Dearth of helping hands may be a sign of progress
Saturday, 24 April 2010
Ameer Hamza
There seems to be a real crisis on the home-front --- of ordinary folk mostly ---- on account of the RMG sector. Almost all potential housemaids these days would rather work in a factory, and be 'free', even though it gives no food and board. No point in slogging away in other people's homes and get treated virtually like slaves, some of them were heard saying. Bad news for the average housewife in Bangladesh, stressed-out as she is with the daily demands of family life and the culture of non-cooperation ---- mostly from male members of the household ---- with respect to sharing the drudgery.
Enlightened people of course would agree that these garment girls' 'no' to home jobs is a sure sign of social progress. At least it is making us more humane, they say, and we are not taking maids for granted anymore. Some are even beginning to apply the classic labour principle of 'eight hours for work, eight for sleep and eight to do as you will,' to their obliging hands. This principle, mark you, was achieved for industrial labour, after a hard and tragic struggle, over a hundred years ago in the pioneering West.
Much has changed since then, with the International Labour Organisation seeking to establish universally applicable labour rules, regulations and laws that signatories, which include Bangladesh, are obliged to follow. But the reality on the ground is not always ideal. Needless to say, nothing as yet applies to homeworkers, save the whims and caprices of the 'shahebs' and 'memshahebs.' This callous culture has to go, and must be replaced by the constitutionally upheld human dignity of all citizens. High time we started becoming civilized, invested in proper training of domestic labour and gave them the value they deserve.
In the industrial front too there is a lot of room for improvement. Tensions between labour and management seem to be a perpetual affair, not necessarily on account of labour law violations by the latter, although in quite a number of upcoming enterprises that have no trade unions, workers are said to get short shrift. The sad fact of any poor labour force ----- and Bangladesh boasts of the world's cheapest labour ---- is that they are always vulnerable to some illegal exploitation, no matter where they are, if an ethics-bound mechanism is missing from the work place. Too many trade union leaders over the past four decades, in fact, had turned out to be outright opportunists who often co-opted labour issues to climb the social and political ladder --- satisfying their own acquisitive egos first and foremost, and contributing little or nothing to the productivity and welfare of the workers, on which the economic viability of the industry depends. One has only to recall the circumstances which had led to the demise of the once admirable Adamjee Jute Mills ---- from the time of its inception to its ill-conceived euthanasia ---- to understand the workings of the canker at the heart of otherwise worthy enterprises.
There seems to be a real crisis on the home-front --- of ordinary folk mostly ---- on account of the RMG sector. Almost all potential housemaids these days would rather work in a factory, and be 'free', even though it gives no food and board. No point in slogging away in other people's homes and get treated virtually like slaves, some of them were heard saying. Bad news for the average housewife in Bangladesh, stressed-out as she is with the daily demands of family life and the culture of non-cooperation ---- mostly from male members of the household ---- with respect to sharing the drudgery.
Enlightened people of course would agree that these garment girls' 'no' to home jobs is a sure sign of social progress. At least it is making us more humane, they say, and we are not taking maids for granted anymore. Some are even beginning to apply the classic labour principle of 'eight hours for work, eight for sleep and eight to do as you will,' to their obliging hands. This principle, mark you, was achieved for industrial labour, after a hard and tragic struggle, over a hundred years ago in the pioneering West.
Much has changed since then, with the International Labour Organisation seeking to establish universally applicable labour rules, regulations and laws that signatories, which include Bangladesh, are obliged to follow. But the reality on the ground is not always ideal. Needless to say, nothing as yet applies to homeworkers, save the whims and caprices of the 'shahebs' and 'memshahebs.' This callous culture has to go, and must be replaced by the constitutionally upheld human dignity of all citizens. High time we started becoming civilized, invested in proper training of domestic labour and gave them the value they deserve.
In the industrial front too there is a lot of room for improvement. Tensions between labour and management seem to be a perpetual affair, not necessarily on account of labour law violations by the latter, although in quite a number of upcoming enterprises that have no trade unions, workers are said to get short shrift. The sad fact of any poor labour force ----- and Bangladesh boasts of the world's cheapest labour ---- is that they are always vulnerable to some illegal exploitation, no matter where they are, if an ethics-bound mechanism is missing from the work place. Too many trade union leaders over the past four decades, in fact, had turned out to be outright opportunists who often co-opted labour issues to climb the social and political ladder --- satisfying their own acquisitive egos first and foremost, and contributing little or nothing to the productivity and welfare of the workers, on which the economic viability of the industry depends. One has only to recall the circumstances which had led to the demise of the once admirable Adamjee Jute Mills ---- from the time of its inception to its ill-conceived euthanasia ---- to understand the workings of the canker at the heart of otherwise worthy enterprises.