The garment export sector is one of the largest employers of women in Bangladesh, particularly women from poor households with little (if any) education. The emergence of home-based work for Bangladesh's garment export sector is an example of the latter. Domestic workers in the export garment sector (HBGW) provide labor for the final tasks in the garment production process at the lowest end of the value chain, but there is almost no systematic information on the size of this labor force or the conditions of their work and livelihoods.
One of the associations in Badda also has a clear mandate to mobilize home-based workers around rights (the reasons for which are discussed in section 7). Through agent Salma, women in Badda and Bonosree are members of the same association and pay membership fees (Tk.105). More than half of women (15) feel that their workload has increased especially during peak seasons.
As all the respondents are employed in the export garment sector, we asked the respondents why they do not work in a garment factory and whether they prefer a factory or at home.
Position of HBGWs in the supply chain
If a garment requires hand stitching and embroidery, the garment factory decides how this work will be completed; buyers are not involved in decisions about who does the work or where. The process of outsourcing a particular task can be initiated by the shop floor managers or by the contractors and their agents. In the first case, shop floor managers will contact known contractors or agents who in some cases may have been former employees at the factory or family members or acquaintances.
An agent is selected by examining their sample products, and usually the entire order is placed with one agent, although the same factory may work with several agents for different tasks. The contracted agent can either distribute the work to women if she/he has a direct network, or he/she can outsource this to another agent who has his/her own network. According to the merchant we interviewed, the factory pays tk.30 to the factory for one task, the factory subcontracts the work to an agent for tk.15-20, and the agent pays the women's lump sum of DKK 10.
Subcontracted work is usually done by women in their own homes, but it can also be done in a designated area in a factory or in a designated area rented by an agent in a factory. These are most likely to be the less compliant factories (category B)14, which are also unlikely to be able to provide space in the factory for women to do this work. Therefore, it seems that the provision of factory space for women to carry out finishing work must be very limited.
13 We have heard of one factory in Banasree having a space within the factory compound where there are several women.
Profile and Role of Agents
Agents need both contacts with garment factories and home workers, as well as the necessary beautification skills, which must then be taught by the women who provide them with work. Agents' work involves approaching various garment factories, gaining access to a manager, supervisor or shopkeeper (usually by paying a small sum of money to the factory guard for "tea") to obtain a sample. When he gets an order, he has to sign a contract, count the number of pieces of clothing and take them to the community.
When the order is completed, the agent must take it back to the factory for cleaning and ironing. If the orders are large, the agent may have to bring the order in batches and therefore visit the factory several times. As we saw earlier, the level of awareness among HBGW of their rights is uneven across locations, depending on who provides the work, ie. agents associated with the labor movement or other agents.
However, unionized agents must strike a balance between maintaining good relations with factory management (i.e. those higher up the supply chain) while remaining in solidarity with the women they outsource. The officers also appear to act as role models for HBGWS, some of whom aspire to become officers in the near future. The other category of agents are those who have no direct link with garment factories, but who have experience in outsourcing work for the local market or are known to factory management, and have no organizational ties.
Agents who currently, or in the past, have ties to unions appear to be caught.
Mobilizing and organizing
28 According to Omar Farooque, OSHE, there are no home workers who provide labor for the export garment sector. So, even if several women work together in a common space, it will not be considered home work. And clearly, the first step in organizing and mobilizing HBWs is to reach a consensus on who are home workers.
Efforts to mobilize HBWs were on a general basis and were not specifically targeted at home-based garment workers. One of the first attempts to organize home workers was by the Bangladesh Home-worker Women's Association (BHWA). To increase the visibility of homeworkers, BHWA, with the support of the ILO, conducted a survey in 1993 and created a database for the different types of products and the different locations that specialize in these products.
The BHWA has also unsuccessfully advocated for a national policy on domestic workers, with the support of international agencies such as the ILO and the regional association HNSA. Over the years, BHWA has provided skills training, rights awareness training16, health and safety training for home workers and established a membership network of local organizations working with women producers of handicrafts, embroidery, etc. Despite the initial work done by the BHWA this was the first attempt to organize domestic workers around the issues of recognizing them as workers and thereby, recognizing their rights.
This recognition was critical in changing not only the mindset of officials, but also the perspective of home workers themselves and their families.
Role of Trade Unions in organizing HBGW
As a result, there is no specific fund in union budgets dedicated to organizing HBWs. At the same time, there is a growing need to organize workers in the informal sector as their numbers are growing rapidly. As major contributors to the garment sector, HBGWs should fall under the purview of the unions that work with garment workers.
There is no precisely identifiable “employer” of HBGWs as they receive work after exchanging many hands, which raises the question of who should be held responsible for ensuring their rights. In addition, there are problems in finding, identifying and organizing the dispersed population working from their home, making them aware of the need to organize, which takes time, or even the fact that they do not receive a reward of right, and facing opposition from family members. In addition, they also mentioned that NGOs such as OSHE working with HBWs face strong competition for limited funding.
The experience of one of the agents, who was a former union member, highlights the limitations of unions on the ground level. To circumvent the problem of non-allocation of funds to mobilize home-based workers, she was instructed to retain a commission from the training grant offered to these workers. Even in the cases where she helped collect the garment factory workers' wages from her employer, she was provided no financial incentive or compensation for the costs involved and was asked to retain a commission from their wages.
Her membership in the federation also posed an obstacle to entering garment factories as an agent.
Discussion and conclusion
32 is defined as 'fully dependent' along a "continuum of dependency, from being completely independent to being fully dependent on the contractor/middleman for design, raw material and equipment and being unable to price the product negotiable" (Unni and Rani 2004 cited in Sudarshan and Sinha 2011). However, women involved in subcontracted work for export garment factories are not an exclusive group: the same woman will be involved in two or more types of domestic work to be employed throughout the year. While location or place of work characterizes the home-based worker, it is difficult to make a sharp distinction between contractual and self-.
However, since there is a limit to the amount of home-based work available relative to the number of women seeking such work, they are in a relatively weak bargaining position. Also on the part of organizations and unions, there are significant limitations to organizing HBGWs both internally, related to recognition and resources, as well as at the macro-political level, where especially HBWs and HBGWs remain invisible. There is a 3-tier supply chain, which is primarily female, from factory to agent to workers in their homes.
Agents are generally women from the same community as the home-based workers who provide the work for a small commission (although this can vary from agent to agent). As this group of home-based workers constitutes a particularly vulnerable segment of the labor force, they must be identified as workers. Making Home Based Work Visible: A Review of Evidence from South Asia, WIEGO Working Paper (Urban Policies) No.
Study on Home Workers in Three Cities of Dhaka Division, Bangladesh, report prepared by development consultant and Global Compliance Initiative Dhaka for HomeNet South Asia.
