We welcome the support being given by the Swedish government to a new ILO initiative to promote social dialogue and industrial relations in Bangladesh’s RMG industry.
The agreement between the governments of Bangladesh and Sweden with the ILO was signed at the UN in New York, in the presence of Bangladesh’s foreign minister and Sweden’s prime minister.
Planned to run for five years, the $5.4m project aims to enhance labour relations by developing and strengthening arbitration and conciliation mechanisms to improve dialogue between employers and workers at the work-place level, and to increase mutual trust and co-operation.
Special attention will be given to supporting women’s representation and economic empowerment, as women make up the vast majority of the estimated 4.2 million workers in the industry.
We are heartened to see growing co-operation between the government and industry associations with the ILO and worker organisations on efforts to improve worker representation.
Historically, this has not been an easy task as every industrial sector in Bangladesh has suffered from agitators and unions which are not representative of the workforce that have acted against workers’ long term interests by extorting chanda from factories.
It is encouraging then to see broad support to this new effort to enhance worker voice and improve social dialogue.
Initiatives which seek to build a system of mature industrial relations in which factory owners and employees work together constructively are in everybody’s interest.
Genuinely constructive efforts such as this initiative can help give more voice to workers and build long-term co-operation to benefit all stake-holders in the industry. They can also help further progress on improving worker rights and representation, which is needed to help restore GSP trade privileges with the United States.