- Title
- Assessing employee work health and safety in the Bangladesh ready-made garment industry
- Creator
- Zaman, Fazluz
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
- Description
- Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) is an integral part of employment industries. Employers are responsible for providing a safe and working environment for their staff, where hazards are clearly outlined and procedures are put in place to minimise the risk of harm or death. In recent decades, the Bangladesh Ready Made Garment Industry (RMG) has seen some tragic accidents in their factories leading to hundreds of fatalities. These accidents have drawn global attention to the industry. The RMG industry is highly competitive on a global scale and it is crucial to the Bangladesh economy. However, as is obvious from the magnitude of the accidents that have unfolded in the industry, there is a lot to be said for the current WHS standards. In my research, I have attempted to assess the current 'Work Health and Safety' issues and employees’ safety preferences irrespective to the gender to suggest a reasonably practicable way to deal with them. These issues can be found in any public or private ventures. This issue is further linked to the individual or organisation that is conducting the business. Private entrepreneurs own the majority of garments factories. Their top-level business performance has contributed to the image of country to the outside world, especially in clothing export. The operators need to ensure control over safe manufacturing operations, proper management of plant and substances, monitor and record health and safety issues, offer adequate facilities (i.e. washrooms, shower place, toilets, lockers, dining areas, first aid), arrange training, ensure participation in the consultation and arrange extra supervision if required. At the same time, both temporary and full time employees need assurance and commitment from management for the planned and continuous improvement in health and safety approaches. All workers should be entitled to have protection from any workplace risks, actively use the personal protective equipment (PPE), be proactive and become actively involved in reporting hazards, and have more engagement and participation in workplace training and communication to improve health and safety. While WHS risks can never be eliminated, hazards can be controlled and precautions can be put in place to reduce the risks associated with working in RMG factories. In my proposed framework, I have asked many questions related to the current health and safety program in terms of planning, implementing and reviewing to assess the common practice. I have also attempted to explore the current capacity building context from the employee awareness, workplace culture and training needs analysis. This conceptual framework from the above two perspectives provides a positive contribution to WHS improvement in the garments sector. The sample comprised 315 RMG employees and supervisors from Bangladesh. Respondents were interviewed using a questionnaire with closed-ended questions. Descriptive research was adopted in one part to determine the gender-based responses under each category. Simple random sampling is used as the sampling technique. At the same time, SPSS ANOVA test, Pearson Correlation test were used to select the significant correlation within each heading. Owing to force completion, data was free from missing value. At the same time, for the treatment for outliers, we tried to ensure that the relationships were not attributable to one or a few outliers, the scatter plots and box plot were used to examine presence of any outliers and to check for normality. For the examination for normality, normal Q-Q Plots have been used. Preliminary analysis revealed that data was normally distributed. All the constructs form a normal distribution, mostly negatively skewed and cases fall more or less in a straight line. Cronbach's Alpha was used to test reliability of the statistics. All those analyses were used to identify hazards as a source of damage, harm or adverse health effects on something or someone under certain conditions at work. The entire work environment runs on meeting the foreign buyers’ fashion cycle times. It is almost impossible to check the WHS in the floor area, where hundreds, if not thousands of workers are in action. During this research, I found employees to be careful in their workplace. Female employees were far more attentive than males due to their family dependency issues. Both male and female employees brought up the importance of training. However, employers were in a dilemma on training design and training cost arrangements with their foreign buyers. International pressure coming from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), accord and diverse lobbyist groups on meeting compliance at one side, and the continuous push from the buyers to rein in costs misaligned the drive to improve training safety and raising safety costs. Thus, the study’s findings showed that WHS issues and non-compliance are widespread and extra attention is necessary to control risks and prevent further tragedies like those of Rana Plaza and Tazreen Fashions. Furthermore, such issues cannot be disregarded in Bangladesh, owing to the massive dependency of the country on garment export earnings.
- Subject
- Bangladesh; garment manufacturers; workplace health and safety; World Trade Organisation; European Union; International Labour Organisation; information technology; occupational health and safety; personal protective equipment; ready made garment; Safe Work Australia; United Nations
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1351714
- Identifier
- uon:30764
- Rights
- Copyright 2017 Fazluz Zaman
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 67 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |