 The type of today's webinar is the government industry in Bangladesh under COVID-19, lessons from the Rana Plaza disaster on how we understand worker safety. In our last webinar, we looked at the cross-country evidence of the impact of the pandemic on inequality. Today, we'll be taking a deep dive into one country, one sector, and one set of workers affected by the pandemic. More than any other sector, the ready-made government sector is among the most globalized in the global south. And more than any other country, Bangladesh has been at the forefront in the integration of global supply chains for ready-made governments worldwide. And it has been a success story when it comes to labor-intensive export-oriented acceleration among late-comer countries. And more than any other set of workers, women workers have been deeply engaged in Bangladesh's ready-made governments industry. And previous research has shown that they benefited greatly from this engagement. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic has had a disastrous effect on global trade, the ready-made government sector in particular and in Bangladesh has especially badly hit as consumer demand for apparel plummeted leading to global retailers cancelling orders and revising their sourcing strategies. To situate what is currently happening to the industry under this global pandemic, today's webinar will draw some lessons from an earlier crisis in Bangladesh, one of the worst industrial disasters the collapse of the Rada Plaza building in 2013. Today's webinar will focus specifically on the distorted notions of what constitutes safety for workers, primarily for women workers, which continue to perpetuate the cycle of labor violations for those at the very bottom of the global supply chain ready-made governments. We're very fortunate to have two distinguished speakers and a discussant who have been deeply engaged in the question of women workers, labor rights, especially in Bangladesh and ready-made governments. So let me introduce them in turn. The speaker is Sanjita Baleshatsena, who's the executive director of the Institute for South Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Subir and Marley Chaudhary Center for Balesh Studies in the same institute. She's also a lecturer of responsible business at the Haas School of Business at the UC University of California, Berkeley, and an author and editor of several books, articles, and commentaries. She has been a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Vincent International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and currently serves in the USA Advisory Council of the world-renowned NGO, BRAC. I also want to introduce the discussant Mahin Sultan. Mahin is a senior fellow of practice and one of the founders of the Center for Gender and Social Transformation, the BRAC Institute, BRAC University. He's a regional center for research, teaching, and policy related to gender and social transformation. She's a development practitioner with over 25 years of experience working for NGOs, donors, the United Nations, Ramin Bank, and the Bangladesh government in a range of capacities from direct program management to policy formulation. Mahin Sultan is also a member of NARIPOC, a Baladeshi Women's Activist Organization. At present, she's involved in research and movements of both the culture backlash against gender equality and the movement for women's labor rights. Very pleased to have Sanjita and Mahin speak to us in this webinar. Sanjita, over to you. Thank you so much, Kunal. It's wonderful to be here. Good morning. If you are in the West Coast or good afternoon or good evening, wherever you are. Thank you all for joining. Again, it's my pleasure to be here. So I just want to start by thinking about how we understand safety. What does safety actually mean? So safety is defined in the dictionary. Is the state of being safe? The condition of being protected from harm or other non-desirable outcomes? A place that is free from harm or danger, a safe place? So I wanted to ask all of you, do you think workers are now safer than they were prior to the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013? We're just going to launch a poll to take a minute to just answer the question. So it's a little bit tied now, a little more at no. We have a few more, a few more seconds. Okay, very interesting actually, it's almost a tie. So 52% said no and 48% said yes. Actually, that's quite interesting. I had expected a lot more, a larger percentage to say yes, because that's kind of commonly what we think when we think about safety, that workers are much safer now. So thank you for participating in that. So more than seven years after the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, if we look now, yes, issues related to fire, electrical and structural safety in hundreds of Bangladesh's factories certainly have improved from before. And according to the Bangladesh Accord website, 84% of factories under the Accord have corrected their outstanding structural issues. But just how safe are workers? So Kabir and all in a 2019 study, they find that in their survey, an overwhelming majority, about 95% said they felt safe working in their present factory. And 90% of workers could refuse to go into a building if they thought it was not safe. And that's really important, because as those of you who studied the Rana Plaza disaster, you know that that was one really important issue then that workers basically could not say that they felt unsafe and they were sort of forced to go into the building. The authors attribute much of this to the Accord and the Alliance and all the work that has been done on health and safety and they conclude that these initiatives really did set out to do, what they set out to do was accomplished. So they author side improvements in workers out what they call outcome standards, better factory safety conditions, relative job security and some improved social benefits and process rights mainly in the form of worker participation committees. What they do find, however, is that problems regarding wages, working hours, abuse and management rejection of unions really have not improved since 2013. And they conclude that workers, sorry, that factories actually are no longer characterized by what we used to think of as sweatshop conditions, but now what is more considered hardship conditions. And of course, we know the incidents of gender-based violence and sexual harassment has been rampant and it continues. It's gotten actually worse under COVID. This is a quote from an author who authored a chapter in an edited volume that I edited post-Rana Plaza, Professor Shonto Li-Huck who writes in her chapter, we must raise the questions. What purpose does this uncritical technocratic use of the word safe or safety serve? And whom does it benefit? This notion of safety as defined by the court as being the number of factories inspected allows for market promotion as part of corporate responsibility program rather than actual holistic health and safety from workers' perspectives or norms set by the ILO. So that's just with a quick backdrop. And as we sort of turn to the global pandemic that we've all been experiencing for the last more than a year. So we know that the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on already unfair practices and heightened inequalities that were kind of inherent in the system. This is not certainly typical to Bangladesh. We see this very much. These are discussions happening in the US. This is happening in Europe and throughout the global South. I think COVID-19 has heightened so many inequalities that we knew were inherent, but it's just put a strong spotlight on them. So what do we know about the impact on garment workers worldwide? Data from Mark Anner in his 2020 survey found quite startling statistics. So 98% of buyers refuse to contribute to the cost of paying the partial wages to furloughed workers. 72% of furloughed workers were sent home without pay. 97% of buyers refuse to contribute to severance pay and 80% of dismissed workers were sent home without any severance pay. And when I spoke to a major retailer, this was last fall, one of the things he said very candidly, when I was kind of shocked that how could this happen? How could all these brands be canceling all these orders? He said, companies retain the right to invoke cancellation and it's an open secret. Frankly, that cancellations are more common than people think. And he goes on to say, basically you can just sort of refuse to pay and accept orders. And he concludes by saying, and this is just how the apparel business works. In last summer, the Shibirin Malini Jodhri Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley worked with BRAC, the Public Health School at BRAC and the Center for Entrepreneurship Development to conduct a rapid response survey with more than a thousand workers in the garment industry to really kind of get an idea of how they were doing under COVID. And this was done by telephone and it was about a 35 minute survey. And so some of the things we found and I'm just giving you some highlights just for the sake of time, but I'm happy to put in the chat later a link to the research study. But what we found in our survey of over a thousand workers was that, this was in June, 2020, that a large percentage actually felt that their factory had, at that time, introduced new precautions against the coronavirus. So 87% said that the factory had introduced new precautions, they gave new protective equipment, they instituted hygiene measures, they were sending workers home who had symptoms, they were encouraging distance. So quite a large percentage. At the same time, however, we asked a series of questions around sort of feelings around COVID and many of large percentage, while these measures were put in place, many also felt like, for example, 59% felt that they were still very likely likely or very likely to contract the virus in their factories. And 54% of women actually said that they would not be able to isolate at home if they were sent home. Although 66% said that that is what the factory would do, they would basically send them home if they had any symptoms. Other studies also around this time showed that, for example, one in four workers reported not being informed about paid sick leave or special leave provisions. And Manushe Jono Foundation's survey in October, 2020 showed they found almost 86% said that if workers had any symptoms, chills, sneezing, fever, if they suffered some symptoms, they said that they had not visited a doctor, nor would they be likely to tell their managers. So these are all, the factories had put a lot of things in place, at least initially, but there was still a lot of fear and worry and concern. Speaking with labor activist Gautwana Akhtar, she mentioned her take on many of these measures, what she kind of considers, a lot of these measures were put in place, but they were actually kind of what she calls a joke because they're actually practically impossible. So social distancing in factories where there are so many bodies is maybe you can do it for about a week or so, but it's probably not practical to keep up. And she said, it lasted all these things kind of lasted for the first few weeks and then everything kind of went back to normal. We did a lot of, we asked a lot of questions trying to understand economic hardship of workers. So again, I'm happy to share the research brief, I'm just giving you sort of really sort of quick data points, but we asked about the monthly salary and as to be expected, because at the time when all the orders were being canceled, April hit this April of 2020, they're hit all time low. And if we look at salary of workers, probably for both men and women, but for women, it was even worse. It really, really hit a low in April. And then it started coming back in May. The clean clothes campaign estimated that between March and May in 2020, the wage gap, the amount, the funding that's needed to make workers whole as they define it was 30%. And so while they said that the wage gap did reduce, they did find that workers, for example, didn't receive their e-bonuses and other things that they were owed. And so the gap really still remained. According to DACA University, this is a much earlier study. They estimate that workers need to spend more than, a little bit more than 3,000 DACA per month to meet their calorific needs. Workers in normal good circumstances actually have the capability or ability to spend a little bit more than 1,000. But at the very lowest point, when we looked at the salaries that workers were taking home in a month, especially for women, especially those in the helper positions, the entry level positions, it was a little bit more than 5,000 DACA a month. So you can imagine that the amount they were spending on food and nutrition, they were absolutely not able to make it. So it's not surprising that 77% of workers in our survey said that it was difficult to feed everyone in their household. And 69% said they less protein-rich foods like meat, fish, and eggs, and 40% more pulses, lentils, chickpeas during this time. And when we asked about how workers cope during this period, 60% of workers, 65% women, 55% men said they don't save or they use their savings to pay for food. And 92% said that they reduce other critical expenses. So we asked, tried to understand sort of the mental health impacts of COVID on workers. And we found, I mean, not surprising, a lot of issues around various mental health issues, 62% said replied with a six or higher. This was on a scale of one to 10 of how worried they were about not being able to feed everyone in their household due to lack of funds. And Oxfam report describes the case of one worker who worked in a garment factory and lost her job in last April. She was eight months pregnant and she did not get the maternity benefits to which she was legally entitled. And she said at that time, with the pregnancy fear of the virus, unemployment, lack of payment of benefits, sometimes I feel like I will lose my mind. Other measures of mental health, 82% feel afraid that something awful might happen, 71% feel down or depressed or hopeless, 65% are not able to sleep, 60% felt anxious. These are very high numbers, but of course not surprising given the kind of situation that these workers were going through. And social protections, and I hope my colleague Maheen will talk maybe more about this, but an article in The Daily Star in last September really was kind of striking because it brought up that a UN report basically said that Bangladesh is kind of, you know, out of all the countries in Asia Pacific actually offers the fewest social protection initiatives and they broke it down into several categories. And according to this report, Bangladesh really only provides in one area sort of some sort of income support or social assistance, but it's really the report also reiterated that the necessity of preventing job losses and providing social protection is really, really critical. And I think we've seen during this period the sort of lack of social protection has been extremely detrimental throughout, but especially for garment workers, especially for women. So I wanna kind of take a little step back and sort of make the claim that global supply chains in and of itself are inherently detrimental to good labor rights. So the characteristics of global supply chains, lack of information, accountability, transparency, hyper flexibility, unequal power dynamics, these are the essential characteristics of global supply chains, but they are inherently at odds with good labor rights and good human rights. These are the characteristics that actually make supply chains work the way they are supposed to, but they are completely at odds with good labor rights. So we should not expect good labor rights necessarily to come out of the structure of global supply chains because we know now, I think research has shown, they impact on workers over time, the health impacts, the mental and physical impacts, the everyday violence and the impact on livelihoods. So extreme low wages over time, lack of job security. Just a very recent report, it just came out from the Business and Human Rights Resource Center. This is kind of global looking at sort of, they call it wage theft and pandemic profits. So just some really kind of striking statistics. One in four workers have not received their legally mandated severance pay, more than 9,000 workers faced what they called wage theft. They did not receive the wages they were entitled to. 77% of garment workers have gone hungry since the pandemic. What they found was that standard workers' wages are four times less than the living wage or how they calculate the wage that they need to live on. At the same time, all this was happening, $10 billion of profits was recorded by fashion brands in the second half of 2020. So it just kind of puts it into, I think, a larger context of how supply chains actually do work. And I spoke with Scott Nova who is the executive director of the Worker's Rights Consortium who was one of the leading organizations in trying to push brands to basically pay up. There was quite an incredible transnational campaign that took place from last year and it has continued. Several organizations have continued to work on this, really trying to push the brands to, as they say, not really do anything special but actually do what they were supposed to, which is pay for the orders that were already produced and to not ask for discounts at this point. So when I asked Scott in an interview about the situation, he said, we asked them, he's talking about global retailers, off the record, why they extended payment terms on existing contracts if they clearly didn't have a cash flow problem. And the answer was, he said, I'm paraphrasing, because we could, because our competitors are doing it and they're gaining an advantage, so why shouldn't we do it? That's the mentality that defines sourcing in the industry. That is the logic of sourcing. So we perhaps should not be too surprised at kind of the incredible dire situation that was created under COVID for garment workers in Bangladesh and I've looked closely at Bangladesh but I can certainly imagine this was happening throughout the global South. So I wanna go back to what I started with, this idea of safety. So what does this narrow definition of safety allow us to do? So this limited approach has served to reassure global retailers that they can continue business as usual because of course now after Rana Plaza, business buildings themselves are now structurally sound for the most part, right? We've kind of achieved what we set out to do. Now after COVID, it's been a year, the virus itself has been contained. I mean, we put in all these measures, the numbers are not extremely high. It's been okay, virus has been contained. So we can continue business as usual because we've taken care of the safety of workers. So we can continue to pursue a sourcing strategy that it's characterized by hyper flexibility, limited transparency, contributes to incidents of gender-based violence to over to all declines in mental and physical health of workers and leaves them insecure and without any social protections. And so unfortunately when the next huge crisis will hit, we still haven't done enough to secure workers' livelihoods in any sort of way. So the question I think we're all asking in this COVID, during this time of COVID and those who are looking at specifically research around COVID, we're trying to ask, how will we build back better, right? That's kind of been the theme. And I would argue, and just to kind of wrap up with this final thought, in order to make a real difference for workers in garment factories around the world, we must, they must, and we must rethink the concept of safety. They must experience safety in the fullest sense of the world. Ward, a definition, if we fully understand it, one that would encompass protections to their health, well-being and livelihoods. Thank you. I look forward to Mahin's comments and I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much, Sanjita. I would like to invite Mahin Sothan to provide a comments on Sanjita's presentation. Mahin, over to you. I'm very glad to be in this session this evening and because I think this topic is a very important one and we've been following Sanjita's work, so I'm very happy to be able to add our research to her findings. As you mentioned, I'm based at the Brack Institute of Governance and Development in Bangladesh. And since last year, we have been undertaking a number of research studies related to the impact of COVID in a number of sectors. And because of the importance of the RMG sector for our overall national economy, what it represents in the formal sector and also in terms of women's employment, this is something that we were looking very closely at. There was a lot of debate in the news and within the government about the fallout of the global crisis on the national garments industry, on the national economy, and what it meant in terms of foreign exchange and employment, but less about the impact on the workers. And we at BIGD, we thought that that was the angle we could contribute, looking at how this whole fallout would affect people at the bottom end, and especially women, because 65, 70% are women. And so we decided to look at it through the lens of the trade unions. Oops, it isn't going down, sorry. Okay, so we undertook a number of studies. One of them was direct interviews with trade union leaders. And then another attempt, research was looking at media and tracking what was being said in the media about trade union organizing, especially women labor leaders. And finally this year, we're bringing together our work as part of what we carry out a yearly state of governance, where we're looking at COVID, the political economy of COVID governance. And one of the chapters is looking at the RMG sector. So going back, again, last year, from the beginning, among the trade union leaders, there was a perception of the different risks that were then possible, and then later turned out to be real. One was the risk of exposure to COVID-19, because at the beginning, there was a lot of debates about closures, not closures, lockdown, what kind of lockdown, safety measures, and without enough precautions being taken. So there was a real fear of workers being infected because of the close proximity in which they work. With the global repercussions, people were aware that factories might be orders, might be canceled, job insecurity became a big issue. And with that, as a rule, that unfortunately, that wages are often paid in a delayed manner or in installments. So anyway, when March came along, there were overdue wages. And then because of the lockdown and other things happening in March, wages weren't paid on time. So this caused a lot of financial suffering because as Sanjita said, anyway, the wages are so low that without overtime and unless the full wages are paid, it's very hard to survive. And this caused a lot of psychological stress. On the trade union side, they felt that their role was to demand accountability both of the state and of the owners to ensure that workers' rights were paid. And in fact, they did play a very active role in negotiating with owners, association and the government and also putting pressure on buyers, both nationally and internationally to ensure that the salaries were paid, job security was ensured and also safety measures were put into place. But at the beginning of the COVID situation, because of all the restrictions on movement getting together, there were lots of difficulties because they're more used to mobilizing on the ground in front of factories, bringing out possessions. But when that wasn't possible, that did create a problem. But gradually the movement had to readjust to mobilizing virtually using social media which they were able to do. So towards the very beginning, and this shows the importance of the RMG sector for the global, for the national economy and the power of the RMG owners, one of the first stimulus packages that the government released was for the RMG export sector and it was said that 80% of the money should be used for wage payments. So while this was very important and it was welcomed by the workers, but they were very apprehensive, especially the unions, whether in fact workers would benefit or whether the employers would benefit because from the very beginning, the package, the way it was formulated, it would only reach the better of larger factories with good records, good relationships with banks, with digitalized payment records, et cetera, leaving out smaller factories which are not in the export sector and with worse records with banks. Another big issue was, there was no public disclosure of information about who was receiving the stimulus package, who was not, what the grounds were, who were the workers who were benefiting, it was all in the dark. And because of this lack of transparency, there was also distrust that the package wouldn't be used for those it was meant to be used for. So there was an attempt so that it could be used to pay managers, et cetera, one had to clarify the definition of workers, there were fears that people would be using fake accounts or fake IDs, so even that had to be regulated. And overall, there was a lack of an oversight or monitoring mechanism and trade unions kept lobbying and asking for their presence in some sort of oversight mechanism. It didn't come at that time, but it has come almost a year later with the unemployment benefits. So one of the things we have to realize that why this whole thing played out this way and which is the analysis we're doing now because of the history of how the private sector has developed in the country and especially the RMG sector, they had a very powerful interest group, both in national politics and economic decision making as well as political decision making. The sector is seen as the main foreign exchange earner, the biggest formal sector employment and also these people are also in the government. So there's a very strong bond or inter overlap between the government and the business which is why they were able to prepare the government to launch this package as soon as it happened and they have been able to bring in lots of other measures to protect the business interests and as I mentioned, these interests have protected the, this has protected the business interests more than the labor interests. So workers, yes, did benefit but they were given only 65% of their wages. This is under the furlough system. And then the factories reopened sooner than the unions would have liked. There have been a number of loopholes. The salaries were paid through digital means while the scheme lasted, but as soon as the scheme was over, they've gone back to payments in the way it was done before. So in fact, the benefit that should have come to the workers hasn't in the same way that the factory owners have benefited. And so while the owners have benefited and they have said that since they didn't have to worry about where the wages were coming from, they could negotiate better with the buyers and look after their overall business interests. Another thing is it's a larger factory owners who have benefited the most. Those who are in the export, those in fact who didn't need the stimulus package but the smaller and more vulnerable factories have not been able to have this kind of support. The trade unions, this COVID situation did bring out the weaknesses that they were neither united or strong enough to negotiate for better outcomes for the workers from either the employers or the government. And they've had to compromise on multiple fronts like in terms of factory closures, well wage cuts, health and safety. As Sanjita mentioned that the safety measures couldn't be maintained for long enough. And the government on the government side, we could see that there were several attempts to ensure that wages were paid on time, that there were workers were not dismissed, that safety was maintained. But in fact, the government measures and their declarations were not followed up strongly enough by the government departments. They didn't have the strength to enforce those directives. So it also brought out the weaknesses on government side. And so finally the workers had to suffer a lot of uncertainty about employment, wage cuts and continue working under unsafe conditions. And we can see that there is a debate about in fact how much of a job loss there was but the numbers show that people did lose their jobs. There were others who were rehired but often they have been rehired at lower salaries and in more vulnerable positions. So for the time being, it seems that the labor has lost out in this whole COVID situation while the employers have become even stronger, especially the stronger employers. I think I'll end there. Thank you. Thank you very much Mahi. That was extremely insightful. We have about 25 minutes for Q&A and I would like to ask those who are watching this webinar please send any new questions using the Q&A function that's right in front of your screen. And I would either read out your question or I would may even ask you to ask the question live. So please keep the questions coming. And also I just wanted to note that the webinars may be recorded and will be available on our YouTube channel afterwards. So in case you want to listen to the presentations again, you'll be able to do that in a very short time. So let me ask actually Sanjita and Mahi some questions myself. This is the start of the discussion. So Sanjita, one of the things that often you hear from Baladeshi government side is that if you bring in too many regulations or labor right protection and so on, the cost advantage that Baladeshi has in ready-made garments will go away. This was even observed after the Rana Plaza disaster. Even at that time, there was concern that, look, Baladeshi's really the ready-made garment sector is really our cash cows, so to speak. We can't afford to lose it because the cost differences between Baladeshi workers and Cambodian workers or workers in other parts of Africa and so on is not that much. So if you take away the cost advantage that Baladeshi workers have, then the garment industry will just move en masse to some other country. What would you say to them and to this concern that we can't really afford to lose the ready-made garments industry in Baladeshi? Yeah, I mean, that ultimately is the issue, right? I mean, why are we just so low? Why do they continue to remain low? And that what you said is primarily the issue. I mean, I think that's again, going back to the larger structure, you know, the global supply chain structure does constantly put pressure on wages to basically get countries to get the lowest possible wage possible. I mean, Bangladesh is one example, but if you even look to say Ethiopia, Ethiopia is a country that doesn't even have a minimum wage set in order, you know, the government did that in order to attract the business. But I guess what I would say is, this is not sustainable. I think we're finding, we see that in Bangladesh, we see that in other countries, not even for, you know, altruistic, you know, this is the right thing to do. It's just not sustainable over time to have your labor force be in such a situation where they, you're not gonna have a productive workforce if your labor force cannot, you know, meet their basic needs, if they can't meet, you know, basic nutrition needs, if they can't even save a little bit. Over time, that's not economically, you know, a good strategy. And I think, and it also goes back to, I think, I mean, this is something that the companies and the retailers, they need to realize, you know, ultimately it is better for their business if they, you know, and it just, it's not even, you know, a large amount, it's just sometimes it's just a small enough amount just to meet the basic standards the basic level for these workers. And I think, you know, there is a little bit more understanding of that now, but I think, you know, it will still take some time. Unfortunately, it's these dramatic disasters, whether it's Rana Plaza, whether it's now it's COVID that takes us to sort of again, look very closely at how these industries work. But hopefully, you know, as a result of what we've seen, there will be some changes. Thank you, sir, Chita. I was going to ask a question to Mahin. Mahin, did you want to come in on this issue? Just to add that, you know, the increase in costs, even if there are increases, could also be absorbed by the buyers. It doesn't only have to be absorbed at the production end. Absolutely. I was going to ask you a question, Mahin, but I'm going to wait because I can see a question coming from Naomi Hussein, who Naomi was done pioneering work and gender herself. Naomi, I think I can unmute you, and therefore you could ask the question live. Let me see if that works. Do you want to go and ask the question live? I think you can directly ask the question. Go ahead, please. Thank you, Kunal. Can you hear me? Yes, you can. Absolutely. Well, thank you first of all to Sanjit then to Mahinapa for really very interesting and very important insights into what's going on at this time. I think we're all really horrified at the way the workers are being treated. But my question is not so much about the factories in Bangladesh as it is about the international brands. And I think we learned from the work that Sanjit and others have put together that the international brands don't seem to have been in any way adversely affected by Rana Plaza or any of the publicity afterwards. Do you think, are they getting away with it again in COVID? I think they have, haven't they? It doesn't seem to be that they have any pressure on them. It seems that consumers don't seem to care at all what workers suffer. Do you, I mean, do either of you see any signs of anything different? So hi, Naomi. Nice to hear you. So I will say actually, I mean, I have something coming out in the next few months looking at actually part of it looks exactly at this. So kind of the international pressure. What is interesting, I think, so right, what you say about Rana Plaza, I mean, I think initially there was a lot of outrage and it was really just these brands were just sort of shocked. I mean, how could their labels be in the rubble and how could they have been associated with something so horrific? I mean, there was that initially, but then a lot of it went back to business as usual. With COVID, it's been interesting because I think we have seen a kind of unprecedented transnational labor movement to put pressure on these brands. And I think I don't wanna say the actual number because in case I get it wrong, but it's a large figure that they were actually able to have the brands to pay up. So what the brands over time had refused to pay, they had actually been sort of shamed into paying. And a lot of this is, I mean, I can give a very long answer to this, but just quickly, I mean, some of the highlights of how this worked, what was interesting, and Mahin, maybe you have some comments on this. I talked to different groups who said for the first time, for a short time, Bangladeshi factory owners and workers were on the same side. And that was at the very beginning when brands were canceling the order. So it rarely happens that they're on the same side, but for that very short moment, they were. And so that kind of coordination and then the international media really picked this up. So if you remember last spring and fall even, there was a lot of international coverage. And we typically don't, I mean, we don't see that, you know, workers, our workers, you know, the plight of workers are not covered so much in the international media, but there was a lot more of that because as someone put it to me, it was actually an example of one business, excuse my expression, but sort of one in business screwing another business in that sense. It became less about how the workers were faring, but it was really about these global brands and how they were interacting with these other, with the other businesses, suppliers in the global south, but Bangladesh got a lot of attention. And so there was a lot of media coverage. And I think all of that combined actually did pressure these brands to pay up. Many of them were shamed into doing that. Some very few had honored their contracts from the beginning, many didn't, but many actually turned because of that. And if you remember under COVID, because, you know, it's true, I mean, demand really did fall, brick and mortar stores were closing at the time. So these brands, a lot of their, they had, they had, they really cared about their online presence. So when there was a lot of this happening, it definitely did hurt them. Now, again, you know, I guess to answer your question, I mean, in the longterm, are we gonna see a dramatic change? I don't know. I mean, I could hope that this is, you know, it's kind of jolts the brands into some sort of response or action or a change in behavior, but that's hard to tell. I mean, we won't know for a while, but I think immediate, this is quite an interesting example of organizing and of putting pressure on brands that I think it's kind of unprecedented. We didn't see this in the same way after Rana Plaza. And I think it remains to be seen how, how this plays out. Yes, go ahead. If I could just add that it wasn't only workers and owners on the same page, it was the government also trying to negotiate with those governments and putting pressure on those companies. So it was a three-way, let's say pressure, but just on them, you know, whether industry has withstood this onslaught, we see that with some of these big companies collapsing and being liquidated, the effect it has on their orders and the production orders that they place, those are somehow canceled. And so the companies which on the producer and have produced for them don't have anywhere they can place their bills or whatever. So that's another impact that we've been seeing with these big companies collapsing. And I could not, sorry, if I can just add one more thing. I mean, this goes back to, this is prior to COVID. I mean, for decades, the structure has been such that companies, the retailers don't, they don't pay till after the orders have already shipped. And then it's, you know, whatever, certain 60, 90 days afterwards. So that is the structure that's been in place. I mean, it is, there's all sorts of, you know, sort of, I mean, there's a lot of things that need to be done in terms of the way the setup is, the way the contracts are, the types of legal loopholes that are in place. It's like I said in my presentation, it seems shocking when we looked at the numbers and the statistics that were coming out. But even retailers will tell you privately, it's not so shocking because it happens all the time. It just doesn't happen in a massive scale and suddenly gets a lot of coverage. It happens constantly. I mean, retailers refuse to accept orders or they renegotiate the price and all that after things have been produced. That's nothing new. And it was surprising for me. I mean, I've done research in this area and I didn't really realize that, how pervasive it is. But it was shocking because COVID sort of, it all came together and it was very dramatic and it happened in a mass scale. So again, this is the issue of, I mean, the entire structure of the system that allows this kind of behavior to take place. I think the question that I think, Sanjita and Mahindra, is this the critical juncture, the pandemic, for the ready-made gum in the dust in Bangladesh or elsewhere too, as compared to say the Rana Prasad disaster, right? So that's interesting. But let me take two more questions from the audience. There are two more, one for Adiba, the second was Shushmita Dasgupta. Adiba and Shushmita can ask a question, a sequentially. Adiba, you want to go ahead? You can unmute yourself and ask the question live. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Kunal. This is Shushmita Dasgupta. Actually, I've just retired from the Indian steel industry, which you know is the second largest in the world. And one of the things exactly what is happening in the garment segment happened in the steel industry as well. And there were people who were selling cheap, initially Korea and Southeast Asia and then China, abrogating all kinds of safety norms and polluting things and all that. So these exactly these questions came up and then now we have a kind of an international steel price index by which all the costs of environment management and safe occupational health and safety, these are factored into a composite steel price. And that serves pretty much as a kind of an index for all the steel producers. We are about 66 countries. So that it ensures that everybody's taking care of the sustainability parameters. So maybe garment industry with, I think I don't think you have more than 20 countries producing garments on an international scale. Maybe this kind of a price index could be worked out. Thank you so much. Thank you, Shushmita. Satya, do you want to answer that question? Yeah, I don't think Mahin wants to, if she may, probably. No, go ahead, Satya. Yeah, I actually don't know about that. I mean, what kind of discussions are being, it is a great, great idea. I mean, what I have heard more on is what Mahin mentioned earlier. I mean, sort of the brands taking the retailers, global retailers taking, in terms of putting living wage or having creating sort of a social safety net and working with governments to do that. There's some very early talk about that. And not only Bangladesh, but in other countries to have the sort of a more of a partnership model with between the retailers and the government. So they sort of coordinate on whether it's wages or social security benefits and things like that. So I don't, but I don't, this is a great example, I think in the steel industry. I don't know about it similar in the garment industry. Okay, Satya, Mahin, I had two questions, one from the audience and one from me. So my own question was that, are the curious to know how the Red Damit Governments Association, as you said, is a very powerful association in Bangladesh. How do they see the trade unions? Do they see them as equal partners? Do they see them as threats? What exactly is their view about trade unions? Which were not, the unions were not really there in the red emit government sector as you know, in the past. So that's my question. Second question coming from the audience is that given the weak representation of unions, what are the ways of strengthening worker representation in national discussions? What could be the next steps of unions to improve? Thanks. Now both very interesting questions. I think BGMEI used to see them, trade unions as something that could be brushed off a botheration that could be just pushed aside. But now they have to give them a seat at the table. So they are trying to treat them politely, trying to show that they're talking to them and including them. But if possible, they would rather not. You know, we have this issue of pocket trade unions, what we call yellow trade unions. So trying to get them on your side without following labor law and all the benefits for the worker. So that is a big problem. So managing trade unions without really improving industrial relations. So on the trade union side, there's a very big problem of representation and democracy within the trade union. So unless they can really speak for the workers and the workers to lead the trade unions from the bottom to the top, you know, that is also one of the weaknesses of the trade union. That unless they have a big enough base and unless they are democratic enough and they can really represent the workers' interests, they cannot have a strong enough voice at the national level. If they just rely on political parties to give them their strength and their space at the table. Yeah, exactly. I mean, just to follow up also that, you know, I think union penetration in Bangladesh is still very, very low in terms of percentage. And even after Rana Plaza, there was a lot of attempt to register new unions and stuff. But there continues to be a lot of, I mean, some unions are very politically tied. Some, there's a lot of political crackdowns on unions as well. There's a lot in Bangladesh, I mean, there's a lot of sort of non-union organizing that happens, formal organizing, female-led organizing, civil society. I mean, a lot of that is there. And I think that's not part of the formal structure. And that has, I think, you know, women, especially women really, and in those informal organizing networks have a lot of the positive changes that have happened over the last several decades has been due to that kind of activism. And that's often not documented in the same way as you would by measuring, you know, the number of unions, you know, that are starting. But there's a lot of that is happening. So I think that for me, I remain hopeful in Bangladesh that that, I mean, there's a long way to go, no doubt. And they're constantly facing backlash all the time. But I think to me, that's a really exciting aspect, which is different from other countries I've looked at their garment industries, you know, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, they don't have, there's a lot more sort of, Bangladesh also has repression, but I think in these two other countries there's a lot of open repression against any sort of organizing. So you don't see that informal organizing at the same level. So in my mind, I think a lot of these, you know, the female-led organizing is, I think, critical in terms of going forward. Thank you, Sanjit. I can see a question from Mother Street Banerjee. And again, Mother Street, I want to ask the question live. Yeah, thank you very much. I'm Madhu Sri. I'm speaking from New Delhi. So I have been following this COVID-19 situation and the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh. So I have been talking to a few of my friends who are there who are factory owners, some of them are trade union activists and others, you know, some economists as well. So what I understand is that, you know, apart from the issues that Sanjit and Mahin has pointed, that, you know, there's a loss of income and the women have lost their jobs and they've taken children out of school and all sorts of other, you know, social and economic adversities that they have faced, there is a problem of that this huge, unsold stock that have piled up in the factories which has locked up some investable capital for the promoters. That is one, the other is the banks have also faced, accumulate a lot of NPAs because the factories are now unable to pay back the loan that they had taken. And the third thing I think which Mahin has also pointed out, that is the larger factory owners and which have benefited from whatever the packages the government has, you know, come forward with. So, but the smaller factory owners are still at the distress. So I would like to hear something on that. Thank you. Mahin, if you wanna start. Well, no, you're very right. It's, and interestingly, the packages that are available for the smaller factories, what are called the SME loans, they're not being taken up as fast as the big loans by the big factories. So somehow it's not matching their needs and the system isn't able to disperse the money either. So that is a big problem. And you mentioned this unsold stock, which is both this end and I guess at the buyer's end, it's a big problem. And the banks, they have been complaining all along about being made to disperse these financial packages because the government has only been subsidizing the interest payments and not the loans themselves. Yeah, and from the brand side, we talked to several brands about this. So it is an issue they, because even the ones that have, you know, agreed finally to actually pay, they are sort of stuck with a lot of this merchandise that's not selling. A lot of it is branded also, which is an issue. I mean, Mahin, I don't know how much you, I don't know if you know, how much is being sold like sort of not, even if it was made for export, but is it being sold internally, you know, domestically or just within South Asia? I don't know if that some brands mentioned that some of their suppliers were just sort of selling more domestically or, you know, within their region. So I don't know if that's happening at home. It's something we would have to look into. I mean, we have these informal markets like Bongo Bazaar and, you know, that sort of thing. So it's something to follow up. Some of it is, that's where some of the merchandise is going. But yeah, that is an issue. And that's, I mean, that is an issue at the end of the day, of course, for the global retailers. I mean, if the demand is really dropped, you know, yes, they do face that issue. I mean, what many, you know, international activists were saying is that they weren't, they weren't arguing with the fact that the demand has gone down. That's certainly the case. And there have been retailers gone bankrupt and went out of business. So certainly, I mean, COVID has impacted everyone. It's not to say that. But at the same time, I mean, if something, if a bunch of, you know, clothing has been already produced and you've paid at every level and you need, at that point, pay your workers to not pay the money then, that's problematic. I mean, it is a shame that the clothes won't be used, but you can't just decide at that point that you're, because you can't accept it, you can't pay. So I think that's the issue there. Yeah, and I mean, the same thing with, you know, the smaller factories, I mean, certainly we're going to definitely see, I think, a consolidation of the industry over time because if there are smaller factories, it's not going to be able to survive. Yeah, and we're seeing that. The other thing is, I mean, you have to remember, when I did the research post-Rona Plaza, I mean, ultimately, you know, the court and the alliance, the factories, even the focus on safety, but the factories that they focus on are still a, you know, it's a percentage of the entire universe. I mean, there's many, for example, a court and the alliance don't cover any of the subcontracting factories, you know, that it's only the registered factories that are covered. So there's always factories that are just kind of left out. And, you know, some of them won't serve, the smaller ones, you know, they just won't survive, but they are the ones that often, as Mahin said in her presentation, they are often the ones that need a lot of the stimulus, you know, this kind of extra funding the most and they are the ones that don't get it. But that's, you know, that's kind of how it's been. Yeah, I mean, actually, so there's a question again from Adiba that the smaller factory, just one owner is not part of the bigger association, the Red Medical Association, BMGA. And you know, there's an argument that, and also when you pointed out, and there's something I also know from my own work, that the BMG is very powerful politically in Bangladesh, right? Economically, as you said, but also politically. So is there an argument to try and foster and nurture a different association of factory owners, which are more smaller in size, who may have a much more stronger interest and perhaps even in workers' rights, but at least certainly more inclusive in many ways than the big factories or behind the BMGA. Is that possible, do you think? That's a very interesting idea. I mean, why not? I mean, I can see like in other sectors like agro-processing sector, the rice producers broke off, the edible oil broke off when they felt their interest weren't represented by the big association. Because there is a lot of discontent, I can hear within BMGA, where the smaller ones feel that they're being left out and not represented and not heard. So, I mean, it is a possibility, absolutely. Well, that's what would be really interesting to see if that also happens post-pandemic. We are exactly coming to an end to off our alerted time, that's 5 p.m. Hedziki time. And thank you so much, Sanjita and Mahin, for a really interesting presentation and discussion and also very good questions from the audience. And it's really going to be quite interesting to see what happens next in Bangladesh. I mean, the question, from my point of view would be that Bangladesh has banked a lot on ready-made garments. There is an argument too, that start thinking a little bit outside of that. So, will that happen or not, is also a very important question for the future. Thank you so much to both of you, Sanjita and Mahin. Thank you. I'm going to call the webinar to a close now. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thanks.