Bangladesh living wage study: Project report, Factory D
The Fair Labor Association (FLA) recently completed a study in Bangladesh to examine strategies for suppliers and buyers to progressively implement living wages for workers.
In total, four factories and five FLA member companies participated in the project. Two of the factories are located in the Gazipur region, while the other two are based in the Chittagong Export Processing Zone. This report covers the collaboration between an FLA member (referred to throughout this report as the “participating buyer”) from one of four factories in Bangladesh that chose to participate in the project, and the project team. For the purposes of this report, the factory is called “Factory D.”
Across all four factories studied, the project team found that the average worker did not earn base wages that met the Global Living Wage Coalition’s estimates for a living wage in Bangladesh. Even with overtime, the average worker did not earn living wages, despite most workers logging excessive hours in an attempt to achieve them. Factory D, like two of the other three factories in this study, incorporated overtime into its regular production planning.
The factories started their lowest paid workers at the legal minimum wage, and provided higher wages as workers gained more skills and experience and moved between wage categories. However, workers interviewed by the project team across all factories reported dissatisfaction with the legal minimum wage, noting that it has been unable to keep pace with rising prices. In general, workers reported that their wages were too low to afford basic needs while also saving money for emergencies, and that most households required more than one earner to survive. Workers reported cutting back on food and housing costs to save money, often living in very poor conditions.
Specifically at Factory D, the project team found a mix of promising practices and opportunities for improvement. For example, Factory D was providing on-the-job training to help workers advance into higher-paid roles; conducting successful worker training on wages, benefits, and allowances; and engaging in positive buyer-supplier dialogue. At the same time, Factory D’s wage levels and reliance on overtime can impact workers’ quality of life. The project team recommended that Factory D engage in greater social dialogue with workers and the Participation Committee on ways to make progress on workers’ wages. The team recommended productivity incentives as one option for providing additional income opportunities for workers.
FLA encourages buyers to incorporate the real cost of labor into their pricing negotiations and to maintain long-term, collaborative supplier relationships to support investment in higher wages. Buyers’ sustainability and purchasing teams should collaborate to ensure that purchasing decisions align with buyers’ living-wage commitments, and buyers should collaborate with each other and with multi-stakeholder partners to increase their leverage with factories. Buyers should support suppliers’ worker engagement efforts and consider ways to provide financial support for productivity incentives. Find further recommendations for buyers in the conclusion section of this report.
In line with FLA’s supply chain transparency requirements, FLA member companies must make their Tier One factories public through a list on their website or other public platforms. FLA also historically discloses its members’ participation in living wage reports. However, the company featured in this report sources from a single factory in Bangladesh. To protect the factory’s anonymity, FLA has applied an exception to its usual disclosure requirement and anonymized the company as well. All living wage findings in the report related to the buyer are retained in full.