Promoting Social Dialogue and Harmonious Industrial Relations in Bangladesh Ready-Made Garment Industry

The initiative will work to enhance workplace rights and industrial relations in the Bangladesh Ready-Made Garment Sector primarily through improved dialogue between employers and workers, particularly at workplace level.

Tripartism and social dialogue
The project will focus on the development of dialogue mechanisms and relations between employers and workers, particularly at the workplace level as a means of preventing disputes; and, the development of conciliation and arbitration mechanisms into a more credible, trusted and transparent system. In addition, the initiative will seek to intensively build the capacity of workers and employers to engage in social dialogue and collective bargaining at the workplace and sector level as well as to make effective use of the dispute prevention and resolution mechanisms.  Given the large presence of women in the lower ranks of the workforce, efforts will be made to fully incorporate their interests and requirements.

The project will be initially piloted in the RMG sector, with gradual scaling up within the sector.  However, the impact of the project and particularly that of the dispute resolution mechanism will go beyond the sector and cover all other sectors.

Project update 

See Activities and progress of the project till December 2018.

Project outcomes

  • Outcome 1: Sustainable improvement in social dialogue, workplace cooperation and grievance handling;
  • Outcome 2: Sustainable and effective mechanisms for conciliation and arbitration are established;
  • Outcomes 3: Enhanced capacities of employers’ and workers’ organizations to dialogue and prevent and resolve disputes including those of gender concerns.

Conventions and Recommendations