Bangladesh and the forced labor market: Proposing regulations for the textile manufacturing industry in Bangladesh to ensure the welfare of all workers | Aarav Gedala

Abstract

Introduction

Worldwide, approximately 170 million children are actively working in textile manufacturing sweatshops (ILO, 2013). In Bangladesh, over five million children are working in the garment industry (Reuters, 2016). Not only do child labor’s roots extend from factories, but they also branch out to consumers that wear the clothes and the companies worldwide that purchase the clothes. Although child labor is the most discussed facet of labor in Bangladesh, there are several other types of illegal labor in the textile manufacturing industry that are equally important, such as forced labor. Although the country’s forced labor problem has been studied intensely over many years, Bangladesh has yet to legislate strictly defined laws against forced labor (NPR, 2016).

In 1974, the Bangladeshi government legislated the Employment of Children Act, 1938, and Rules 1955. These rules proposed multiple strategies to combat the rise of child labor in the country. Sharma and Herath, after examination of the strategies, concluded that the proposed regulations for child labor were not strict enough and not specific enough to deter formal and informal factories alike to forfeit the use of child labor (2007).

Forced labor is also prominent in the Bangladeshi working economy. Women are often physically harassed by their employers. Sadika et. al claims that workers are not allowed to raise their voice in the factories or complain at risk of employment termination. Employers rely on tactics such as pay reduction, verbal abuse, and humiliation to force workers to achieve their production goals. Often, workers are forced to stay inside the compound, even in emergencies, as seen by the Tazreen Fashions factory.

As of 2020, the Bangladeshi government implemented a wider variety of restrictions on the worst forms of child labor, however omitting the informal sector, which is a leading supplier of child labor in the country. The Bangladesh Labor Act did not include improvements towards the specificity of the term “child labor”, and efforts towards hastening the legal process of imposing fines against utilizers of child labor were not pursued (DOL, 2020).

Although significant efforts have been made to alleviate the forced labor crisis that is interlinked with the human trafficking crisis, those efforts have not been able to address the entire crisis. Law enforcement agencies repeatedly dismiss human trafficking cases, and the United States Government claims that the Bangladeshi government has put minimal effort into resolving these problems. When migrants from Vietnam attempted to move to Bangladesh to escape forced labor, the government of Bangladesh arrested them instead of seeking refuge for them. This points toward the fact that the Bangladeshi government focuses less on its forced labor crisis than appropriate due to the situation. Therefore, stricter regulations must be legislated to encompass all surfaces of the problem.

What fashion labor regulations should be created and enforced in Bangladesh, considering the lack of regulations on the fashion industry in the country? This paper argues that while Bangladesh’s labor acts were legislated to protect workers’ rights and welfare, it has been proven that the regulations have not functioned to their highest level of efficiency, as seen by poor and unfair working conditions, and dangerous workplaces. Therefore, workplace hour regulations and inspector regulations should be legislated to ensure the welfare of all workers. Workplace hour regulations include the regulations set by the International Labour Organization, which state that as an international norm, workers should be subjected to no longer than forty-eight hours of work a week, and no more than eight hours a day.

After carefully examining multiple sources of literature reviewing the labor crisis in Bangladesh, this paper proposes additional regulations to significantly decrease the number of people forced to work in textile manufacturing plants and therefore alleviate large amounts of pressure applied to the government of Bangladesh to reform their labor system.

Literature Review

Bangladesh’s human rights crisis has caught the attention of international labor rights organizations such as the International Labor Organization, which has prompted intensive studying of the crisis and identified several proposals to combat the crisis. The literature suggests that Bangladesh’s current Labor Act has not been adapted to fit the needs of the country, and further reworking of the Act is necessary to protect workers against illegal or pressured labor. This literature review introduces the topics of child labor’s prevalence in Bangladesh, poor working conditions, worker abuse, failures in regulating the industry, and the importance of planning regulations correctly.

Prevalence of Child Labor

In many factories in Bangladesh, child labor is used to lower the cost of labor used to produce textiles. Often, factories use illegal means to exploit children, such as forcing or threatening children to work after factory closing times, allowing factories to meet their production goals. However, the Bangladesh Labor Act does not permit labor beyond a total of forty-eight hours per week, which is legislation often illegally bypassed by factories (Reuters, 2016). Extensive legal processes make prosecution of felonious companies extremely difficult for local authorities, allowing both informal and formal factories alike to utilize child labor without the possibility of serious prosecution by government officials.

Child Labor in Bangladesh takes many forms, including, but not limited to, the bidis, dried fish, bricks, footwear, furniture, garments, glass, leather, matches, poultry, salt, shrimp, soap, textiles, and jute industries. The presence of child labor in a wide distribution of labor types makes rectifying the several labor industries in Bangladesh extremely difficult, considering the constraints of the current Bangladesh Labor Act (DOL, 2019).

Multiple proposals have been made in order to assist in the combat of child labor in Bangladesh, such as the Country Level Engagement and Assistance to Reduce Child Labour. This approach, which is a large-scale attempt to combat child labor in multiple countries, includes regulating several aspects of the Bangladesh Labor Act, such as the minimum age to work, proving that regulations must be enforced to repair the damage done to the textile manufacturing industry in the country (ILO). Although regulations may be applied towards working conditions, law enforcement regulations must be legislated along with working condition regulations for all of the regulations to work to their highest efficiency.

Prevalence of Poor Working Conditions

GlobalEDGE states that most developing countries “do n[o]t uphold Fair Trade Certificates” meaning that the governments and formal factories place extremely heavy restrictions against labor unions and employee working hours (ILO, 2017). Without the ability to formulate a protest against factories, workers in singularity lack the courage to speak against their organization of employment, due to the fear of being terminated. Without protests, it is tough to prove that workers are being forced to work in poor working conditions. Several fatal incidents occur in Bangladesh’s Textile Manufacturing Factories, most notably the Rana Plaza incident and the Tazreen Plaza incident. The Rana Plaza incident was caused by an earthquake that led to the collapse of the building. One day before the incident, inspectors deemed the complex unsuitable for work, and a public safety hazard. It was advised for workers to be evacuated from the building–however, the owner of the factory, Mohammed Sohel Rana, requested that employees report for work the next day at risk of possible termination, leading to the deaths and injuries of nearly all persons working in the building (Human Rights Watch, 2014).

The Tazreen Plaza accident happened under similar circumstances, which led to smaller-scale destruction. However, it can be argued that the incident at the Tazreen Plaza occurred under harsher circumstances, since even after the building suffered immediate, life-threatening damage, workers were not allowed to evacuate, and were forced to continue manufacturing products while the floors were burning and fire alarms rang (Human Rights Watch, 2014). Workers such as Reba Khatun, who worked at the Tazreen Fashions Factory, were forced to jump three stories to escape the fire, upon the doors being locked. Reba suffered extensive spinal cord injuries which needed to be treated in three separate hospitals (United States Senate, 2020).

The Rana Plaza Incident and the Tazreen Plaza incident were two outstanding examples of poor working conditions in Bangladesh. However, the scope of “poor working conditions” encompasses more than employer corruption.

Prevalence of worker abuse

Workers in Bangladeshi textile manufacturing factories have provided evidence that they are often made to submit to various counts of abuse and harassment. 65% of all Bangladeshi textile manufacturers are women, and often these women are harassed and abused by their often male employers. Reports from the United States Senate claim that this crisis is an immediate call to protect labor workers’ rights universally (Reuters, 2020).

Women in the textile labor industry were forced to comply with their employer’s demands, under the risk of termination, wage cuts, or withholding of pay. Female workers in the Bangladeshi textile industry were made to stay quiet about various methods of abuse to protect their employers. For a majority of workers, employers create subjective standards that vary from factory to factory that allow employers to lower payments or even deny it in total due to behaviors deemed “unacceptable” (National Library of Medicine, 2019).

Importance of the Planning of Regulations

Regulations regarding worker health and safety must be carefully planned to ensure the actual safety of the workers. According to Sinkoviks et. al, regulations that pressure  immediate compliance by companies alter the priorities of their factories; companies become more focused on producing measurable statistics to meet the regulations. When this occurs, companies must find a way to recover profits lost during the regulating period, therefore lowering working wages. Providing stricter regulations forces factories to hire skilled workers to efficiently manufacture products, which in turn leaves unskilled workers unemployed. Without careful planning by the Bangladeshi government, the regulations legislated would not work to their full effectiveness. Therefore, regulations must be carefully planned to circumvent all possible negative outcomes.

After the Rana Plaza Incident in 2012, Bangladesh legislated a revision of the Labor Act, with hopes of persuading the worldwide public that the state actively takes action to protect its citizens. However, the labor act consisted of multiple flaws that did not act to the benefit of laborers in the textile manufacturing industry. Many of such regulations applied to the formulation of Labor Unions. Currently, Labor Union Regulations compose of laws such as requiring thirty percent or more of all laborers in an organization to join a labor union to have the labor union legally registered into the government systems. Human Rights Watch states:

Unions will be allowed to select their leaders only from workers at the establishment. This will enable employers to force out union leaders by firing them for an ostensibly non-union-related reason, a common practice globally. Workers in export processing zones, which cover a large percentage of Bangladesh’s workforce, would remain legally unable to form trade unions.”

Allowing employers to fire laborers indirectly due to protesting working conditions is arguably unethical, and promotes an unsafe workplace. Therefore, it is essential, for the safety of laborers, that regulations should be carefully planned to avoid a variety of inconveniences to laborers.

Methodology

This paper reviews Bangladeshi labor regulations and proposes ideas for what can be done to ensure a fair and safe working environment for workers in the textile manufacturing industry.  To ensure that reliable sources were found for preliminary research, search engines such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and Google were used to research key terms, such as or similar to “Bangladesh Labor Regulations”, “Bangladesh Textile Worker Environment”, “Bangladesh Child Labor”, and “Bangladesh Forced Labor”. Sources used in this paper vary from organizations like the United States Department of Labor, Reuters, and the International Labor Organization. My sources were collected from websites such as international coalitions, the Bangladeshi government, and the United States Government. A majority of my sources are secondary sources since workers in the Bangladesh textile industry often cannot speak directly about their experiences in factories.

To narrow down the paper to its most relevant facets, several articles were reviewed that contained critiques of Bangladesh’s proposed plans for regulation of the textile manufacturing industry. Sharma and Herath provided detailed explanations and critiques of a majority of the regulations in place by the government to combat the spread of illegal or unsafe work. Sharma and Herath also provided evidence that in the eyes of employers and factory owners, factory profit was worth more than worker safety and health. To provide a clearer and more generally concise paper, arguments and findings will be separated into multiple parts, the first being arguments detailing the effectiveness of regulations as shown in countries such as Mexico, the next being past proposed regulations for the textile manufacturing industry, and the remaining point being possible regulations in the textile manufacturing industry. These articles will serve as bases for the research that this paper will be conducting. This article will build upon these articles to form a newly generated set of textile manufacturing regulations.

When using scholarly search engines, I used the “cited by” and “similar to” functions to find similar articles that could provide information for my paper. Cross-referencing certain articles allowed me to gain a greater understanding of the topic, as well as locate other significant articles that expanded the extent of the paper. To provide concrete evidence for my paper’s arguments, the paper uses a comparative style approach by comparing regulatory success in other countries as compared to Bangladesh.

Research Findings and Analysis

Comparison: Mexico Forced Labor Alleviation

Roughly, Mexico and Bangladesh have similar size workforces, with projections for the Bangladeshi workforce population being 69,816,327 people, and the Mexico workforce population is projected at around 57,297,553 people, according to the World Bank. These statistics place Mexico’s Labor Participation Percentage at around 57.3% and Bangladesh’s at around 69.3%. As shown in Figure 1, Mexico’s and Bangladesh’s labor forces grow at almost the same rates, therefore Bangladesh and Mexico can be compared in the labor industry.

Figure 1

Note. This graph shows the growth of the labor force in Bangladesh and Mexico, per millions of people. The sudden drop near the 2020 drop on the x-axis is due to the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic and its effect on jobs in the respective countries. From Labor Force, Total - Bangladesh, Mexico. (2021). The World Bank. Retrieved August 15, 2022, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN?end=2021&locations=BD-MX&start=1990&view=chart.  

Child Labor Regulations have proven to lower child labor in Mexico, so it is a reasonable approach for Bangladesh. Bangladesh and Mexico share a common factor in that child and forced labor are prominent activities in their respective countries. Mexico made conscious efforts to combat its child labor crisis, which in turn alleviated much of its forced labor crisis. In a thorough examination of the Mexican legislature by the United States Department of Labor, the United States found that Mexico:

ratified International Labor Organization Convention 189 on Domestic Workers and revised the Migration Law and Refugee Assistance and Asylum Law to prioritize the rights of migrant and refugee children, including prohibiting the detention of children in migrant centers and ensuring migrant and refugee children have educational access. Moreover, state governments investigated and prosecuted at least 199 child trafficking cases (U.S Department of Labor, 2019)

Figure 2

Note. From ALLIANCE 8.7. (n.d.). “Mexico.” ALLIANCE 8.7, https://www.alliance87.org/pathfinder_countries/mexico/.  

The government’s examination of Mexico’s legislature suggests that Mexico has identified the root of its child labor crisis, the human trafficking industry, and is moving slowly towards eradicating child labor in its entirety.  To keep children out of the forced labor industry, Mexico provided educational services to 3,200 children recently pulled out of the forced labor system.

When examined further, Mexico’s legislature points toward several regulations regarding the strictness of the court and the proactiveness of the police force. According to the United States Department of State, Mexico has not fully eliminated its human trafficking crisis, although the government is making significant efforts to combat the problem. Mexico’s regulations included the reworking of their previous criminal system into an accusatory system. Accusatory systems follow the American Court Model, meaning that defendants can present evidence and propose arguments, and court trials are relatively expeditious and fully transparent. Mexico’s improvements included “identifying more victims in Mexico and abroad; investigating and prosecuting allegedly corrupt or complicit government officials, including the conviction of a government official to 39 years imprisonment; maintaining law enforcement cooperation with the United States; providing increased resources for victim services; and initiating more investigations as a result of hotline referrals”(U.S. Department of State, 2020).

Proposed Regulations for Working Condition Improvement

In a 2020 report by the United States Senate, the Senate proposed multiple strategies to combat currently existing forced labor in Bangladesh. The report stated that the Bangladesh government should regulate industrial-related misconduct with a court of labor, where due processes will be taken. The report also claimed that no such cases should be brought to the attention of the police station or criminal court to resolve the problem.

The Senate also proposes modifications to the authority of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), by transferring the authority of distributing utilization declarations from BGMEA to the Ministry of Labor and Employment. Utilization declarations are “essentially a license to export [goods]” (U.S Senate, 2020). The Senate then introduces another regulation to the plan–expanding upon the framework of the utilization declarations in order to include “standards on factory safety and labor rights” (2020). If these laws were to be legislated, then factories would have no choice but to export ethically produced textiles to gain a profit.

BGMEA puts forward a problem in current regulatory processes, being that its mission is to “establish a healthy business environment for a close and mutually beneficial relationship between the manufacturers, exporters, and importers in the process ensuring a steady growth in the foreign exchange earnings of the country” (Assignment Point). The mission of BGMEA suggests an overarching goal of producing income in the Bangladeshi garment industry. Therefore, it would present an ethical problem to allow the organization to control welfare-related regulations in the industry. Rizwana Hasan, an environmental lawyer, claims that BGMEA should have no legal authority over regulations, as many of its influential members consist of citizens who hold political positions in the government. Hasan refers to BGMEA as the “clubhouse of the garment industry” (New York Times, 2013), meaning that the organization acts as a haven for factories aiming towards producing a profit. Therefore, regulations should be legislated concluding that BGMEA holds no political power over exports, imports, or the “foreign exchange earnings of the country”.

The U.S Senate has also identified a possible way to alleviate illegal or forced labor by giving workers the right to assemble, as stated in the International Labor Standards. In factory work, labor unions are the preferred option for protest. The Senate proposes a reworking of labor union protection, particularly the prosecution of anti-union practices and anti-union employers. Along with regulating the prosecution of anti-union practices, the Senate introduced a proposal for disposing of the lengthy legal process for founding a labor union. By removing a majority of the legal processes, labor unions will be easier to assemble,  and therefore the right to assemble will be achieved.

Newly Proposed Regulations for Working Condition Improvement

As previously stated, law enforcement regulations are imperative to the alleviation of the forced labor crisis in Bangladesh. During the Rana Plaza collapse in 2012, Mohammed Sohel Rana sent police officers away after the factory was proven to be unstable. Without strict control over regulations in the law enforcement department, events similar to Rana Plaza may occur in Bangladesh in the future. Therefore, Bangladesh must prosecute employers of factories such as Ranza Plaza and Tazreen Fashions, where injury rates were high and workers were unethically held in their workplace. More pointedly, we must heighten regulations on the prosecution of employers in the textile manufacturing industry to deter factories from exploiting their workers. As this paper previously mentioned, taxes and fines have been imposed upon factories with formal operations that break regulations, which has proven to be ineffective since fines are relatively minuscule compared to the net profit textile manufacturing factories produce.

Another problem previously mentioned in this paper is illegal informal factory operations, in which child and forced labor are often common. It is often hard for law enforcement to impose fines upon these organizations because such organizations are not registered in any government system. Therefore, a possible solution could be to regulate exports. The United States Senate mentioned regulations on utilization declarations that could force factories to source their labor ethically. Making informal factories into formal factories will possibly increase the amounts of skilled laborers in Bangladesh, as well as send a majority of people out of the human trafficking industry.

Maximum standard working times must be enforced to protect all workers’ physical and emotional well-being. During the ILO Hours of Work (Industry) Convention (No.1) of 1919, a directive was proposed stating that the weekly working hours of any specific worker should not exceed forty-eight hours, and daily work should not exceed eight hours total. However, the directive states that “In several exceptional cases, working time is allowed to exceed these limits, as long as daily working time remains not higher than ten hours, and weekly working time not higher than 56 hours” (ILO, 2004). Working for longer than these set guidelines raises risks of strokes by 35% and ischemic heart disease by 17%, as described by the World Health Organization. In a shared labor study between the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization, it was found that “in 2016, 398 000 people died from stroke and 347 000 from heart disease as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease due to working long hours increased by 42%, and from stroke by 19%”(WHO, 2021). Accordingly, to protect the health and welfare of laborers, the government of Bangladesh must set work hour regulations to prevent deaths indirectly caused by the labor industry.

Conclusion

Throughout this research paper, the main argument I made was that while Bangladesh’s labor acts were legislated to protect workers’ rights and welfare, it has been proven that the regulations have not functioned to their highest level of efficiency, as seen by poor and unfair working conditions, and dangerous workplaces. Therefore, workplace hour regulations and inspector regulations should be legislated to ensure the welfare of all workers. Human rights cases such as the Tazreen fashions factory Incident and the Rana Plaza Incident cement this argument by indicating the failure of Bangladeshi policies such as the 2006 Labor Act of Bangladesh and the Accord on Fire And Building Safety in Bangladesh. Chronic mistreatment in Bangladeshi garment factories becomes more apparent over time with action by various governments to investigate forced labor allegations in Bangladesh. Female and Child mistreatment in factories affects lower-class families who often have only one source of income in their households. Withholding of pay from these families can lead to other problems, such as starvation, or the inability of parents to care for their children due to a lack of resources. In order to protect an ever-growing social class characterized by poverty, the Bangladeshi government should regulate the textile manufacturing industry to ensure the welfare of all workers.

This paper uses a legislative view of the problem, addressing issues by proposing corresponding regulations. For example, the Bangladeshi government should disband BGMEA, an organization devoted to producing profits for Bangladesh solely through the garment industry, which puts both economic and welfare-related problems into singular governance, consequently presenting an ethical problem. The government should also address utilization declarations, and modify the requirements to add the necessity of good worker welfare in order to be eligible to export goods. Doing this would essentially “strongarm” factories into following regulations, and would be denied the ability to export goods if not. Working hours should also be regulated, for a variety of health reasons. Working for more than 56 hours in a week can raise the risks of heart disease and strokes, making it imperative for Bangladesh to effectively regulate working hours for both adults and children.

This paper had a number of factors that allowed for some short sight in research, such as the lack of statistics regarding adult forced labor. The reason behind this is that most popular media stems from shocking or negative information, and the child labor crisis currently trumps the adult labor crisis in terms of shock. Therefore, most of the media focused on solely child labor. Most information found on regulating the crisis had to do with environmental factors, rather than humanitarian factors. Therefore, I relied on websites such as the United States Department of Labor, the Senate, the Bangladeshi Government, the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and the International Labor Organization in order to justify my claims.

Not only does the general public demand change in the Bangladeshi regulations, but there have been several internal movements to combat unfairness in legislation. Workers demand minimum monthly payments of $100, which consequently causes factories to close due to the danger of protest. Reuters claims that Bangladesh has “Very low labour costs…[which] makes the country of 160 million the cheapest place to make large quantities of clothing, with 60 percent of clothes going to Europe and 23 percent to the United States”(Reuters, 2013). Bangladesh’s forced labor problem can no longer be an oversight in the eyes of the government. The problem must be solved through regulations for the salvation of the lower-class population.

References

Akhter, S., Rutherford, S., & Chu, C. (2019). Sufferings in silence: Violence against female workers in the ready-made garment industry in Bangladesh: A qualitative exploration. Women’s Health, 15, 1745506519891302. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745506519891302 

ALLIANCE 8.7. (n.d.). Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://www.alliance87.org/pathfinder_countries/mexico/ 

Angry Bangladesh garment workers protest over pay, factories shut. (2013, September 23). Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/bangladesh-garments-idINDEE98M07B20130923 

Atkinson-Sheppard, S. (2016). The gangs of Bangladesh: Exploring organized crime, street gangs and ‘illicit child labourers’ in Dhaka. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 16(2), 233–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895815616445 

Bangladesh. (n.d.). United States Department of State. Retrieved August 4, 2022, from https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-trafficking-in-persons-report/bangladesh/ 

Bangladesh urged to stop worker abuse in garment industry. (2020, March 9). Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-worker-rights-idUSKBN20W25O 

Bangladesh—Economy | Britannica. (n.d.). Retrieved July 27, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/place/Bangladesh/Economy 

Bangladeshi slum kids work over 60 hours a week to make clothes: Research. (2016, December 7). Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-children-labour-idUSKBN13W1YL 

Beaubien, J. (2016, December 7). Study: Child Laborers In Bangladesh Are Working 64 Hours A Week. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/12/07/504681046/study-child-laborers-in-bangladesh-are-working-64-hours-a-week 

Bhagwati, J., & Panagariya, A. (2013). Reforms and Economic Transformation in India. OUP USA.

Child Labor and Forced Labor Reports—Mexico | U.S. Department of Labor. (n.d.). Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/mexico 

Child Labour in Bangladesh (ILO in Bangladesh). (n.d.). Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://www.ilo.org/dhaka/Areasofwork/child-labour/lang--en/index.htm 

Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor—Uzbekistan | U.S. Department of Labor. (n.d.). Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/uzbekistan 

Functions and Activities of BGMEA. (n.d.). Assignment Point. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://assignmentpoint.com/functions-and-activities-of-bgmea/ 

Labor force, total—Bangladesh | Data. (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2022, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN?end=2021&locations=BD&start=2021&view=map 

Labor force, total—Bangladesh, Mexico | Data. (n.d.). Retrieved August 15, 2022, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN?end=2021&locations=BD-MX&start=1990&view=chart.

Long working hours increasing deaths from heart disease and stroke: WHO, ILO. (n.d.). Retrieved August 9, 2022, from https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2021-long-working-hours-increasing-deaths-from-heart-disease-and-stroke-who-ilo 

Mexico. (n.d.). United States Department of State. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-trafficking-in-persons-report/mexico/

Paton, E. (2021, August 25). International brands sign a new accord to protect garment workers in Bangladesh. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/business/garment-worker-safety-accord.html 

Reuters. (2021, October 23). Mexico probing allegations of forced labor at tomato export firms. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-probing-allegations-forced-labor-tomato-export-firms-2021-10-23/ 

Risch, J. E., Rubio, M., Johnson, R., Gardner, C., Romney, M., Graham, L., Carolina, S., Barrasso, J., Portman, R., Paul, R., Young, T., Cruz, T., Perdue, D., Menendez, R., Cardin, B. L., Shaheen, J., Coons, C. A., Udall, T., Murphy, C., … Socha, C. M. (n.d.). COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS. 50.

Saage-Maaß, M., Zumbansen, P., Bader, M., & Shahab, P. (Eds.). (2021). Transnational Legal Activism in Global Value Chains: The Ali Enterprises Factory Fire and the Struggle for Justice (Vol. 6). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73835-8 

Sharma, K., & Herath, D. G. (2012). Child Labour in South Asia. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Siddiqui, J., & Uddin, S. (2016). Human rights disasters, corporate accountability and the state: Lessons learned from Rana Plaza. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 29(4), 679–704. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-07-2015-2140 

Stewart, J. F. (2019). The importance and challenges of measuring work hours. IZA World of Labor. https://doi.org/10.15185/izawol.95 

The Impact of Fast Fashion in Bangladesh—The Borgen Project. (n.d.). Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://borgenproject.org/fast-fashion-in-bangladesh/ 

Uzbek cotton is free from systemic child labour and forced labour. (2022, March 1). [News]. http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_838396/lang--en/index.htm 

Viollaz, M. (2016). Are Labor Inspections Protecting Workers’ Rights? Adding the Evidence from Size-based Labor Regulations and Fines in Peru. International Labour Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12038 

Wells, D. (2005). Best Practice in the Regulation of International Labor Standards: Lessons of the U.S.-Cambodia Textile Agreement. Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, 27, 357.

“Whoever Raises their Head Suffers the Most”: Workers’ Rights in Bangladesh’s Garment Factories. (2015). Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/04/22/whoever-raises-their-head-suffers-most/workers-rights-bangladeshs-garment 

Working Conditions in the Textile Industry. (2017, October 19). https://globaledge.msu.edu/blog/post/54484/working-conditions-in-the-textile-indust 

Yardley, J. (2013, July 25). Garment Trade Wields Power in Bangladesh. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/world/asia/garment-trade-wields-power-in-bangladesh.html 

Zarroli, J. (2013, May 9). Bangladesh’s Powerful Garment Sector Fends Off Regulation. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2013/05/09/182637164/bangladeshs-powerful-garment-sector-fends-off-regulation