In most major RMG factories, Freedom of Association (FoA) and the ability to collectively bargain remain limited. Trade unions often face systemic restrictions through policies and labour laws that do not align with ILO Labour Standards. As a result, workers have little scope to negotiate better wages or working conditions, leading to persistent living wage gaps.
To address this, ETI launched the Workplace Social Dialogue Programme (SDP) in 2015, aiming to build foundational dialogue mechanisms between workers and management. Over two phases, the programme has helped embed functioning grievance systems, Worker Participation Committees (WPCs), and Sexual Harassment Complaint Committees (SHCCs) in 89 factories, directly engaging over 216,700 workers—more than half of whom are women.
In parallel, the Gender Sensitive Workplace Programme (GSWP), launched in 2021, reached 86,000 workers across 37 factories, deepening gender-specific interventions.
Together, these programmes lay the foundation for an enabling environment where social dialogue, collective bargaining, and eventually effective trade unionism can thrive—an essential condition for achieving living wages that keep pace with inflation.
Workplace interventions:
1) Building workplace stakeholders capacity to advocate for improved wages
2) Living wage data collection and benchmarking
3) Dialogue between brands/buyers, suppliers, and worker representatives
Theory of change
The three main proposed interventions and interrelated, all contributing to encouraging different target stakeholder groups to advocate for the payment of living wages.
The long-term impact of our proposed interventions in that decent work is achieved for RMG workers in the target countries. Further, achieving this impact in these geographies would stimulate improvements globally. The interventions are designed to build the capacity of the various stakeholder groups to continually demand or negotiate improvements to wages and working conditions, hence outcomes are not static and interventions are sustainable by nature.