Thread by @InsightOfDay

@Guardian frontpage article today implies that sourcing clothes from Bangladeshi factories is morally wrong. theguardian.com/world/2019/jan…. This is a deeply problematic. These factories give income to millions of poor people. I worked for years with these factories. Long THREAD 1/37

Background: Bangladesh is second largest garment exporter in the world, after China. Ca. 4000 factories produce for export, with 4M workers, ca. 3M female. Factories vary from damp poorly lit shacks with few dozen workers to vast modern complexes with 10,000s workers. 2/37

Every major clothing brand in the world sources garments there, from exactly the kind of factories described in the article. If you are outraged over the Spice Girls from this article, you need to be outraged over EVERY large Western cloth retailer. But should you? 3/37

In a sector this vast, there are black sheep. But the factories that dominate the business work within the country’s legal framework. I know the factory mentioned in this article. It is a very typical factory for the country. It is visible, prominent, representative. 4/37

40 years ago, Bangladesh was desperately poor, ravaged by floods, famines, war. Kissinger’s famous “Basket Case”. These days it is a lower middle income country, successfully providing almost universal schooling, bringing down child and maternal death rates, and birth rates. 5/37

Its among the 10 countries with the best improvement in the Human Dev Index ’90-’17, and seven countries with best improvement of the HDI ’10-17 (hdr.undp.org/en/composite/t…) What happened? Two things, which I argue go hand in hand: 6/37

1. It’s fantastic local NGO sector (BRAC, Grameen), bringing schooling, health care, communication technology, financial services, and much more to all corners of the country. But let me focus on Nbr. 2: The rapid growth of the garment export sector. Some more background 7/37

Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world, except for a few city states. It is the 8th most populous country in the world with ca 170Mio people. Until now, the large majority of these people live in the countryside in poverty. 8/37

Famines (the last 1973) or devastating hurricanes (1970, 1991) killed 100.000s at a time. Recurring monsoon flooding and seasonal famines (Mongas) bring regular death and misery especially to poor rural populations until now. 9/37

Women bore the brunt of this poverty. Less access to schooling, forced marriage in early teenage years, and subsequent pregnancies without reproductive autonomy, high maternal mortality rates. Widowhood often meant expulsion from husband’s family and abject poverty. 10/37

Is this particular to Bangladesh? NO. All societies in the world were like this before the onset of modern economic development. 250 years ago Europe and North American were still like this, 150 years ago Japan, 100 years ago S.Korea. 11/37

Only sustained economic growth over the last centuries made them “developed” as they are now. How did sustained growth happened in all “success” cases (West, Japan, S.Korea…)? Industrialisation. How did industrialisation look 200 years ago in England,... 12/37

... 150 y.ago in US/Japan, 50 y.ago in S.Korea? Like garment factories in Bangladesh today. Bangladesh is on the same path as UK/US/JAPAN/KOREA, but only starting now. One can argue that the hardships of workers during this industrialisation is not worth it. 13/37

I do not have a better answer except for saying that it is the only path to build “developed” societies that has worked reliably again and again. Empirically, it seems that any nation must go through such a phase if it later wants to become “developed”. 14/37

Also, the garment sector has motivated thousands bright young Bangladeshis to study (industrial) engineering. They will expand the country’s economy into more advanced sectors soon, following the lead of S.Korea, China, Hong Kong… (or my native Swabia). 15/37

This was part 1, background and big picture. Why what we see in Bangladesh is common for any country embarking on a development path. I now like to discuss a few of the concrete points made in the article: 16/37

The article is silent on this, but the wages of the workers seem in line with the country’s minimum wage law for garment factories (the sector is so important to the country that it has its own minimum wage law). In fact, the law stipulates 7 different minimum wage levels,..17/37

..from inexperienced workers, to machine operators, to skilled operators, and up to production line managers. The minimum wage is defined for monthly pay, 6-day weeks, 8 hour days. Overtime beyond 8 hours/day has to be paid at 150% the implied hourly min.wage. 18/37

The wage level mentioned in the article (8.800Tk) is in line with the minimum wage for the lowest machine operator minimum wage level (the second lowest overall). The 8.800 are higher than this as it most probably includes overtime pay. 19/37

The first point here is that this wage level is an absolutely standard and legal wage in garment factories in Bangladesh. Millions of workers working for any Western brand sourcing in Bangladesh will get the same wages. One may argue that the legality of the wage ... 20/37

does not make it moral. That it is still exploitative. But what is an exploitative wage, if not all wages in the world are exploitative? Which share of people in any country feel that their wage allows them full participation in society, free of financial worries? 21/37

And the minimum wage, which is broadly enforced in the sector, partly because foreign brands do not like their partner factories be caught and exposed paying illegally low wages (again => black sheep exist), has been risen rapidly over recent years. 22/37

For example, since 2010, the lowest of the 7 min.wage levels has risen from 3,000 to 8,000Tk. Sure, factory owners complain, but the wage increase is largely followed, while employment still grows. Total headline inflation was 75% over this time. worlddata.info/asia/banglades… 23/37

Ultimately, though, these wages are so low as it allows factories to compete with factories in China, Vietnam, Turkey, etc… Garment factories there pay higher wages because they have better machinery, more educated workers, etc… they produce more per worker. 24/37

Factories in Bangladesh cannot yet afford these machines. They do not make large margins due to fierce international competition. There cannot be Bangladeshi garment factories with Western wages (or 4-5 times the current levels, as demanded in the article). 25/37

I often hear calls for boycotts of Banglad'i garment factories. But workers in these factories have no better alternatives for work. Boycotts would only push them to jobs they perceive as worse: construction, transport, land labor, maids, with even worse working conditions 26/37

And recent research by @mushfiqmobarak and @rachelmheath has shown that the garment sector has positive long term effects. As many young women find work in garment factories, and send money back to their villages, parents marry their daughters off less when they are young.27/37

blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluati… As minimum age of 18 years is reasonably well enforced, parents keep girls in schools so that they can then work in the sector. A massive positive side effect.
28/37

Is there a gender pay gap in the sector? Research by me and C.Woodruff, R.Macchiavello, and A.Rabbani shows less than 2% for men and women doing the same job. But male workers are on average on better paid positions, even when they started out on same entry level positions.29/37

Particular they get more often promoted from workers to supervisors. Why? Mostly social norms that dictate that men are better leaders. But slowly more women enter supervisory roles in the factories (check my homepage for more details on the research). 30/37

On other problems the article mentions: 1)Forced overtime: Workers work in assembly lines, as traditional industry does/did in the West. This work does not allow for individual decisions on whether to take overtime. In any assembly line in the world, if management decides..31/37

..that the line has to run longer to meet order deadlines, workers are “forced” to do the overtime. It was little different for my father in Germany. 32/37

2) Verbal Abuse: Obviously, every instance of verbal abuse is reprehensible. But again, is there a sector in the world, including the West, where verbal abuse is not happening? One may argue that this should not prevent Guardian from reporting about it. Fair point. 33/37

But the article does implicate that these are uniquely features of garment factories in Bangladesh, which I argue it is not. Certainly it is a common feature of any work sector in Bangladesh, at least any that employs lower class people. 34/37

In the end, the sector mirrors the environment in which it emerged, characterised by poverty, desperation, very low education levels, and power relations learned from centuries of foreign and colonial rulers. It is not a freak sector ravaging a previously pristine society. 35/37

Possibly we best we can do if we want to help is to support the many NGOs that work hand in hand with garment factories to improve the lives of their workers, such as @giz_gmbh, @SNVworld, @BRACworld, @BSRnews, Phulki and many others. @murphy_simon #Bangladesh #RMG 36/37

Closing remarks 1. I have discussed some problems Bangladesh has &had. I sincerely hope I have not offended any of the many fantastic Bangladeshis I met, including from its garment sector. Your culture is rich, your civil society enviable, and the development of BD remarkable.37

Closing remarks 2. As an academic, I would have liked to include more sources. But with the limitations of twitter, it would have made this already burgeoning thread impossibly long. Please respond or DM for sources. /end