Race to the Bottom: Sweatshop Industry Existence in Bangladesh and Its Impact on Social Cultural

Abstract

In Bangladesh, 80 % of the country’s total export revenue comes from the garment industries. There are 3.5 million workers in 4825 garment factories. This garment production chain held in Bangladesh then export to the global market, mostly Europe and North America. This industrial sector generates the wealth of Bangladhesis and helps improve their lives whom 85% of them are women. Besides, most of the garment workers in Bangladesh earn a small amount of money. Bangladesh garment workers also got no decent working condition. They used to work for 14-16 hours per day seven in a week. As well as, worker’s working condition is relatively unsafe, cramped, and hazardous. That condition potentially leads to work injuries and factory fires. Also, many of the woman workers reportedly got engaged in sexual harassment and discrimination. This such phenomena done by major fashion industry have been called as sweatshop industry. This paper is focused on what have done by the fashion industries, more specifically in relation to labor rights. This paper used a qualitative descriptive study method of analysis, which is the way to describe an illustrate the phenomenon based on the observation data based on research done before. The purpose of this research is to educate and show people that the fashion industry, especially the sweatshop fashion industry cost so many effects one of them in labor issues. The result of this research is the customers are having a huge control of fashion industry sustainability, if customers are wise enough to avoid sweatshop fashion brand, the brand itself will collapse