Labor Unrest in Ashulia Industrial Hub

Abstract

Bangladesh readymade garments (RMG) industry has qualified with exceptional growth since 1995, contributes 77% to the country’s net exports, which is more than 25% of GDP. Bangladesh has got 5,150 export-oriented RMG units and around 95% of the industry is located in 9 different districts, Ashulia is one of among them. Ashulia industrial belt has got more than 300 RMG factories and all these factories were closed from 11th June to 19nd June 2012 and loss is more than US $100 million. The annual RMG export is US $3.6 billion from Ashulia industrial belt, which is 16% of total exports from Bangladesh. Therefore, an attempt has been made to find out the causes, effects, centralized programs, remedial solutions and precautionary measures to avoid the labor unrest. The research tools used are questionnaire for laborers and interview schedule for factory management. The samples were taken randomly from twenty six laborers, ten managers, three coordinators and six Directors. This study divulges that employee unrest not only the less wages issue, but other primary causes such as union leaders and political leaders’ influence, non-garment workers involvement and the secondary reasons are less wages, imbalanced house rent, inflation and illiteracy. Concluding remarks, Government should suspend the function of trade unions outside the factories. Government and BGMEA have to fix the labor wages annually depend upon inflation fluctuation and to ensure that every factory gets nonpolitical labor representatives. Government, BGMEA and factory management should work together and urgently need to provide affordable accommodation for workers. As a result, influencing by outsiders can be condensed and avoid unrest.