13 March, 2025This coming Monday, the ILO Governing Body will discuss the latest progress report submitted by the Government of Bangladesh on the implementation of the Roadmap which the government drafted following a complaint made to the ILO in 2019 on the non-observance of Conventions 81, 87 and 98. Yet again, the progress report focuses heavily on statistics that do not necessarily reflect positive changes in the country vis-à-vis labour rights.
The Roadmap prioritises four areas for intervention namely: (i) labour law reforms, (ii) trade union registration, (iii) labour inspection and enforcement, (iv) addressing acts of anti-union discrimination/unfair labour practices and violence against workers. The Government of Bangladesh (GoB) is required to report to ILO twice every year on the progress of the work undertaken regarding the four pillars.
The latest GoB report, dated 17 February 2025, mentions that the amendments to the Bangladesh Labour Act would be finalised by March 2025, however this seems unlikely.
IndustriALL affiliates have consistently pointed out that many of their recommendations, have not been considered so far. The GoB report also mentions the 18-point tripartite agreement which was signed in September last year to address workers’ concerns, heralding it as a major achievement; however, affiliates are concerned that the implementation of the agreement have not been uniform across different industrial areas.
Regarding the government’s commitment to make the trade union registration process easier, IndustriALL affiliates indicate that contrary to the claims in the GoB report, the process of offline application system is not parallel to the online system. After submitting the online application, it is mandatory to submit the hard copy of the application within three days, failing which the online application needs to be resubmitted.
Furthermore, often the applications take longer to process than the legally mandated 55 days. The GoB report also claims that from July 2020 to December 2024- 46,000 individuals including workers have received training on the registration process but IndustriALL affiliates which represent more than 80 per cent of the readymade garment workers in the country remain largely unaware of such trainings.
The GoB report mentions that a total of 15,576 inspections were carried out from July to December 2024. This indicates that about 85 inspections were carried out every day during the period. The number of inspections is highly questionable especially considering the number of labour inspectors available, which is 441 according to the report and the kind of work that needs to be done before and after an inspection. Regarding the action point on elimination of case backlogs at labour courts,
IndustriALL affiliates state that labour courts continue to operate without adequate number of judges and prosecutors and that it was pointless to establish new courts in areas with fewer factories compared to other industrial areas in the country.
Regarding the action point on addressing anti-union discrimination, unfair labour practices and violence against workers the government’s entire focus appears to be on training programmes, the outcomes of which are not mentioned anywhere in the report. Moreover, while designing the curriculum of these training programmes, no consultation was done with trade unions.
Atle Høie, general secretary of IndustriALL, says:
“IndustriALL urges the interim government of Bangladesh to implement all aspects of the Roadmap in consultation with IndustriALL affiliates.”
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