Labour Governance in Bangladesh's Garment Sector: Exploring the Relationships between Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives and Labour Actors

This paper explores the relationships between multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) and labour actors at both national and factory levels, through the lens of the labour regimes framework. MSIs are often described as "cooperation-based" alternatives to brands' corporate social responsibility supposed to compensate power imbalances between actors. By linking global production dynamics with territorialised economic, political, and social structures, the labour regimes approach offers a valuable perspective for understanding labour outcomes at the factory level. Further, it helps to analyse the interactions between labour, capital, and the state, and to reveal the relationships between various stakeholders. The study focuses on three MSIs—Ethical Trading Initiative, Fair Wear Foundation, and Better Work — as well as key labour actors, specifically trade unions, labour NGOs, and workers, in Bangladesh's garment sector. It highlights the ambivalent relationships among these stakeholders. While much of the existing literature examines the composition, processes, and outcomes of MSIs, this paper shifts the focus to how these global initiatives are perceived by labour actors and the nature of their relationships in a context where labour is highly fragmented labour. The study draws on a qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in and around Dhaka, complaints submitted to MSIs, and newspaper articles. Findings suggest that trade unions have very limited engagement with MSIs. In contrast, some labour NGOs collaborate with MSIs on specific programmes, while workers' use of MSI complaint mechanisms remains extremely limited. Overall, MSIs provide only a marginal tool for labour actors, amidst a broader but fragmented array of both local and global strategies for addressing power imbalances between actors.