Raising Labour Standards in Bangladesh’s Global Garment Industry: What Role for Compensation Rights?

Our research seeks to understand the experiences of the Rana Plaza claimants and trace experiences of compensation beyond the claims-making process to answer three core questions:

(1.)   How did claimants experience the Rana Plaza Arrangement? The compensation agreement was designed by stakeholders to be appropriate to the national context and compliant with international labour standards; we will explore barriers to effective registration, calculation, and payments.

(2.)   How did receiving compensation affect the lives and livelihoods of claimants in the years since? We will pay particular attention to gender-, age-, and disability-related factors, especially the experiences of widows, elderly dependants, and disabled workers.

(3.)   How do claimants perceive work-injury compensation in relation to the quest for justice? For victims of workplace harm, compensation claims and the pursuit of justice are intimately linked (Miller 2012, Sumon et al. 2017). We seek to understand how claimants regard the treatment of legal accountability of employers and brands in the aftermath of Rana Plaza.

^{Image courtesy of Tazreen Claims Administration}