identified the structure of the division of labour involved in the production of pairs of short pants exported to Japan. Second, it compared 20 female operators’ wage assessments to those of the overall labour force, based on their skills and experience, and pointed out ambiguous and unfounded issues caused by the gender-asymmetrical workforce deployment of Bangladeshi factories. This gender-asymmetrical system is responsible for Bangladeshi female workers’ low wages. Finally, despite their low wages, the analyzed Bangladeshi women were found to share multiple household reproduction costs through remittances and perform most of the housework and care work in the household.
Keywords
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to examine the skills, wages, and householding of the female Bangladeshi readymade garment (RMG) workers through a case study of a Japanese multinational company. I use the term ‘householding’ in the sense of Douglass (2006, p. 423), to mean an ‘ongoing, dynamic social process that covers all life-cycle stages and extends beyond the family’. In Bangladesh, the RMG industry is important because of its economic and social aspects. This industry began in the early 1980s due to the entry of foreign companies, the most prominent company being Daewoo Corporation of South Korea and has grown rapidly in terms of the number of factories and amount of exports, also being supported by a shift of the Bangladeshi government from a nationalized to a market-oriented industrial policy in the mid-1980s. Bangladesh experienced not only high economic growth since the 1990s reaching more than 6 per cent in the 2000s but also macroeconomic stability, largely due to the success of the RMG industry (Asian Development Bank, 2016). This has generated dramatic changes in its social indicators, including poverty reduction, maternal and infant mortality, life expectancy, and literacy (Asian Development Bank, 2016). There have been remarkable changes for Bangladeshi women, in that, the RMG industry has created employment for a large number of them. These women had previously been restricted in their activities away from home by religious and social norms, especially the purdah system, a religious and social practice of female seclusion. Most of these female workers are born into circumstances of low economic status in rural areas, and garment labour is their first formal type of work. There are now five million workers in the Bangladeshi RMG industry (including textiles), 80 per cent of whom are women (Ministry of Finance, 2017, p. 123).
Given this background, many researchers have investigated issues involving female workers in the Bangladeshi RMG industry (Feldman, 1993; Kabeer, 2000; Kabeer & Mahmud, 2004; Kibria, 1995; Murayama, 1997; Naved, Rahman, Willan, Jewks, & Gibbs, 2018; Paul-Majumder & Begum, 2006). Although they conducted studies based on field surveys of female workers in both the factory and the household, they have been rather interested in female workers who work at Bangladeshi (national) RMG factories, not multinational ones, as survey subjects. Therefore, this article focusses on female workers who work at a Bangladeshi factory owned by a Japanese company with the new international division of labour as the theoretical framework. This approach allows us to analyze how the globalized economy—proxied in this article by a Japanese company’s international transfers—impacts the Bangladeshi macroeconomy and its female workers. Since the global financial crisis, many Japanese garment companies have transferred the capital from China to Bangladesh to avoid the political and social risks in China. By focussing on a Japanese RMG company’s international transfers from China to Bangladesh, and the manufacturing of cheap short pants in Bangladesh, this article analyzes how shifts in the global trade patterns affect the Bangladeshi female workers’ wages and householding.
The outline of this article is as follows. ‘Theoretical Framework and Survey Outline’ section provides the theoretical framework of this study and an outline of the survey. ‘Economic Relationship between Japan and Bangladesh after the Global Financial Crisis’ section presents the economic relationship between Japan and Bangladesh after the global financial crisis. ‘The Case of Matsuoka Corporation’ section introduces the international transfer and business activities of the Japanese companies in Bangladesh through the case of the Matsuoka Corporation. ‘Bangladeshi Female Labour Force at a Japanese RMG Factory: Skills, Wages, and Householding’ section first illustrates the real picture of the division of the labour forces engaged in the company’s production processes, which produces cheap short pants to be exported to Japan and examines the case of 20 female Bangladeshi workers; second, it analyzes their situations in terms of skills and wages; finally, it investigates their lives from the perspective of householding. ‘Concluding Remarks’ section provides concluding remarks.
Theoretical Framework and Survey Outline
Theoretical Framework and Key Concepts
This article is based on the theoretical framework of the new international division of labour and uses two key concepts: commodity chains and householding. The term ‘new international division of labour’ was coined by Frobel, Heinrichs, and Kreye (1978). They found that the fundamental preconditions for the expansion and accumulation of the capital have transformed qualitatively so that a new international division of labour substituted the ‘classical’ international division of labour that had been in place until the 1960s (Frobel et al., 1978, p. 123). According to Frobel et al. (1978, p. 130), the classical international division of labour meant that industrialized countries produced capital and consumer goods, while the larger part of the underdeveloped world was integrated with the capitalist world economy as a supplier of raw materials. However, with the three preconditions below occurring simultaneously in the 1960s, the new international division of labour appeared, under which underdeveloped countries produced commodities for consumption by industrialized countries through an export-oriented industrialization. The three preconditions are as follows (Frobel, Heinrichs, & Kreye, 1980, pp. 34–36). First, a worldwide reservoir of potential labour power was formed. 1 Second, the development of technology and job organization meant that complex production processes could be decomposed into elementary units, for which even unskilled labour can be easily trained over the short run. Third, the development of technologies, including telecommunications and modern transport, meant that industrial facilities and production management could be located without considering geographical distances.
Further, Frobel (1982, p. 539) also points out other two factors that are important under the new international division of labour. First, ‘a worldwide industrial reserve army’ has been formed together with ‘a world market for labor-power’ (Frobel, 1982, p. 539). This means that, with the great variety of structural conditions in the world-economy, workers who live in industrial countries have to increasingly fight for their jobs, now competing both with workers who live in other industrial countries as well as with workers in developing countries. They are set to compete with each other by capital. Second, ‘a world market for production sites’ is expanding, in which industrialized and developing countries compete with each other to appeal to a ‘world market-oriented manufacturing industry’ (Frobel, 1982, p. 539). According to Frobel (1982), capital continues to consider the option of transferring production to sites with cheap and compliant labour in developing countries more than ever before. In the light of the case of Japanese multinational companies, especially in the RMG sector, which are examined in this article from the perspective of international division of labour, these outsourced production sites can roughly be divided into the following three categories. First, they focussed on the newly industrialized economies (NIEs) of the 1970s, namely South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, subsequently shifting their focus onto the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries until the Asian financial crisis, as labour costs increased in the original NIEs. Second, they shifted to China from the 1990s to the 2000s, especially with the era of China as ‘the world’s factory’. Finally, they moved from China to other countries such as Bangladesh, where labour costs are lower than in China since the global financial crisis, the so-called era of China as ‘the world’s market’. This article focusses on the period after the global financial crisis.
In addition, this article illustrates the production and labour processes used in the Marxian economics, based on the RMG produced by a Japanese company’s Bangladeshi factory, using the concept of commodity chains developed by Hopkins and Wallerstein (1977). According to Hopkins and Wallerstein (1977), the term ‘commodity chains’ is used to symbolize core–peripheral relations:
Our basic assumption in the analysis of core–peripheral relations is that the concept of international trade is fundamentally misleading. (…) Instead, we start with a radically different presumption. Let us conceive of something we shall call, for want of a better conventional term, “commodity chains”. What we mean by such chains is the following: take an ultimate consumable item and trace back the set of inputs that culminated in this item—the prior transformations, the raw materials, the transportation mechanisms, the labour input into each of the material processes, the food inputs into the labour. This linked set of processes we call a commodity chain. If the ultimate consumable were, say, clothing, the chain would include the manufacture of the cloth, the yarn, etc., the cultivation of the cotton, as well as the reproduction of the labour forces involved in these productive activities. (p. 128)
Wallerstein (1983, p. 30) also affirms commodity chains: ‘To talk of commodity chains means to talk of an extended social division of labour which, in the course of capitalism’s historical development, has become more and more functionally and geographically extensive, and simultaneously more and more hierarchical.’ 2 This means that the commodity chains have tendencies ‘to move from the peripheries of the capitalist world-economy to the centres or cores’ (Wallerstein, 1983, p. 30) and can thus be said to show the core–periphery relationship. More importantly, by using the commodity chains as an analytical framework, we can examine the division of the labour forces incorporated into commodity chains, including all adult women and most people ‘at the pre-adult and post-prime adulthood age range’ (Wallerstein, 1983, p. 23). 3 In this article, I illustrate the actual situation among the labour forces integrated into the RMG production processes of a target Japanese company’s Bangladeshi factories. Moreover, I discuss these workers’ households as places of social reproduction. Wallerstein (1984, p. 17) notes that the households constitute one important institutional structure of the capitalist world economy, with arguments regarding households being initiated and carried forward by Wallerstein’s working group in the mid-1980s. Influenced by these works, which are focussed on North America and Europe and cover an era during which global migration occurred relatively infrequently, Douglass (2006) sets up a new concept, ‘householding’, to analyze the actual situation of the households in the Asia-Pacific region in this global era. According to Douglass (2006, p. 423), householding implies that to create and sustain a household is an ongoing, dynamic social process that covers all life-cycle stages and extends beyond the family. Typical elements of householding include not only marriage, partnering, and bearing children but also raising and educating children, maintaining the household on a daily basis, dividing labour, and pooling income from livelihood activities, among others (Douglass, 2006, p. 423). This article focusses on how 20 female Bangladeshi garment operators maintain their households and how their wages and remittances are managed, not only for their own households but also for their parents’ and (if married) their husbands’ households.
Survey Outline
This article is based on four surveys I undertook, three in Bangladesh and one in Japan. The first survey conducted in Bangladesh was from 30 January to 28 February 2010, the second from 12 May to 4 June 2010, and the third from 27 to 28 August 2012. In addition to Bangladesh, I conducted another survey in Japan on 26 December 2011. The outline of each survey is as follows.
The fourth survey was conducted within the Matsuoka Corporation. The Matsuoka Corporation is a Japanese Original Equipment Manufacturer apparel company that produces internationally through its own factories, including Bangladesh. As such, I conducted the first three surveys at Matsuoka’s Bangladeshi factory and one Japanese survey at its head office in Fukuyama city, Hiroshima.
There are three main reasons why I chose Matsuoka Corporation for this study. First, Matsuoka Corporation took the initiative to establish its Bangladeshi factory to avoid the political and social risks in China after the global financial crisis. According to the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO, 1986) and Board of Investment (2010), the first such Japanese investor in the country was the company named Japan Bangladesh Garments Ltd. (founded on 31 August 1984), and since the 1990s, there were further Japanese garment companies that invested in Bangladesh. However, as this study focusses on Japanese companies’ international transfers from China to Bangladesh after the global financial crisis, I chose Matsuoka Corporation, which established its Bangladeshi factory after the crisis but earlier than other companies. Second, Matsuoka’s Bangladeshi factory was established as a joint venture between Matsuoka China—not the head office—and a Bangladeshi company. This capital formation of Matsuoka’s Bangladeshi operation shows business activities in Bangladesh being undertaken to avoid the particular risks that occurred in China before and after the global financial crisis. Finally, Bangladeshi workers undertook the manufacturing of the cheap clothing that had been produced by Matsuoka China up to that point, as well as new orders for export to Japan from Matsuoka Bangladesh.
The content and methods of each survey are as follows. The first survey’s objective is to identify the corporation’s organization and illustrate the production and labour processes for short pants produced in its Bangladeshi factory. The survey methods are interviews and participant observation. The second survey’s objectives are to capture the skills, wages, and household circumstances of 20 female workers, based on interviews and participant observation. In addition to these two surveys, I undertook a supplementary survey in Bangladesh to explore the human resources management, especially the wage system and promotion structure, in more detail. To this end, I interviewed Bangladeshi male production managers, a Japanese staff member, and female Bangladeshi workers. I also investigated the Japanese head office and interviewed the president and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Noriyuki Matsuoka, to reveal the corporation’s history, history of its global development, and his perception of the current situation regarding the environment for international business.
Finally, I would like to discuss the ethical issues pertaining to this survey. Given that the research relates to an especially sensitive topic, the wage system in the Bangladeshi factory of Matsuoka Corporation since July 2009, I have agreed to use the data collected from the factory only for the purpose of my research. I obtained official permission to use the company name from the CEO, Mr Noriyuki Matsuoka, on 26 December 2011. Regarding the confidentiality agreements with the 20 Bangladeshi female workers, all interviewed workers have been informed of the survey’s objectives and the way the data were collected. In addition, the data from the individuals who participated in the survey were anonymized by using numbers and not their names.
Before presenting the findings from the four surveys, I would first like to emphasize in the next section the strong economic relationship that has developed between Japan and Bangladesh since the global financial crisis.
Economic Relationship Between Japan and Bangladesh after the Global Financial Crisis
The economic relationship between Japan and Bangladesh has been growing stronger since the 2008 global financial crisis. This article illustrates the situation from the point of foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade.
Figure 1 shows Japan’s FDI in Bangladesh from 2000 to 2016 (by fiscal year). In 2008, Japan’s FDI in Bangladesh reached a peak of USD 57.15 million, before falling dramatically during 2009 and 2010, which might be attributed to a decrease in the amount of FDI per company after the global financial crisis. The FDI recovered in 2011 and then increased rapidly in 2013 and 2014. However, it began decreasing again in 2015 and 2016, being affected by the Holey Artisan Bakery terror attack of 1 July 2016. 4
Primary
On the other hand, as Figure 2 shows, the number of Japanese companies in Bangladesh has been increasing since 2005 and has hardly been affected by the domestic and international issues such as the global financial crisis or the Holey Artisan Bakery terror attack. There were total 269 companies as of May 2018, accounting for an increase of 3.7 times since 2008.
Primary
The strong ties between Japan and Bangladesh can be observed in terms of trade. Figure 3 shows Bangladesh’s trade balance with Japan. Both imports from and exports to Japan increased steadily from 2004 to 2016 (with the exception of 2013, when imports from Japan decreased sharply but recovered over the next year and, with the exception of 2016, when exports to Japan decreased). Bangladesh’s trade deficit with Japan has continued to exist. However, exports to Japan have increased by 5.3 times from 2008 to 2015. This is due to increases in apparel exports to Japan. Figure 4 shows that the amount of apparel exported to Japan increased steadily since 2008. Apparel now accounts for more than 80 per cent of the total exports to Japan, indicating that the increases in Bangladeshi exports to Japan are mainly driven by increases in apparel exports.
Primary
Why have Japan and Bangladesh had such a strong economic relationship since the global financial crisis? This crisis affected the Japanese economy directly as follows. Japan recorded a negative economic growth in 2008 of—1.094 per cent as opposed to the 1.654 per cent in 2007, further decreasing in 2009 to—5.416 per cent, according to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook Database in October 2019. The downturn of the Japanese economic growth in 2009 was sharper than that in the USA or European countries; Japan sustaining the most severe damage of the major advanced countries.
This was due to the structure of its economic growth model prior to the global financial crisis, especially around 2002. According to Ito (2013, pp. 90–96), Japan experienced an economic growth of less than 2 per cent per year, with the exception of 2003 when the economic growth reached 2.3 per cent, which was supported by exports rather than domestic demand. Concretely, there was around a twofold increase in the Japanese exports to the USA, fuelled by the consumer boom in the USA that supported the expansion of home mortgages from 2001 to 2006. Simultaneously, Japan’s exports to the surrounding Asian countries, especially China, also increased. The global financial crisis hit the Japanese economy through the falling demand for exports to the USA and also to Asian countries. In particular, export-oriented companies saw their performances decline and attempted to navigate this difficult phase by cutting the wages and restructuring, based on the increasing mobility of labour. As a result, real wages have been falling since the global financial crisis, 5 while disparities have continued to widen.
Against this background, there was an increase in low-end consumers, coupled with aggressive competition based on cost cutting by the global apparel companies and retailers. 6 Most Japanese apparel companies have responded by setting up subcontractor factories in China, chosen for its geographical proximity since the 1990s. However, since the global financial crisis, these companies have begun transferring the capital away from China to avoid political and social risks, 7 which are some of the most important risks that contribute to the rising labour costs in China. 8 This trend has come to be known as ‘China plus one’, which describes a management strategy under which Japanese manufacturing companies create extra production bases in other countries, in addition to those in China. 9
Japanese companies tend to choose ASEAN countries, especially Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam as ‘China plus one’ destinations; however, after the statement of the chairman, president, and CEO of UNIQLO, Mr Tadashi Yanai, many Japanese apparel manufacturing companies started to focus on Bangladesh. In November 2008, Mr Yanai officially announced the company’s plan for Bangladesh to be its next largest production base after China. This announcement created a ripple effect that led to numerous Japanese garment and apparel companies establishing factories in Bangladesh. In addition, Bangladesh’s high economic growth (above 6 per cent) during recent years and the advantages of its garment industry, that is, more than 4,000 factories and abundance of cheap but skilful 10 labour (80 per cent of garment workers are women), were attractive to the Japanese capital. In the next section, I discuss the situation of a Japanese multinational company’s international transfers and business activities in Bangladesh.
The Case of Matsuoka Corporation
Matsuoka Corporation was established in April 1956. Its president and CEO is Mr Noriyuki Matsuoka, who is the fourth-generation leader of the enterprise. 11 Matsuoka Corporation is a typical Japanese family company. Its head office is in Fukuyama city, Hiroshima and employs 94 staff (as of 31 March 2018). As Figure 5 shows, Matsuoka Corporation had its own factories in China, Myanmar, the Philippines (closed in March 2008), the USA (closed), and Bangladesh. It has produced all types of wear items (uniform, casual, and formal) through commissioning at these factories, which allocate the orders for items according to the characteristics of the labour force at each factory. 12
Matsuoka Corporation has had investments in China since November 1990, which was the first international investment for Matsuoka. 13 It has continued to invest in China from the 1990s to the early 2000s; especially since January 1999, when it was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the speed of investment in China has accelerated and its scale has expanded. On the other hand, in 1999, Matsuoka closed its mother factory in Hiroshima because of the increases in labour costs and labour shortages in Japan. Since then, Matsuoka China has come to play a greater role as the mother factory on behalf of the Japanese factory.
However, from the 2000s, when the labour costs started to increase, Matsuoka was forced to develop new production areas outside China. First, Matsuoka chose Myanmar as a production area. Matsuoka established a factory here with full ownership in October 2002 and then bought out a Japanese factory in January 2004. Matsuoka then established a factory that was 100 per cent owned in the Philippines in November 2004, opened an office in Bangladesh in December 2004, and established a wash processing plant in Los Angeles, USA, in June 2005. The company then set up a factory in Bangladesh in March 2008. As shown in Figure 5, the factories in China, Myanmar, Philippines, and USA 14 are 100 per cent owned factories by the Japanese head office or joint venture enterprises between the Japanese head office and companies in the concerned countries. The factories in China, Myanmar, the Philippines, and the USA can be called subsidiary companies. On the other hand, the Bangladeshi factory, established in March 2008, is a joint venture between Matsuoka China, not the head office, and Bangladeshi capital. The investment ratio is Matsuoka China 70 per cent and Bangladeshi capital 30 per cent. As shown in Figure 5, the Bangladeshi factory is positioned as the subsidiary of a subsidiary factory of the Japanese head office. This means that the mother factory for the Bangladeshi factory is Matsuoka China, which has two important consequences.
First, soon after the Bangladeshi factory was established in March 2008, five Chinese technical experts were sent from Matsuoka China to enhance the productivity of the Bangladeshi factory and improve Bangladeshi workers’ skills, a decision made by the Japanese head office. In contrast with the Chinese factories, no Japanese experts have been sent to the Bangladeshi factory. 15 The experts from Matsuoka China comprised three women and two men. Three female Chinese technical experts were assigned to the sample, garment, and finishing sections, while two males were assigned to the washing and cutting sections. All these workers have a long-term experience on each section in Matsuoka China. Their ages range between 38 and 42 years, and they are junior-high-school graduates. All of them are married but are settled in Bangladesh apart from their families, who live in China. Second, the Bangladeshi factory imports most of the materials it uses, for example, fabrics, threads, and other accessories from Matsuoka China, despite inexpensive and good-quality textiles and thread being available in Bangladesh.
At the Bangladeshi factory, where I conducted my survey in February 2010, about 800 workers (of whom 70 per cent are women) produce pants more cheaply than in China. Almost all these products are consignments contracted by major retailers and shopping centres and are exported to Japan, as well as to Europe and the United States. In February 2010, this factory produced 1.2 million pieces on its six production lines. The machines used at the Bangladeshi factory, including the sewing machines, are Japanese brands but are made in China. Almost all the machines were supplied locally, while some of them were sent from Matsuoka Philippines, which closed in March 2008.
Bangladeshi Female Labour Force at a Japanese RMG Factory: Skills, Wages, and Householding
Commodity Chains and Division of Labour Forces: The Case of Cheap Short Pants Exported to Japan
This section examines the involved labour processes, using the concept of commodity chains, developed by Hopkins and Wallerstein (1977).
16
Taking cheap short pants exported to Japan as an example, the following 12 production processes are involved:
Send fabrics and accessories from Matsuoka China by ship, arriving at Chittagong, the second largest city, to be transported to Matsuoka Bangladesh by truck. Check the quality of the fabrics by machine. This process is important because it is possible to send the fabrics back to China if colour spots and flaws on fabrics are found before cutting. Wash the fabrics and dry them to minimize shrinkage of the finished products. Cut the fabric. Check the quality of fabric sections that cover larger areas of the body, mostly done by women. Sew until ready for processes to add accessories. Wash to clean the dirt (e.g., marks and threads) and dry. Carry the garments to the finishing section, attach the accessories, check the quality, iron, and fold the garments. Pack garments. Check the presence of needles using a needle detector. Box. Ship.
The steps previous to these 12 processes involve computer aided design and creating a sample, following Matsuoka China’s direction.
Figure 6 illustrates these 12 production processes from the viewpoint of the labour processes involved, based on the workers’ gender and nationality. In line with Wallerstein (1983, p. 30), we can identify the division of the labour force in these processes, composed of Bangladeshi male and female, Japanese male, Chinese male and female, and Filipino male and female workers. Foreign technical experts are allocated to all floors, with the head being a Chinese woman, the highest skilled foreigner staff, who works in the sample section. However, although this is a Japanese factory, there is only one Japanese staff, based in an office, while the remaining labour force depending on Bangladeshi and other foreign staff. As shown in Figure 6, more Bangladeshi male workers than female are allocated to the washing section and the carry fabric section on the first floor and at the cutting section on the sixth floor. On the other hand, there is a concentration of Bangladeshi female workers on the garment floors (third, fourth, and fifth). Most of the women working on the garment floors are sewing operators or helpers; except for the A-2 line, Bangladeshi women represent 70 per cent of the labour force for each line. Numerous Bangladeshi female workers, who are regarded by capital as unskilled workers, undertake the sewing processes that determine the quality of the completed products. In the following section, I examine the skills, wages, and householding of 20 selected Bangladeshi female workers.
Bangladeshi Female Workers’ Skills and Wages: The Case of the Garment Floor
On the garment floors (third, fourth, and fifth), there are two lines that manufacture three garment lanes. There are lines A-1 and A-2 on the third floor, lines C-1 and C-2 line on the fourth floor, and lines B-1 and B-2 on the fifth floor. Every line produces different pants in terms of buyers and colours. However, all line settings are basically the same, even though the destinations for export are different, either to Japan or to Europe and the United States. Concretely, pants are made from three lanes, which are the front, back, and joint. According to my survey, there are 17 processes on the front lane, 24 processes on the back lane, and 25 processes on the joint lane. Overall, 66 processes are necessary to sew a pair of pants. In Bangladesh, at least 66 workers are needed to produce the pants, so one operator does one process at the Bangladeshi factory. In addition to the operators, there are helpers who support the operators in handling the difficult parts of the work.
To determine where are the skilled female Bangladeshi workers placed on the garment line and how are their wages assessed, this section analyzes the situations of 20 Bangladeshi female operators in terms of their positions on the lane, skills, experience at the garment factories, and wage assessments.
Before the analysis, I present the way of assessing the garment workers’ base wage as per the supplementary survey of August 2012. The garment section is responsible for the wage assessment of garment workers. As subsequently explained, Bangladeshi male managers and line chiefs are in charge of the decisionmaking regarding the line setting, workforce deployment, and assessment evaluation for garment workers. The wages at the time of joining determine the wages that the workers will get in the future, meaning women do not have the same promotion opportunities as men. They obtain an increase in salary of 3 per cent of the basic wage at the time of joining annually. As such, it is important for women how the basic wage at the time of joining is decided. The way this decision is made is as follows. Matsuoka Bangladesh adopted two steps to assess the basic wage at the time of joining for the garment workers. In the first step, floor managers recruit new employees using oral interviews and practical skill tests (there are cases where the line chiefs do the recruiting). Then, they judge the results to decide the workers’ starting salary. In the second step, the production manager, who holds the second highest position to the factory manager, determines whether the floor manager’s evaluation is correct. The oral interview comprises four categories based on the interview survey with the production manager in Matsuoka Bangladesh: 1) working years at garment factories in the past, 2) understanding production processes for pants, 3) variety of processes in which workers can sew, and 4) type of sewing machine the workers can operate.
Table 1 shows the 20 female operators’ 17 line arrangement, work roles, experience at the garment factories, and basic wages. 18 They are ranked based on their skills—unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled—from No. 1 to No. 20. In addition, I requested the Bangladeshi staff in the accounting department to provide me with the data on the amounts of the basic wage, monthly wage, and rate of overtime from the numbers of each operator, which are controlled by the factory. Figures 7 and 8 show the 20 female workers’ line arrangements. They are arranged on the A-1, A-2, B-1, or B-2 lines (A-1 and A-2 are on the third floor, and B-1 and B-2 are on the fifth floor).
20 Operators’ Skills and Wages
On the garment floor (see Figures 7 and 8), every part sent from the cutting floor is carried either to the front lane or the back lane. In both the cases, production starts from one end of the lane and proceeds to the other end; when an item arrives at the far end of the either lane, quality controllers who invariably sit at the end of each lane check the quality of the parts that have been sewn through the lane. This quality controller has the role of discovering defective products at the earliest stage. After finishing the sewing and checking on the front and back lanes, each part is carried to the joint lane that sews the final short pants. Then, there is a quality controller at the end of the joint lane and he verifies the item. After the quality check on the joint lane, every product is carried to the final floor quality check. Four or five quality controllers determine whether the full pairs of pants meet the standards. The finishing step is to reinforce with bar tack and checking the parts of the bar tack complete the operations at the garment department, and then pants go to the washing floor for cleaning. Given this background, let us examine the actual situation for workers’ wage assessment.
Below, I point out the characteristics of female operators’ wage assessments at the three skill levels, that is, unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled, based on Table 1 and Figures 7 and 8. First, the operators from No. 1 to No. 4 are regarded as unskilled. They work on the initial and middle processes in the front or back lanes (see Table 1 and Figure 7) and are engaged in simple straight stitching processes and have a limited number of years of experience in the garment factories. Their basic monthly wages are low, the lowest wage being that of No. 2 (1923 Tk 19 ), as a result of their low level of skill and limited experience.
Second, the operators from No. 5 to No. 13 are regarded as semi-skilled. They sew the initial processes sitting on the joint lane and the last or later processes on the back and joint lanes. They sew the curved parts or are engaged in the longer straight stitching, with a typical process being the hem of garments. Specifically, No. 12 and No.13 are in charge of the hems in the B-1 line. They are operators excellent in terms of speed and accuracy of sewing. However, their wage assessments are low as compared to their skills. Moreover, even though women engage in the same processes, if the lane in which operators are sitting is different, the assessment evaluations are also different. For example, No. 9 is engaged in the hem on the B-2 line, as are No. 12 and No. 13, who are in charge of the B-1 line. The monthly basic wages of the three operators are 2462 Tk (No. 12), 2423 Tk (No. 13), and 2269 Tk (No. 9). As per Table 1, No. 9 is paid lower wages than the other two operators, despite her long experience. No. 7 has an experience of eight years at the garment factories, and she engages in fairly difficult processes, but her basic wage is quite low: 2346 Tk. As described, there are some cases for which the assessments of the wages of semi-skilled operators are made ambiguously and unfoundedly, which means they are not based on the four standards for the oral interview at Matsuoka Bangladesh.
Finally, the operators from No. 14 to No. 20 are skilled. No. 14 and No. 15 cover absentees and can basically sew every process, while the operators from No. 16 to No. 20 are engaged in sewing the belt on the pants, which is the most difficult part. They have the longest experience of more than seven years (except for No. 19). Their wages are higher than those of the unskilled and semi-skilled workers, so the skilled workers’ wages can be said to be determined by an assessment based on their skills and experience. However, the amount of the operators’ workload is not reflected in their wages. Concretely, on the B-1 line, four operators, No. 16, No. 17, No. 18, and No. 20, work on the same parts, sewing the belt on the pants; however, on the A-2 line, only one operator, that is, No. 19, works on the same process because of her dexterity and the work rate. No. 19 is paid a lower salary than the operators on the other line. However, her past working experience at the garment factories is rather limited.
This article divided the 20 female operators into three groups based on their skill levels and analyzed the relationship between skill, experience in the garment factories, and wage assessment. The following is a summary of the findings. The unskilled and skilled operators’ wage assessments are based on their skills and experience; however, semi-skilled operators’ assessments are ambiguous and unfounded, not being based on the four standards for oral interviews at Matsuoka Bangladesh. Specifically, 1) workers’ wage assessments for those who engage in a fairly difficult processes are low (No. 12 and No. 13) and 2) worker’s wage assessments for longer experiences at the garment factories are insignificant (No. 7 and No. 9). In addition, in the case of the skilled workers, although their workload differs according to the floor and line, these differences in the workload are not considered in the wage assessment.
One of the most powerful reasons for the ambiguous and the unfounded wage assessments is the gender-asymmetrical workforce deployment as previously mentioned. Figure 9 shows the workforce hierarchical deployment based on gender for the garment floor on the third floor of the building. The top level is the manager, followed by the line chief, and finally the supervisor. The positions from manager to supervisor (called the production manager) are held by men. The manager and the line chief have the highest decision-making power concerning the line setting, workforce deployment, and evaluation and wage adjustment for the operators and helpers on the line, as shown in Figure 9. In the case of the third floor, 126 out of 138 operators are women. Hence, all female workers have their skills and capabilities evaluated and their wages set by male managers. As mentioned above, these evaluations, conducted by Bangladeshi male managers, are not always based on workers’ skills, experience, and job performance. In addition, there is no opportunity for women to be promoted, even to the position of a supervisor, which is the lowest position among the production managers, as of the survey conducted in February 2010. Bangladeshi men occupy the higher positions, while women cannot be promoted to higher positions and continue to engage in low-paying jobs. Thus, the gender-asymmetrical system is responsible for the Bangladeshi female workers’ low wages and is also the source of the competitiveness in the Bangladeshi RMG industry.
Bangladeshi Female Workers’ Households and Householding
Table 2 shows the details of the 20 operators’ households and householding and is organized in the same manner as Table 1. It shows the situation of the household members for three types of household: houses in which the women lived in May 2010, when I performed the survey; homes where the women were born; and in the case of married women, their husbands’ houses, where the women’s husbands were born. This captures the situation of sending remittances to the women’s or the husbands’ houses (if married).
From the analysis of the 20 operators’ households and householding, the following three cases are highlighted (see Table 2). First, the operators from No. 1 to No. 6, who are categorized as unskilled and semi-skilled, are unmarried. The years they have worked at the garment factories are more limited than for the skilled workers, as shown in Table 1. This means that they are also younger than their skilled counterparts. In Bangladesh, it is uncommon for unmarried women to live alone—they live with their parents, sister/brother, or friends, as shown Table 2. All operators who live with a sister/brother or friends pay a remittance of at least 1000 Tk every month from their basic wages to cover their parents’ reproduction cost. 20 Their wages are low because of the low skills and limited experience; however, they can save the money and send it to their parents, because they live with married sisters or/and brothers for a limited time until they get married themselves.
20 Operators’ Households/Householding *1: Every Month *2: Biannual *3: Once Every Two Months *4: Every Year
Second, as the operators’ skill level improves, the number of married operator’s increases. Married (including widowed) workers number 10 out of the 14 operators, from No. 7 to No. 20, who are semi-skilled and skilled. They live with their husbands and children, if any. After getting married, the operators build a stronger relationship with their husband’s household than their own through their remittances. For example, operator No. 10 sent 1000 Tk to her husband’s household every month, despite the fact that she cannot do the same for her own household because of the tight household economics. Operator No. 11 sent more than twice as large amounts to her husband’s house every month (5000 Tk) than to her own house (2000 Tk). To sum up the first and second points, despite the low wages, most female operators share multiple households’ reproduction costs through their remittances (there are cases including the husband’s and other household members’ wages). In other words, their parents’ and husbands’ households cannot survive without their remittances. Most of the operators (especially the married women) are also the ones who do the majority of the care work (e.g., housework, raising children) in their households, in addition to working at the factory.
Third, some of the skilled operators, for example, No. 14, No. 17, and No. 20, can form other types of households that are different from the typical one (husband plus children). No. 14 and No. 17 are sisters and work on the same line as the skilled workers. Both leave their children 21 with their parents, who live in the village; they told me that their houses in Dhaka are too small to accommodate children and there are limited places to leave a child while working at the factory. Their mothers, who live in the village (Barisal district), look after their children for them, and their parents often come to Dhaka to bring the children over because their daughters can only visit the village once a year due to their factory jobs. The transfers for child care expenses to their parents out of their monthly wages are as follows: No. 14 sends 1000 Tk and No. 17 sends 500 Tk every month. However, they send more remittances to their husbands’ households than their parents’: 2000 Tk and 1500 Tk, respectively. On the other hand, No. 20, who is in charge of sewing the belt on the pants and is the highest skilled among the 20 operators, lives near the factory with her mother, her younger brother, who works at the sweater factory, and her son, who is nine years old. Her husband lives separately and runs his own business selling wood in his village (Barisal district). She supports her mother and son with her younger brother and transfers 10000 Tk per year to her father, who lives with his brother’s family in Pirojpur district. She takes her son to her hometown to visit her father two or three times a year. She works every day at the factory from 8 am to 5 pm; if she works overtime, she works until 7 pm, except for one day off a week. Her mother does most of the housework and raises her son. As shown in Table 2, No. 20 is the most skilled and is paid the highest salary out of the 20 operators. Therefore, she has more decision-making power in her household compared with the other operators. However, this is far from representing empowerment, because she is also located at the bottom of the gender-based hierarchical organization.
Concluding Remarks
In this article, I discussed Bangladeshi RMG female workers’ skills, wages, and householding using a case study of a Japanese multinational company. Since the global financial crisis, Japan and Bangladesh have built a strong economic relationship based on Bangladesh’s economic status as ‘China plus one’. As apparel exports to Japan have increased, more apparel companies, especially those that produce cheap clothes, have started to invest in Bangladesh, or, even without having invested, have been ordering products from Bangladeshi factories. This article identified three main points in the case of the Matsuoka Corporation, which plays a leading role in producing clothes in Bangladesh for export to Japan since the global financial crisis.
First, examining the production and labour processes using Hopkins and Wallerstein’s (1977) concept of commodity chains, I point out the actual situation of the division of the labour forces, not only for Bangladeshi workers but also Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese ones. Especially the sewing processes, which are the most important in affecting the quality of the completed products, are worked by a large number of female Bangladeshi employees, who are regarded by capital as unskilled workers. Second, although there are differences in the skill levels between the Bangladeshi female workers (this article divided them into three categories; unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled), analyzing the 20 female operators’ wages based on their skills and experience of working at the garment factories reveals ambiguous and unfounded assessments, especially for the semi-skilled workers. The ambiguous and unfounded assessments refer to these points: 1) Although there are four evaluation standards for the starting wage, in many cases, assessments are not based on the four standards. 2) Women do not get any raise in the salary other than 3 per cent in the annual wage increase and cannot be promoted. In addition, the workload and performance of the skilled workers were not considered consistently in the wage assessment. This article concludes that this uneven assessment is caused by the gender-asymmetrical workforce deployment: men at the Bangladeshi factory occupy top production positions and have the authority to make evaluations, while women work as operators or helpers. This system, thus, dictates the Bangladeshi female workers’ low wages. The important point is that both the Japanese head office and Matsuoka China, the mother factory of Matsuoka Bangladesh, have almost no interest in human resources management, leaving it to the Bangladeshi male managers because Matsuoka Bangladesh is simply a result of the risk aversion towards Matsuoka China for both the Japanese head office and Matsuoka China. Third, despite their low wages, the Bangladeshi women covered multiple households’ reproduction costs through remittances. Further, they also do most of the housework and care work in their households, in addition to their factory work. On the other hand, some of the skilled female workers hold a measure of decision-making power in their households; however, in terms of the gender-asymmetrical organization of the corporation, women’s empowerment is far from becoming reality.
Under these circumstances, what should Japanese companies do? According to Elson, Grown, and Cagatay (2007, pp. 46–47), they should be free from ‘short-term competitive advantage’ based on gender inequality to construct a business model for ‘sustainable people-centred societies’. Elson et al. (2007) also notes that in an environment of free trade, companies only try to cut costs; therefore, collective action and multidimensional public policy are required to reduce gender gaps, including the care gap. Regarding collective action, Better Work, which is an International Labour Organization (ILO) initiative, could be one source of good practice. Gender equality in factories has been proven to have advantageous effects on corporate performance (ILO, 2018). As for multidimensional public policy, it goes without saying that notional women and social policies are important. These future efforts based on gender sensitivity are not only targeting Japanese companies but also the Bangladeshi government and other related organizations that are key to the improvement of the female workers’ conditions.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received financial support from JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A), grant number 17H01652.