The Shaping of Production Conditions and How It Affects Workers

In our world where large retail companies and major brands determine business conditions, worker rights and protection remain secondary. As in the case of Walmart, the conditions of Bangladeshi workers who produce their textile goods are truly deplorable. Walmart denied any relationship that emerged during the Tazreen factory fire, which went down in history as Bangladesh's largest fire, took no responsibility whatsoever, and didn't even pay for the order placed through its supplier, bringing the Bangladeshi factory to the brink of bankruptcy. After the fire that killed hundreds of people, Walmart severed ties with the supplier, choosing to extricate itself from the situation in this way.

Informal Work

Informal work refers to production areas that are beyond government oversight, where the concept of social security is invalid, and taxation does not apply. Employees and producers who maintain their presence in the formal sector consist of unregistered, meaning untaxed, workers. In Bangladesh, the fact that all workers, especially child laborers as young as 12 years old, work in unhealthy conditions without insurance and other benefits whets the appetite of major retail companies worldwide.

Informal Working Conditions

There are also attractions to informal working conditions from the perspective of both employers and employees. A large part of global production chains actually serve as subcontractors of subcontractors. Global production chains are chains that develop between suppliers, agents, and subcontractors that must be registered. However, today the links in this chain cannot be properly inspected or supervised.

Informal/Unregistered Work

This is one of the common problems of all countries, especially Third World countries. Particularly in the textile sector where outsourced production takes place, retailers and major brands turn a blind eye to informality in the name of cost reduction and timely production delivery. Their priority is to receive the production on time. Despite global supply chain inspections, informal work and child labor cannot be prevented.

Particularly in issues such as workplace accidents, retailers continue their lives ignoring the problems experienced by manufacturing companies. This leads to the selection of another company and can ultimately result in the bankruptcy of the producer. To improve the correct working system and working conditions, cheap labor must be abandoned. Although situations such as cheap labor and child labor may help secure business, in extraordinary circumstances like workplace accidents, floods, earthquakes, and fires, they leave the subcontractor producer alone. There are responsibilities of the primary contractor, but generally, a legal exit point is found, leaving responsibility to the outsourced producer in this sense.