Automation makes RMG workers’ workload easier: Sanem

Business Report :
The majority of garment workers prefer new equipment because they think it will enhance productivity, lessen their workload, and provide better quality.
It was discovered through a survey carried out by the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (Sanem), in association with the nonprofit organization Microfinance Opportunities (MFO), based in the United States.
The “Garment Worker Diaries” project has been conducting weekly surveys of over 1,300 carefully chosen garment workers since April 2020. The June 2022 study was a follow-up to this investigation on how workers see automation.
Sanem said that these labourers are engaged in industries located throughout Bangladesh’s five primary industrial regions (Chittagong, Dhaka City, Gazipur, Narayanganj, and Savar).
In the study, 73% of respondents indicated a desire for a new machine, while 27% indicated a dislike for one.
They expressed a desire for a new machine during the study for a number of different reasons, and their responses reflected some common views. Whereas another employee was extremely precise about the advantages of the new machine she already had and said: “If it helps to meet the target quickly, then I want the machine.”
“I work with computer machines, it comes with a knife that cuts the yarn mechanically. The equipment can also work relatively quickly, she continued. The workers also said that if there is a new machine, the quality of the work will be better, more orders will come and this will increase their salaries.
In the survey in June 2022, when asked whether their workload changed when they last got a new machine, overwhelmingly, 85% of workers reported that their work quota increased.
However, given the increase in workers’ workload after automation, when asked whether they got paid more. Their responses suggest that most of them did not get paid any more than before.
Among them who responded about an increase in their workload, 71% said their salary did not change.
In that case, one possible justification that their employers might provide for why workers’ salaries did not increase, despite their increases in productivity, is that the new machines they were using made their work easier.