Meet Your Global Tailor

Your personal Bangladeshi seamstress

I wanted to close my recent trip to Bangladesh with a few summary thoughts and images about the Bangladeshi garment industry. I toured a clothing factory in Bangladesh yesterday, and thought you might like to see where your clothes are being made.

How do I know that your clothes are made there? I can almost guarantee it, actually.

According to the site Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Americans buy 20 billion (with a “b”) articles of clothing every year – roughly 68 garments per American annually. 98% of the clothing that Americans buy is made outside the United States. This is up from only 50% in 1990, an incredible sea change in outsourced manufacturing in just two decades. According to Wikipedia, Bangladesh is the 2nd largest producer of clothing in the world, and is projected to take the #1 spot within the next 5 years.

Why Bangladesh? Well, the production of clothing is surprisingly labor intensive. From spinning to weaving, dyeing to cutting, sewing to finishing, there are hundreds of steps involved in producing even a simple garment. China has long been the world leader in clothing production, but according to a recent Global Sources article, labor now accounts for 40% of the cost of making a garment in that country. In Bangladesh, labor is a lot cheaper – it only accounts for 20% of the cost of making a garment. This explains why despite some of the challenges of working in Bangladesh, famous clothing brands the world over are flocking there to invest in larger and larger sourcing operations. Bangladesh has millions of workers willing to do a lot for very little.

So like I said – I can almost guarantee that if you look through your drawers and closets (or just check the labels on the clothes you’re wearing), you will find a “Made in Bangladesh” label on something or other. But it doesn’t have to be Bangladesh… the point here is that we are wearing stuff made all over the world. I didn’t plan this, but I just checked the clothes I have on – Jockey t-shirt made in India, Basic Equipment shirt made in Peru, BVD boxers from El Salvador, Old Navy jeans from China, and shoes from Vietnam. I may not be cosmopolitan, but my wardrobe is. And I don’t have to search far to find Bangladesh: I’ve got a pair of St. John’s Bay khaki pants that I wear to work at least twice a week, bought at a J.C. Penney (big spending fashion mogul that I am) in Vermont, and made in Bangladesh.

We put a lot of thought these days into where our food is coming from – is it locally sourced? Is it organic? Is it safe? How do I know who’s producing it? Buying clothing is a lot less thought provoking, but maybe it shouldn’t be. So follow me below the jump, to learn just a little bit about how the stuff you’re wearing gets made.

Typical factory floor

The factory I visited is one of five thousand garment manufacturers in Bangladesh, and this one is medium sized.  It employs about 1,000 workers.  The Director currently claims to be producing clothing for Kohl's, Wal-mart, J.C. Penney, and Bennetton, but orders and production are fluid.  Target has been a big customer in the past, for example (DISCLAIMER:  I can't vouch for the factory's relationship with any of these brands -- unauthorized subcontracting is not uncommon in Bangladesh, and the supply chain can be circuitous and difficult to track -- but I don't really have any reason to doubt what he said, either).

The factory is housed in a 7-story building and has four prodcution lines.  The one pictured above takes up one of the floors.  As you can see, the factory is bustling with activity.  My visit was on a Friday, which is the equivalent of Sunday in the United States.  So these workers were there on the Muslim holy day.  The world is hungry for clothing and this factory is happy to satsify that hunger.

This is one of the nicer garment factories I've seen, well managed and comparable to others that I've visited in China.  The production lines are well-lit, have multiple ceiling fans to damp the worst of the heat, are clean and organized, and there's no sense that the workers are unhappy or toiling away in unsanitary conditions.  Still, it's important to recognize that the quality of the conditions is relative.  The ambient temperature in the factory is in the '90's.  In an environment where needles, pins and machines are everywhere, all of the workers are barefoot -- it doesn't do to track dust and dirt into the factory from the outside when you are producing clean garments.  And the work itself can be mind-numbing and prone to repetitive stress.



Cutting velcro rectangles

This woman (girl really, we'll get to that in a moment) is cutting rectangles from a long spool of velcro, then trimming the edges of each rectangle neatly.  She may do this for up to 11 hours per day, 6-7 days a week, not counting a 1-hour lunch break.  Her base monthly salary is about $50.  With overtime (anything over 8 hours per day is supposed to be overtime), she can make about $90-$100 per month, or an annual salary of $1200 per year.  Like I said -- willing to do a lot for a little.

In a way, this is Reagan-era trickle down economics in action.  We, in America, are rich.  I don't care if you are living paycheck to paycheck or are in debt or maybe even have declared bankruptcy at some point -- comprared to the average Bangladeshi, you are rich.  And you buy clothes.  The wage this woman makes, while pitiful by American standards, is several times greater than what she could hope to earn doing literally anything else in her village.  She may not enjoy the work in the sense of loving cutting velcro rectangles; but the wage she's making means a much better life for her and her family.  Even being at the factory is great in many ways compared to conditions at home.  The factory has a steady supply of electricity, plenty of clean drinking water, decent toilet facilities, a daycare, and full-time medical staff.  At home she may not have access to any of these things.  So while her wages seem small to us, the opportunity to work in this factory means a better life for this woman in more ways that are obvious at first glance.  Trickle down economics:  the money may not be trickling down to Americans, but it's trickling down to someone, one tiny drop at a time.

Of course, it also means going to work early instead of staying in school.  The woman in the picture above, or the woman in the picture at the beginning of this post, looked to be 16 years old.  Actually that may be generous.  They may be about 14.  According to Bangladeshi law, 14-18-year-olds are classified as adolescents and are permitted to work up to 5 hours per day.  I don't know this, but it would not be at all surprising to learn that many of them are working much longer hours than that.  Most of the workers in the factory I visited looked near or under 18, though of course I have no way of knowing their age for sure.   More than 80% of the garment manufacturing workforce is comprised of women, who otherwise have limited employment opportunities outside the home in this conservative Muslim country.  

Sorting and folding

  

A "basting" machine, for fusing fabric strips with plastic or other backing materials -- definitely well over 100 degrees in this room

The daycare center -- shown full size

It's worth noting that the Bangladesh garment manufacturing sector is under a lot of scrutiny currently, in the wake of the deadliest factory fire in the country's history last November.  The Tazreen factory fire leveled an 8-story building and resulted in the deaths of 111 factory workers, injuring another 200.  The incident highlighted endemic safety concerns across the industry, with weak fire safety practices and an understaffed

Fire safety instructions -- although most workers are illiterate. 

and poorly equipped civil firefighting service.  There were reports that exit doors at the Tazreen factory were locked, and that managers and security guards who might have opened them fled the scene.  In a country where labor is cheap, some point fingers at factory owners for treating workers cheaply or not managing safety effectively.  Some blame the Bangladeshi government for not enforcing safety standards -- the standards themselves are comparatively strong, but they are not well implemented.  Others blame  international clothing brands that choose to buy products from these factories without ensuring that working conditions are as safe as possible.
 
There is certainly some truth to all of these assertions, but the truth is both simple and complicated.  Yes, factories could do more and some factory owners are callous, but many are not, and have no wish to endanger their workers or their facilities -- they simply lack sufficiently skilled managers and infrastructure to

Every door in the factory was open, but everyone had an available padlock and bolt too -- no idea when or how they are used.  Unlockable push-bar fire safety doors are the international standard.

understand or systematically apply fire safety systems.  Yes, the government could and should do more, but it too is chronically short of skilled staff as well as paralyzed by bureacracy and corruption.  Yes, brands should do more, but many already have zero tolerance policies for fire safety violations and are investing huge amounts of money and effort to police their suppliers and help improve working conditions.  It would, perhaps, be easy to say that brands should bring their manufacturing back to the United States, where safety standards are much stronger.  But this would cause the cost of clothing to skyrocket, and under corporate law in the U.S., companies can be (and often are) sued by their shareholders if they take decisions that are deemed to be counter to the goal of growing the company and increasing the value of their stock. 
 
And we, the consumers -- are we demanding to pay three times as much for a shirt?  Or are we searching out the cheapest possible clothes, at stores known for their affordable merchandise?  We are the demand.  If we consistently buy clothing at the cheapest possible prices, in the highest possible volumes, without demanding knowledge of its origin or the conditions under which it's manufactured, then we shouldn't be surprised to learn that those conditions are not always ideal.

The factory I visited had fire extinguishers; sprinkler systems; fire hoses independent of the municipal water system and fed by rooftop tanks always kept full; clearly marked placards and floor directions for what to do in case of emergency; designated evacuation areas; a systematic fire drill system; clearly designated fire safety team leaders on every floor, wearing yellow vests to be easily identifiable in an emergency; multiple exit stairwells; a significant portion of its rooftop kept free and clear of all construction or debris, for firefighting and congregating if necessary; readily accessible smoke masks; and so on.  As you can see above, however, it also had lockable doors.  Windows had grates or bars with no release mechanisms.  And some of its systems seemed strangely at odds with logic -- in the picture below, for example, taken on the roof of the building, you can see a poster depiction of a man using a "fire rope" to lower himself to the ground in the event of a fire.  But at 7 stories, and with a huge majority of the workforce young women with limited upper body strength, and a rope able to hold only one person at a time, it seems unlikely that this would prove to be an effective method of getting workers off the roof of a burning building.  I have no training whatsoever as a fire safety expert, but I feel pretty comfortable making that assertion.

Again, this was a good factory, comparatively.  Well managed, with a Director who seemed sincerely to care about these issues and a lot of good systems in place.  But there are limits to what can be accomplished in a country that is still, for all that things are improving, the third world.

Safety is one thing... environmental pollution is another.  This post doesn't even begin to address the problems of fabric inking and dyeing mills, which use incredibly toxic chemicals and rarely dispose of them safely.  Bangladesh's rivers and water tables are being routinely fouled with all manner of vitriolic substances, just as China's are and the United States' were before them.  Unless and until our methods of consumption and global production change, we will continue to face -- and play our part in causing -- environmental and human catastrophes.  Many good people are working to change this, but the problems are systemic and never easy to solve.

Something to think about the next time you go shopping... We buy a lot of things we don't need.  According to the USEPA, Americans throw away 10 pounds of clothing per person per year -- a total of over 13 million tons of textile waste annually.  Only 15% of this waste is reused or recycled.  Only 20% of clothing we donate to charity thrift shops is ever sold -- there's simply too much ever to sell it all.  I don't know if it's the answer, but it may be an answer:  buying a bit less, and being willing to pay just a bit more for what we do buy.  Everybody likes the combination of cheap and always accessible, but we can't turn blind eyes to the consequences of our actions.  And the money we put into someone's cash register is having just as much of an effect on the world as the money we might put into the collection plate every Sunday.  We're just a little bit less aware of what that effect is, and where.