Labour leaders have called upon Bangladesh government to revise the wage structure for the apparel industry workers saying the newly-announced wage board will be benefiting only a small number out of the 3.6 million workers of the ready made garment industry.
They observed that the recent salary hike, where the minimum pay for workers have been raised to BDT 8,000 from the previous BDT 5,300, is applicable only for the workers in the seventh grade, which includes only 5 per cent of the total workforce.
However, there has been a long demand for BDT 16,000 as the minimum wage for the workers.
The labour leaders have demanded that the government raise the basic pay of workers by 70 per cent from 32 per cent that was raised in the recent wage board hike. The basic pay was raised to BDT 4,100 from BDT 3,100 (last fixed in 2013).
The observations were made at a round table discussion titled “RMG workers’ wage revision: Reality and way forward” organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) at The Daily Star Centre in Dhaka on October 2, 2018.
Only 5 per cent of the workers belong to the seventh grade, meaning that a majority of them are serving as operators and senior operators in the other grades, said Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garment Workers Federation. “So the pay structure needs to be reviewed.”
Over 80 per cent of garment workers are operators, said Kamrul Ahsan, president of Jatiya Sramik Federation, another trade union. “So, the salaries of those workers also need to be increased,” he said in the roundtable.
Salahuddin Swapan, secretary general of the IndustriALL Bangladesh Council, said the labour law stipulates that the basic pay doubles in every wage revision but it clearly did not happen in this case. He blamed the deviation on the government.
Sirajul Islam Rony, a union leader, said though there was still scope for bargaining to increase the salary, although it required unity among union leaders to make it happen.
The concept of a national minimum wage cannot be established in the country for a lack of legal measures, said Chowdhury Ashiqul Alam, general secretary to Bangladesh Trade Union Sangha. Garment buyers should keep workers in mind while settling prices and make sure that factory owners deliver this additional amount to workers, he said.
Khondaker Golam Moazzem, research director of independent think tank Centre for Policy Dialogue, reasoned why they proposed Tk 10,028 as minimum monthly salary, which was way below the union leaders’ demand for Tk 16,000. Both were rejected by the government.
Assistant Professor Mostafiz Ahmed of Jagannath University said the minimum wage was fixed keeping in mind the number of family members, general wage of the country, living costs, social security benefits, living standards of other social groups, productivity and prices of products.
Ahmed presented a keynote paper at the event, chaired by Mojibur Rahman Bhuiyan, vice-chairman of the BILS.