Building Decent Workplaces for Women and Informal Workers in the Garment Sector

Lead Partner: Women Working Worldwide
Project Partners: Homeworkers Worldwide, READ (Bangladesh), LECAWU (Lesotho)
Project Location: Bangladesh, Lesotho

Project Description

The purpose of this project is to achieve improvements in key decent work areas for formal and informal garment workers. This is expected to be achieved by promoting and strengthening social dialogue in Lesotho, India, and some work in Bangladesh.  The focus of the project is on women (who make up a majority of the workforce, but are often not in a position to represent their concerns in workplace dialogue) and informal workers (who are often not visible in the supply chain and consequently suffer a lack of social protection and serious rights abuses).  The emphasis will therefore be to ensure that these groups are empowered to take leadership roles in building decent workplaces.

The main activities in support of this project are training of workers in their labour rights in order to build awareness and act as a stimulus to organizing; research into conditions at the factories and workers’ priorities for building decent workplaces; mapping the location of homeworkers; and, assessing the impact of productivity programmes and the efficacy of codes of conduct on working conditions.  This information will be shared in negotiations with employers, retailers and other key stakeholders in order to effect key changes in policy and practice.

The project is expected to be implemented in 10 factories employing over 10,000 workers (the majority of which are female) in Lesotho and will engage 2,000 home/informal workers in India. Productivity enhancement work will also be conducted in Bangladeshi garment manufacturing factories.

In Bangladesh (in locations to be determined), research on workers in the factory sites of two ETI retailer-led productivity programmes will be expected to provide an independent monitoring of the impact on wages as well as other decent work indicators. WWW will link with a Bangladeshi NGO to undertake this work, the findings of which will be shared with the ETI.

The expected project benefits include:

• over 3,000 workers (majority women) are aware of their labour rights and technical issues impacting the decent work agenda
• home/informal workers are aware of their entitlements under ILO conventions and ETI Base Code
• trained workers join unions or self help groups and negotiate for improved working conditions through collective bargaining agreements and bilateral negotiations
• women's increased unionization and representation in TU leadership roles will ensure the incorporation of gender clauses in collective bargaining
• in India, informal workers are recognised as workers and gain access to social protection through the Manual Workers Welfare Board
• industrial stakeholders including employers and UK retailers are made aware of workers' priorities for building decent workplaces and the impact of retailers’ productivity programmes on wages and other decent work areas
• the capacity of workers' organisations to engage with UK and global retailers sitting on ETI is strengthened
• lobbying activities targeted at UK and global brands and retailers sitting on ETI bring about changes in company practices and effective responses to the demands developed by workers during the research process