The Ethical Trading Initiative sent a delegation to Bangladesh last
month to try to establish the ‘underlying causes’ of recent violent
protests by garment workers there.
The protests about wages and
working hours have resulted in the deaths of at least two workers,
hundreds of injuries, the burning of more than 200 factories and scores
of arrests.
Retailer members of ETI, including Asda, Gap, Marks
& Spencer, Next, Tesco and Inditex account for a significant
proportion of Bangladesh’s garment exports.
The delegation
comprised ETI chair Alan Roberts, Neil Kearney, general secretary of
the International Textile Garment and Leather Workers Federation, and
representatives from Gap and Inditex. They met representatives of
manufacturers’ associations, local unions, NGOs and the government, and
visited affected factories.
The ETI said initial findings from
the visit indicated that a sudden rush of garment orders into
Bangladesh, partly due to technical readjustments in international
trade agreements in May, had prompted the unrest. This had caused
‘tremendous pressure on factories to take on orders beyond their
capacities’, the ETI said.
Roberts said that ‘intense delivery
pressures’ on managers and supervisors had ‘apparently resulted in
abusive behaviour towards workers’ and ‘grossly excessive hours’.
The
team will now recommend steps ETI members can take ‘to help promote
stability and improve working conditions’ in the Bangladeshi textile
and garment industry.
