US wants further improvement of labour rights

The US wants further improvement of the labour rights situation in Bangladesh, which will increase US investments in the country. Delegations from both countries met at the secretariat in Dhaka over this on Sunday.

A visiting team of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) for South and Central Asia has prepared an action plan to improve the labour rights situations in the country. They have stressed on 11 factors. Finalising a strategy to implement that work plan was the agenda of the meeting.

Brendan Lynch, assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asia led the US delegation and commerce secretary of Bangladesh Tapan Kanti Ghosh led the Bangladesh side in the meeting. Besides, officials from the finance, industries and Agriculture ministries, National Board of Revenue (NBR) and Bangladesh bank along with US ambassador to Dhaka Peter Haas and USTR senior commercial specialist Shilpi Jha were also present in the meeting.

Speaking to newspersons following the meeting, commerce secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh said Bangladesh has always been demanding a tariff and quota free market to the US. Bangladesh also sought assistance from the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to carry out development works. They (US delegation) said the labour rights situation in Bangladesh must improve further. Although there have been some improvements in some of the laws, the improvement must be better.

Tapan Kanti Ghosh said according to the existing law, consent from at least 20 per cent workers is needed to form a trade union. They want to reduce that ceiling.  They also want to increase the punishment for accused owners under the labour law and want to revoke the law that dissolves trade unions which have less than 20 per cent of total workers as its members.

The commerce secretary further said, “Bangladesh gets a tariff free facility from all the advanced countries except the US. We told them that the US provides a tariff-free facility to African countries under the same law. The discrimination between the poor people in Africa and Asia is not rational.”

Taking effective action against the people who exploit and torture trade union leaders, workers and labour rights activists is the first of the 11 factors that came up in the action plan proposed by the USTR delegation.

Bringing the factory owners and managerial authorities who work against workers and their leaders to book is second in the list.

The USTR wants an amendment in the Bangladesh labour law to ensure Bangladeshi trade unions have the equal rights as the other unions enjoy at international level. They also want an amendment of the existing labour rules.

The regional delegation of USTR further expects the government to take necessary actions to ensure that the workers have the full right to be involved in trade union activities in the EPZ (export processing zones). They demanded an amendment of the section-34 of the Bangladesh Economic Zones Act of 2010 and its implementation to ensure that the workers have the chance to get organised and can take part in the bargaining together.

The US delegation has also recommended finishing the process of applying for a trade union within 55 days. They also said that the Department of Labour must provide the updates on the pending appeals for trade unions on the online registration portal on a regular basis.

The USTR also asked to stop the tendency to obstruct the recruitment of labour inspectors through annual budget, allocation for these recruitments and the tendency to delay the process of registration.

Speaking regarding this, Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILLS) chief executive officer (CEO) Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed said external pressure is inevitable when there is any weakness. However, the demands from the USTR don’t breach the rights ensured by the constitution of Bangladesh or any laws of the international agencies that Bangladesh ratifies.

Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed further said, “The demands of the workers have always been ignored. However, these issues are nothing new. Some new issues have come up in the action plan developed by the USTR as a result of the actions taken by the police at the behest of the owners during settlement of wages to repress the movement.”