Far From Perfect: Bangladesh Quality Control and Social Compliance

Since the turn of the 21st century, Bangladesh’s annual economic growth has surfed at 6%. Despite its growth, Bangladesh clings to one tenth the FDI of Malaysia or Thailand. Experts believe the lack of FDI is partially attributed to recent PR scandals due to unsafe factory conditions.

In the last decade alone, industrial safety hazards within the garment district have left 330 Bangladeshi workers dead. The economic pressure of sourcing competition with neighboring powerhouses India and China forced Bangladeshi factory owners to make sacrifices. Often, one of these sacrifices included cutting costs of hazard prevention. As risk levels became irreversible, owners fled to avoid scandal and loss. However, many laborers remained to face the consequences of absent oversight. All seemed lost, that is, until activist groups pushed for the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in defense of workers’ rights in the Bangladeshi garment industry.

The MOU regulates the union-controlled brand sources throughout Bangladesh. The affected unions apply new safety conditions to factories identified as high-risk priorities. Some affected factories serve reputed brands including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. The agreement regulates well-known brands to operate factories at steady or increased levels as they upgrade their working conditions. This incentive allows the quality-inspected factories to maintain their competition with those lacking QC.

Unfortunately, the MOU policy focuses primarily on fire safety, rather than the wide array of problems that Bangladesh currently faces. Although this nation-wide movement is a positive sign of progress for Bangladesh quality control, it does not address the extensive range of quality control associated with garment factories. Child labor, forced labor, health, discrimination, working hours, compensation, and management are all factors that should be addressed.

What does this mean for you? As a buyer looking into importing from Bangladesh, it is important to ensure the quality of your factory source. After all, it is often expensive, timely, and disruptive to switch factories. In this age of increasing standards, media scandals, and conditional scrutiny, 3rd party auditing is a small price to pay compared to the alternative.