The evolving politics of labor standards in Bangladesh: taking stock and looking forward

This chapter provides a brief history of three or more decades of national and international efforts to improve labor standards for the workers in the garment industry. It concludes by looking forward to what could be done in the future. The author draws on her own research in this field to structure the wider literature on this topic. This chapter argues that any account of achievements and failures in relation to these efforts has to be embedded in the wider context in which the Bangladesh industry emerged and grew because this helps us to understand why its working conditions continue to fall short of international conventions and national regulations. While it faces the difficulties faced by any underdeveloped country with a limited history of industrialization and an industrial working class, Bangladesh has featured particularly prominently in international efforts to promote labour standards in global value chains in the garment sector. It can therefore provide an important case study of the challenges encountered by these efforts when the apparent protectionism of powerful global actors encounter the apparent intransigence of locally powerful actors.