Every year, international brands and retailers import billions of dollars worth of readymade garments from Bangladesh. But, the workers, who make those products, do not get even get 1% as wage of the retail price.
Labour leader Kalpana Akter at a roundtable on Compact Sustainability held at a local hotel said the workers don’t get proper wages and due to that their living standard is poor.
Citing example of his own life, Akter said she along with a Rana Plaza victim had an opportunity to visit the United States.
When they went to a cloth store, the worker was interested to know the price of Bangladesh-made jeans as she sewed such product in the country.
Kalpana told her that a Bangladesh-made jeans was selling at $75 or over Tk5000.
The workers expressed her surprised as she sewed hundreds of such jeans in her factory, but did not get even 1% of the retail price as wage.
“It is really high time for the brands to pay more,” Kalpana said.
General Secretary of Bangladesh Trade Union Wazedul Islam Khan said if the foreign buyers increased unit price by 10 cents, the workers would be benefitted as due to that it would be possible to hike the wage rate.
“We observed that the cheap labour is the main content of the buyers,” he said.
Institute of Business Administration Professor Farhat Anwar said fair trade should be looked at from value chain perspective.
If the buyers ask producers to cut price, which is happening on a regular basis, it would be resulted in a price war and ultimately has negative impact on wages.
“Whether it is European Union or the United States of America, I can bet, today there are factories in Bangladesh, which perform better than many factories across the globe. Have we talked about that? The answer is big no,” he said.
He said Bangladesh has set examples and those factory owners should be identified to know their success stories so that it could be circulated in the world.
In the last fiscal year, Bangladesh exported $32 billion worth of RMG products and has a target to reach at $50 billion level by 2021.