The recent move made by the US administration to revoke GSP privileges for Bangladesh strikes us as hypocritical and extremely unlikely to have any positive impact on workers in our nation.
We would argue that this decision by the US administration is not reacting to the Rana Plaza tragedy, but rather giving in to pressure from AFL-CIO, the powerful American labour lobby, which has been petitioning for such a move since 2007 – leading to the logical inference that the AFL-CIO has cynically taken advantage of the tragedy in Savar to push through its agenda, which has nothing to do with protecting Bangladeshi workers.
It is also a touch absurd to see the US championing unions and unionisation in Bangladesh, given their own long-standing efforts to roll back unions in their own country. Indeed, its largest employer, Walmart, does not have a unionised work-force, and the country’s hostility to unions has been a cornerstone of its economic model for the past 30 years.
We abhor the greed and apathy that led to the Rana Plaza disaster, but we think that taking away GSP privileges will be counter-productive.
As GSP benefits did not extend to the garment industry, there is no impetus for garment factory owners to do anything differently, they have also taken away the leverage they would have had through the promise of the extension of benefits if the garment industry was able to meet international labour standards.
Instead, the move will punish non-garment export industries, making them less competitive and possibly pushing more workers into unemployment as demand for their products decreases.
The other major effect this retraction of privileges will have is that Bangladesh will become less attractive to foreign investors, and others, such as the EU may be brow-beaten into following the US in taking away privileges – something the workers can ill-afford.