Richer Bosses, Poorer Workers

The garment industry contributes 16.63% to the foreign earnings of India and it employs over 3.5 million workers. There are five different garment production hubs in India, all specialize in different types of garment production. Bangalore is one of the centres of production of garment and has somewhere around 1200 big, small and medium sized garment factories. Workers employed in this sector in Bangalore are nearly five hundred thousand. With the phasing out of the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA) in 2005 the world garment industry was put on one platform where the countries had to compete with each other to grab business. On the one hand work pressure has been constantly rising while on the other working conditions in the factories are going from bad to worse. While the garment industry is one of the biggest sources of export, with considerable and rapid increase in growth (much of it over the last four decades), there has been a corresponding race to the bottom insofar as labour standards and wages are concerned.