ActionAid Bangladesh has been working with the RMG workers for empowering them to claim their rights. The purpose of the project is to improve the working conditions of the workers. To reach its objective we seek to raise awareness on the Bangladesh Labour Law (BLL) 2006 among the workers as well as the management. The approach follows Peer educator techniques and the train the trainer methods to enable the RMG workers in order to create a bottom‐up pressure of rights enablement that eventually will contribute to the betterment of the working conditions as well as the gender friendly workplace. Another approach of our work is women’s café. This woman's café is a place where the women workers are gathered to receive the training on labour law as well as their rights. The workers also conduct meeting and have some game on their rights in this café.
ActionAid Bangladesh is also working to build the capacity of local partners around labour rights issues. The overall objectives of the project are translated in to:
‐ Women RMG workers have a comprehensive understanding on Bangladesh Labour Law 2006.
‐ Women RMG workers have a collective voice in the form of functional participation committee and are able to mediate conflict between management and workers.
‐ RMG factory owners and management understands the benefits of compliance and the importance of gender friendly work‐place.
‐ A movement of the RMG workers for living wage campaign takes hold.
ActionAid Bangladesh is working with five local partners (Awaj Foundation, Karmojibi Nari, PSTC, Agrajattra, OWDEB) who have long time experience to work with labour and women issues in Bangladesh. The project working with 1000 RMG factories basically in two RMG hubs named Dhaka and Chittagong in Bangladesh. Starting from May 2011 to September 2013, this project was active in Ashulia, Tejgaon, Gulshan, Pallabi, Darussalam, Badda, Kafrul, Mirpur inside Dhaka district and Jaidebpur in Gazipur district. In Chittagong, the project was taking place in Kotowali, Baizid bostami, Chandgaon and Bakulia. The project has altogether 45 women’s cafes, which are located adjacent to the RMG factories and worker’s slum areas. The project targets to provide direct training to 20 thousand RMG workers mostly female workers, then they form a group of 10 members from their production floor. Consequently we called them PEG (Peer Educator Group) Leader and PEG Member. The PEG Leader conducts informal meeting or the interactive game to disseminate their knowledge over labour law as well as their rights.
The project has some legal advisors align with partner NGOs who are enlisted to Bangladesh labour court are assigned to provide legal support to the RMG workers. Beyond this the project conducts some advocacy works like seminar, dialogue and capacity building workshop with RMG owners, officials, buyers and government officials to make the sector accountable. Capacity building training for factory mid level staff around gender issues, labour law and better floor management is also is also arranged from the project. An initiative around living wage campaign is also our concentration of the project.