Worker empowerment in Bangladesh: The European initiative for the garment industry

1 Introduction

Worker empowerment initiatives have been undertaken to improve worker health, safety and wellbeing by many formal sector industries across many countries. Several research studies have shown that such initiatives help make occupational health and safety programs more effective through better worker participation [1–3]. Empowerment programs often include formation of functional workplace safety committees, offering safety training for the safety committee members as well as awareness training for general workers and creating a mechanism for workers to report on safety and health concerns and issues they come across at their workplace [1–3]. The Safety committees consisting of labour and management representatives that meet on a regular basis to deal with health and safety issues have been in existence in industrialized countries for many years. Reporting of workplace injury or disease has been a fundamental component of managing occupational health and safety.

The Bangladesh garment sector has been considered infamous for its unhygienic and unsafe working conditions [4–6]. A number of studies have highlighted the inadequacy of physical safety including fire, building and electrical safety in these factories, whereas other studies also identified issues such as abuse, harassment and disputes over salary, overtime and shift work [7, 8]. System level capacity needs to be built and improved by increasing competent human resources for in-factory hazards and health assessment as well as enhanced training of government officials on regulatory inspection, enforcement, monitoring and reporting [9].

The Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, which contained five garment manufacturers collapsed on April 24, 2013, killing at least 1,132 people and injuring over 2,500 others. Only five months prior, at least 112 people were trapped and killed inside the Tazreen Fashions plant on the outskirts of Dhaka in a horrific fire tragedy. There were other similar incidents of a smaller scale before these. These catastrophes, which rank among the worst global industrial disasters in recent history, brought international attention to the poor working conditions in Bangladesh’s ready-made garment (RMG) business [10]. These incidents sparked a surge in consumer awareness, prompting creation of a worldwide alliance of clothing and fashion companies and trade unions to join in a vast, multifaceted campaign to make Bangladesh’s garment industry safer [11].

The Western large retailers mostly from Europe formed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (Accord) to advance workplace safety in Bangladesh’s garment sector. The Accord was a legally-binding contract between global brands and retailers and IndustriALL Global Union and UNI Global Union and their Bangladeshi affiliated unions to work towards building a safe and healthy garment and textile industry in Bangladesh [12].

Accord was formed “to help ensure that no garment worker needs to fear fire, building collapses or other accidents that can be prevented with reasonable health and safety measures” [12]. Over 220 companies (Table 1) signed the agreement and for a period of five years, Accord had taken several initiatives to accomplish its commitment [13]. Accord’s founding and pursuits generated a lot of curiosity and contentions inside and outside Bangladesh. An objective look at its initiatives and learning about what worked would benefit all stakeholders within and outside Bangladesh.

Among its initiatives was forming Safety Committees at the factories and organizing training programs on safety. Accord operated a Safety Committee and Safety Training (SCST) Pilot Program at 65 factories from August 2015 to May 2016. It expanded the SCST Program in June 2016 at all factories, based on the pilot’s success [14, 15]. SCST was recognized as an important constituent of workplace safety programs. In addition, Accord planned to hold three 45-minute All Employee Meetings in all the factories (Table 2).

Another major initiative was to “create an independent Complaints Mechanism for workers and protect them against retaliation for utilizing it” [12]. Workers and staff at Accord signatory facilities could express concerns about health and safety hazards to its Safety and Health Complaints mechanism and these were to be kept secure and discreet (Table 2). All complaints were first evaluated to see if they fit under Accord’s safety and health mandate.

It was expected that Accord’s achievements in these dimensions would create a long term safety culture in Bangladeshi garment factories. This study attempted to find out the impact of Accord’s programs in improving safety and quality of the working environment in the garment sector.

This is a descriptive study of secondary data. All published and publicly available reports of Accord available online on their official website (https://bangladeshaccord.org/) were retrieved and then compiled and analyzed. Data were gathered on 1) Safety Committees formed, 2) Safety Training Programs conducted, and 3) Safety and Health Complaints reported. The data were extracted from Accord’s annual and quarterly reports from 2013 to 2021. There were 24 documents in total and all were reviewed.

The number of factories which had Safety Committees, received Safety Training, where All Employee Meetings were conducted were reported in this research. The numbers of All Employee Meetings were also reported; in addition, how many workers completed one, two or three meetings were listed.

This study divided the annual recorded complaints by days to calculate frequency of complaints per day. Number of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) complaints and Non-Occupational Safety and Health (Non-OSH) complaints reported were divided by number of factories and number of workers to understand the frequency and extents of reporting.

Ethics approval was not deemed necessary as all data were publicly available and no identifying information on worker or factory was presented in any of these reports.

3 Results

In 2021, a total of 1581 factories were under Accord’s umbrella covering about 1.8 million workers. From August, 2015 to May, 2016, Accord included 65 factories for their pilot project on safety committee training. Then, by the end of 2016, 203 factories participated in the safety committee training program and 19 factories successfully completed all the training sessions. By May, 2021, it successfully completed all training sessions for safety committees in 1022 factories which was64.64% of its target. Table 2 presents the cumulative number of factories covered in training.

In terms of All Employee Meetings, out of the total of about 1.88 million workers completed AEM1, 1.6 million completed AEM2 and 649,571 workers completed AEM3. This means one third of the workers completed all three meetings that included topics of health hazards and rights to safe workplace topics.

Table 4 shows that by 2020, the number of total complaints per factory was around two (1.86) and the number of occupational health and safety (OSH) complaints was less than one per factory (0.87). OSH complaints per 1000 workers covered were 1.4. The number of non-OSH complaints was almost 25-35% of the total complaints from 2016 to 2019, but in 2020 and 2021, non-OSH complaints increased and made up 50% of total complaints. Table 3 also shows that in 2016 and 2017, Accord was receiving less than one complaint per day. The number of complaints per day was between 2 to less than 3 for the later years.

The number of complaints received by Accord appeared to be quite low given the very large number of factories (1581) and workers (1.8 million) under its umbrella. It completed the 8 session training curriculum scheduled for the safety committees in 65% factories from 2016 to 2021 whereas their expectation was to cover all the factories in their 5 year timeline. In addition, the majority of the general workers were not informed comprehensively about health hazards and rights to safe workplace topics as only 34% of factories completed the three All Employee Meetings.

By May, 2021, only about 3 complaints on average were filed daily from almost 1600 factories. A study in 2015 showed that occupational health hazards were prevalent among 88.28% Bangladeshi garment factories [16]. Also, numerous newspaper reports also show a very high prevalence of occupational health issues in this sector [17–19]. Either the garment workers did not know, were not able to make complaints or they did not understand how and why filing reports could be beneficial. Lack of information or poor understanding, mistrust about the management following years of suppression and injustice might not make the workers believe in the functioning or effectiveness of this complaint mechanism. Also, it appears that Accord did not succeed well in making the workers understand the type of complaints it would normally deal with. As a result, the numbers of non-OSH complaints were quite high compared to OSH complaints. This study demonstrated that Accord only dealt with 1-2 complaints per day and in some years, less than 1 complaint was filed per day.

The advantage of a joint safety committee is that the in-depth practical knowledge of specific tasks by the workers is pulled along with the broader overview of company policies, and procedures (management) [20]. When a worker suffers a work-related injury or disease, a timely and accurate report of the incident is made which helps in taking relevant actions to prevent it in future [21]. Data from the workers’ compensation claims system have been widely used as a major surveillance data on occupational health and safety in countries where such a system exists. In the USA, the OSHA logs including Injury & Illness Recordkeeping Forms (300, 300A, 301) have been extensively used as a surveillance data source [22]. In Bangladesh and many LMICs in absence of such data collection systems, understanding the scope of the problem and implementing preventive measures have been quite limited.

From reviewing Accord’s annual and quarterly reports, it appeared that its efforts were primarily focused on protecting the physical safety of the garment workers, tackling urgent and life-threatening risks linked to construction of factory building, fire, and electrical safety. These were done quite vigorously and meticulously through factory inspection and remediation processes. Evidence generated in this research suggests that Accord went for volume of coverage in terms of number of factories and workers rather than the quality or sustainability of its important initiatives in creating and improving a long-term culture of ensuring worker safety through training, safety committee and surveillance.

Accord’s work had the potential to substantially improve workplace safety for millions of garment workers. The magnitude and scope of its safety inspections, training and education programs, and complaint resolution procedures could alter the standard of safety practice in Bangladesh’s RMG industry. However, this research does not show that their activities regarding Safety Committee and Safety Training were implemented satisfactorily.

About the complaint handling process, during 2018, a formal committee was formed to process the complaint mechanism and according to Accord’s January 2021 quarterly report, 50 members were responsible for building safety committee and implementation of their training in almost 1600 factories. This was a daunting task for this small team in five years with limited resources and expertise and may explain why Accord fell behind in its schedule to complete all training in their factories [12]. In its 2017 annual report, Accord’s director stated that the delivery of the training programs was slower than planned and he related it to initial opposition faced in the large scale roll out of the factory-based programs and for the continued recruitment and preparation of training department staff [12].

Accord established a complaints process via which workers could file complaints on dangerous working conditions, worker mistreatment, and so on and emphasized the development of collective worker capacity in order to build a self-sustaining system. The complaints received were claimed to be promptly solved by Accord though further details about the process and outcome were not provided. However, the complaints filing procedure seemed to be difficult or uninviting for individual workers to use as the very low numbers of complaints received and reported in this report suggest. Furthermore, establishing such a process needs a favorable institutional structure supported by legal enforcement and management’s willingness to help, both of which seemed absent in the Bangladesh setting [23]. According to one study that attempted to evaluate a project among the female workers and management staff in Bangladesh, some factories advised employees against providing information to the study team as this might jeopardize the company’s operations[24].

Bangladesh became a worldwide test case for European firms to assess what they can or are willing to do to protect workers’ health and safety in their global supply chains. But Accord was not fully able to deliver a sustainable solution in all areas, as their focus remained mostly on physical infrastructures which usually yield narrow and short-term outcome. The mechanism of filing complaints could be made easier and general workers could be made more enthusiastic to report [25].

The buyer countries’ governments have tried without success to hold businesses accountable for worker safety violations perpetrated abroad. The governments appear to have been hesitant to pursue corporations operating abroad for such violations. Cases in the United States demonstrated that victims of alleged rights breaches such as excessive working hours, terrible and hazardous working conditions, threats, sexual and physical abuse, and human rights abuses were unable to obtain justice from large corporations. A Bill on Corporate Code of Conduct in Australia attempted to create a mandate that businesses adhere to environmental, labor, health and safety, and human rights requirements [25].

Scientific data is an important component of occupational safety and health management system [26]. Bangladesh does not have a national level OSH surveillance or reporting system. The government needs adequate and reliable data to develop evidence-based OSH policy [27]. Workplace safety cannot be ensured if brands cannot be held accountable for workplace tragedies. Also, for Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), workers’ safety has not been a priority with the exception of catastrophe led external push factors [28].

Accord was very unique in design and this was the first time that the European retailers appeared to share a common concern for improving working conditions and the health and safety of millions of garment workers who make a living by knitting and sewing garments for European shoppers. In the absence of careful planning and team work by public and private organizations on implementation and a lack of sincerity by the factory owners as well as incognizance of the workers likely made this worker empowerment initiative less than optimal.

5 Conclusion

The Western large retailers mostly from Europe formed the Accord to advance occupational health and safety in the garment industry and one of its mandates was worker empowerment. This study reported on the impact of Accord’s programs on improving quality and safety of the working environment in Bangladesh’s garment sector. By 2020, number of total complaints per factory per day was around two and number of occupational health and safety (OSH) complaints was less than one. In 2020 and 2021, non-OSH complaints constituted 50% of total complaints filed.

Nothing as massive as the Accord initiative covering so many factories and workers existed before in Bangladesh. The data provided by Accord can be considered as a starting point on developing a national level surveillance system regarding the status of the working conditions in the garment factories. The expertise gained and learning experience from this initiative might help undertake and implement better initiatives in future in Bangladesh as well as other supply chain countries for garments and other export oriented sectors.

Ethical approval

Not applicable.

Informed consent

Not applicable.

Conflict of interest

None to report.