What?

In last week’s Garment Worker Diaries blog we promised further analysis of the types of factories in our study sample in Bangladesh. This week, we share that analysis with you by comparing brand-facing and non-brand facing factories.

The catalyst for performing this analysis was to see whether workers at two different types of factories in our study were faring as well as each other in terms of work hours, wages, health, and other metrics. We’ve defined elsewhere what brand-facing means, and we define it again for you in the blog.

What we discovered is that there are some statistically significant differences between what workers at each type of factory are telling us. We can’t yet be certain if the key difference is whether or not brands have a public, transparent relationship with one type of factory over another. But, that could certainly play a part.

We hope you’ll check out the full blog, and if you have any questions for us or the workers, please write to questions@workerdiaries.org

This week’s Garment Worker Diaries blog updates the project through the end of January 2021. In January, garment workers in Bangladesh worked more hours and made more money than in any other month since the COVID-19 pandemic began. And, these numbers largely track with the numbers we were seeing during this same time in 2019 and into 2020.

We realize this could imply that everything is going great for garment workers…we aren’t implying that. What we are saying is that the workers in our representative sample are as employed and earning as much money as they normally would. No one disputes that “as usual” is very far from ideal on a number of metrics (work hours, pay, illness, food insecurity, educational spending for children, and housing to name a few things we track).

Next week we are going to do our due diligence and zoom in on the factories in our study sample to see if there is any distinction in employment resiliency between those factories that are brand-facing and those that aren’t (we define brand-facing in this week’s blog). This will hopefully inform the current discussion about whether it is just “Tier 1” factories (think: larger with more money) that are managing to stay afloat compared to “Tier 2” and “Tier 3” factories (think: smaller with less money). It could be the case that workers in Tier 2 and 3 factories are not experiencing life as usual, and if that’s the case we need to find out.

We also hope you’ll check out our most recent #OpenDiaries post on Instagram. We asked garment workers what job benefits they wish they could demand, and how many of them have health insurance. And remember, you can always submit your own questions you’d like us to ask the workers. Just send an email to questions@workerdiaries.org to reach the workers.

Last week in our Garment Worker Diaries blog series we discussed how far parents working in the RMG sector would like to see their children’s education progress, and what types of barriers their children might face climbing the education ladder.

In Part 2 of our Educational Aspirations blog this week, we discuss the workers’ educational ambitions for themselves. Many garment workers (20%) would still like to continue their education all the way on to university, despite the fact that 82% of them don’t have a secondary school certificate. The possible barriers they think they might face on this journey are somewhat different to the perceived barriers their children might face, but the need for additional income and the cost of school still appear to be two of the bigger roadblocks.

We also hope you’ll check out our most recent #OpenDiaries post on Instagram. We asked garment workers what job benefits they wish they could demand, and how many of them have health insurance. And remember, you can always submit your own questions you’d like us to ask the workers. Just send an email to questions@workerdiaries.org to reach the workers.

In this week’s Garment Worker Diaries blog, we cover a subject our blog series hasn’t fully touched on yet: education.

We had so much to ask garment workers about the subject, and they had so much to tell us, that we’re splitting the blog up into two parts. Part #1 this week focuses on garment workers’ educational aspirations for their own children. Part #2 next week will focus on workers’ own hopes for themselves. We hope you’ll click through!

We’re also inviting you to join us next Thursday February 18th at 10am EST for Ethical New York Fashion Week. MFO’s project manager Dani Ortega will be speaking on a panel alongside Laudes Foundation and SANEM colleagues to discuss the true Supply Chain Heroes, who we all know are the workers. Tune in all week, and RSVP for our panel here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ethical-nyfw-supply-chain-heroes-tickets-138431559521

If there is anything in the blog that we did not cover and which you’d like to know about, please write us your thoughts at questions@workerdiaries.org. We can also pose questions directly to the workers themselves if there is anything specific you’d like more information about.