Vulnerability of garment workers, who underwent a significant pay cut during the last coronavirus lockdown months, multiplied in Bangladesh due to the pandemic, according to a latest report.
The report styled 'The Weakest Link in the Global Supply Chain: How the Pandemic is Affecting Bangladesh's Garment Workers' revealed this on Thursday.
It suggested that the government strengthen social protection mechanisms and provide resources through well-designed furlough regulations so that workers' wages are not reduced during a crisis.
Global brands should ensure that their actions do not squeeze their suppliers and they should use their resources and leverage to ensure liquidity for suppliers, it further proposed.
The report found none of the brands interviewed made direct financial contributions to either the suppliers (beyond their contractual obligations) or to the suppliers' employees.
The Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, UC Berkeley, in collaboration with the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB), with support from UNDP Bangladesh and the government of Sweden, virtually launched the report.
The report was drawn from in-depth interviews from October 2020 to February 2021 with senior executives from international brands, Bangladeshi suppliers, representatives of international civil society and Bangladeshi labour activists.
It sought changes to policies and practices that can lead to long-term changes to benefit global retailers, suppliers and ultimately workers themselves.
"While the industry suffered from closure of markets, suspended shipments, delayed payments and a liquidity crisis, Bangladeshi workers suffered what was in effect a 35-per cent pay cut during the lockdown month."
Thousands of workers lost jobs and depleted their savings without having a safety net to fall back on, the report mentioned.
As Bangladesh's second lockdown is underway, the findings of the study offer a cautionary tale on how brands and supply chains should respond.
The report said 72 per cent of furloughed workers were sent home without pay while 98 per cent of buyers -- many of them big global clients -- refused to contribute to the cost of partial wages for furloughed employees.
"The result of being paid extremely low wages meant that these workers had no savings to cover expenses while they waited for factories to reopen and government stimulus payments to be disbursed."
"This had adverse effects on several human rights -- food, health, housing, even life," the report added.
Workers faced critical challenges to their mental health and overall emotional wellbeing, it said, citing another study that revealed 82-per cent workers felt afraid that something awful might happen.
Some 71 per cent said they felt down, depressed or hopeless, the report said.
Garment workers overall and female workers in particular were worse off in terms of mental health scores, compared to their male counterparts.
The report suggested that suppliers, who bear direct responsibility for workers' well-being, ensure safe working conditions and wage disbursement.
Local unions and labour rights advocates should remain vigilant about the adherence to standards and work with their members to ensure that they comply with new standards and minimise disruption.
The report called on international organisations to consider new initiatives in three areas -- empowerment of workers, cooperation with suppliers to negotiate as equal partners with major brands and facilitation of dialogue between brands and local unions.
"The pandemic has revealed the vulnerabilities of many groups, and Bangladesh's workers in the RMG sector bore the disproportionate burden," said Salil Tripathi, IHRB's senior adviser (global issues) and the report's co-author.
While the scale of the pandemic took everyone by surprise, lessons must be learned from the experience so that the effect of Bangladesh's second lockdown, now underway, causes the least harm to those who suffered the most the last time, he noted.
