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Describe and analyze the economic realities of low-income and marginalized individuals, households, and communities to inform the policies, decisions, and practices of policy-makers, private sector entities, multilateral and bilateral organizations, NGOs, and low-income and marginalized people themselves.

Lobbying Activity

Response to Effectively banning products produced, extracted or harvested with forced labour

20 Jun 2022

The attached report focuses on the increase in the share of workers working more than the work hours legal limit under Bangladesh’s 2006 labor law, and examines whether workers have a choice in working those extra hours. The report draws on data collected through the Garment Worker Diaries (GWD) initiative, which has collected data every week from a sample of workers employed in the RMG sector in Bangladesh since January 2019 (with a short break in February and March 2020). What we find is the following: • The share of workers working excess hours has been increasing steadily since August 2020 • For the first time since the pandemic began, more than 50% of workers (50% of women and 53% of men) reported working excess hours in December 2021. The share dipped very slightly below 50% in January 2022 but remained above 50% for February and March. • Over two-thirds of workers (69%) report that they have no choice in whether they work overtime or not. About half of those who say they have no choice face a penalty if they do not work overtime when requested. • Workers’ perceptions of their ability to choose to work or not, and the potential penalties they face have consequences for the number of hours they work and the likelihood that they work excess hours. o In March 2022, 60% of workers who said they had no choice about working overtime and faced a penalty if they did not work overtime worked excess hours, whereas 49% of workers who said they had a choice to work overtime and faced no penalty if they refused to do so worked excess hours. These data suggest that there is a forced labour problem in the RMG sector in Bangladesh, made worse by the fact that workers struggle to make ends meet if they only work regular hours (48 hours per week).
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