Who cares about workers’ safety in Bangladesh?

A few weeks ago I was in Bangladesh, and Jamil Ansari, who is the Joint ETI coordinator, kindly took me out for dinner.  We sat in a roof top restaurant, with a grand view of the end of the runway at Dhaka airport.  Jamil waved his fork at all the other buildings around - we were on the 11th floor - and said “all these structures are illegal, of course, including this restaurant.”

There are safety rules (quite sensible when you think about it) that say tall buildings should not be allowed near airports. But the developers in Bangladesh who put up these buildings - many were 15 stories high - somehow got round the rules.

You can imagine how.

Seen in this light, the widespread flaunting of the other rules about building safety which ended up in Rana Plaza is no surprise. I blogged about it at the time.

Centuries ago when what is now Bangladesh was part of the Mughal Empire, there was a saying “Dilli door hey”, which means “Delhi is far away”; the Emperor can pass a law in Delhi but we are not going to pay much attention to that here.

No doubt you are wondering where this treatise on Mughal history is headed.  The point is that finally, the Bangladesh Government has issued new rules providing details on implementation of the main Labour Act 2006, as amended in 2013, after Rana Plaza.

So if you are sourcing from Bangladesh, or concerned about workers’ safety and rights there, you might be wondering - will the rules make any difference?

They are what we would call secondary legislation in the UK, where the minister has used powers to make the Labor Rules 2015, as they are known. The rules run to 286 pages, in the English translation. What everybody has been waiting for are the sections on Participation Committees (PCs) and Safety Committees.

Taking PCs first, the rules re-emphasises the necessity of proper elections and lays down a procedure. They also state that the gender make-up of the elected worker members needs to reflect the gender composition of the workforce.

This will have a huge impact. In all the PC elections that I have observed, women workers, even when they stand, do not get elected in sufficient numbers.

Unfortunately, there has been no clarification about Section 6KA of the Bangladesh Labour Act. Because of the post Rana Plaza uproar, and the demand that trade unions be allowed in the garment industry, the government passed this gem:

If there is no trade union in any establishment, workers representatives in the participation committee shall conduct the activities related to workers interests till a trade union is formed in that establishment. 

You would be hard pushed to find a more meaningless clause in any law, anywhere in the world. How is this supposed to be enforced?  What authority would decide to launch a prosecution? Who would decide what constituted workers interests?

Any law has to be justiciable - capable of being settled by law or in a court.  Clearly this clause is not.  Its sole purpose is to pretend that the government cares about workers’ rights. 

The Committee that never barked

The most important section of the new rules deals with safety committees (section 85).  They were mentioned in just a single line in the 2013 Act and everyone has been waiting for the detail.

They will be joint committees of managers and workers. The worker members will be chosen by the trade union, if there is one. In most factories there is not, so worker members of the Participation Committees will be the electorate - there will not be direct election of the Safety Committees.

A schedule lists extensive functions including:

•           Risk assessment
•           Inspections
•           Planning fire drills, fire inspections
•           Planning the response to accidents
•           Organising training

Thinking of “Dilli door hey”, I particularly like the clause which says: The Safety Committee shall work at the establishment level with a view to implementing various policies and guidelines introduced by the National Industry Health and Safety Council, from time to time.

“Fair enough”, you might say, “that’s a good idea. Tell me more about the Council”

The 2006 Bangladesh Labour Act, Section 323, empowered the government to “constitute” such a council, which is supposed to “prepare national policy for ensuring safety in industrial establishments and maintaining healthy and hygienic conditions of work and atmosphere, [and] frame guidelines for implementation of its policy”

Nobody could argue that a National Council for Industrial Health and Safety was not  needed - the succession of fires and collapses in the garment industry; the awful tanneries; the notorious ship breaking yards of Chittagong - it’s a pretty long list of really dangerous unregulated industries in Bangladesh in desperate need of policy and guidelines.

So how many guidelines has it produced for Safety Committees to implement?

Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nulla.

The National Council for Industrial Health and Safety has not produced a single document.

How come?

In 2012, six years after the law was passed, the Government of Bangladesh announced the membership of the committee, with a mandate of two years.

Did it swing into action after six years of inactivity?

Guess what, the committee never met in those two years, and its term of office has come to an end.

So for nearly ten years after placing that provision on the statute book, the Government of Bangladesh has done exactly - nothing.

The next time you hear a minister from Bangladesh give a speech saying how they care about safety, just remember that.

The Safety Committee rules represent a huge advance - potentially.

But to make them meaningful will mean a huge effort by brands, the Accord, the Alliance and the ILO. Not only training, a huge task as there is hardly any tradition of safety training in the country, but developing the tools etc that committees will need.

Most important though, will be getting factories to really allow the worker members to carry out their functions.

In the UK, we have had safety committees since 1978. They have not made a huge difference, the real change has been safety representatives, appointed by trade unions and working for improvements every day. 

That's what we need to see in Bangladesh. Worker representatives taking up safety and health problems every day.  The law says that the committees need to meet "at least" once every three months. Which means in most factories they will only meet once every three months. That's just not often enough.

Companies sourcing from Bangladesh will need to be very vigilant to make sure that the potential of safety committees is realised.

Otherwise it’s another case of Dilli door hey.