A stitch in time saves nothing for women in garment factories

The 2023 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Claudia Goldwin’s work, published in the 1980s, was perhaps the first to demonstrate the structured character of women’s economic disadvantage. Although Goldwin’s work was rooted in US and American economic histories, her theoretical contribution—the gendered structuring of households and labour markets—is immensely valuable for analysing women’s work in the global south.

India’s female labour force participation rate (LFPR), at a mere 19 per cent, is one of the lowest globally. Declining industrial employment has been one of the main reasons for low female LFPR, particularly for unskilled and semi-skilled labour seeking to move from rural to urban areas. In this context, global commodity and supply chains, particularly in labour-intensive sectors such as Ready-Made Garments (RMG), have provided a boost to employment in the global south. On the other hand, low wages paid to labour in the backdrop of disproportionately high-priced end products sold in global north retail stores—attributed to innovative financial and marketing activities by global MNCs—have attracted much criticism.

We draw here on a recent collaborative study of apparel export companies in Karnataka. The study was conducted by CIVIDEP India and Supriya Roy Chowdhury, supported by STITCH, a consortium that seeks to improve working conditions in the export garment industry across six countries. The study highlights the connection of women workers with multi-national capital in global exports, shedding light on supply chain governance.

Why study the ready-made garment industry?

While textiles contribute 15 per cent of exports from India, 40 per cent of it is contributed by the RMG sector, which employs more than 12 million people. Karnataka accounts for 20 per cent of India’s total garment production, with Bengaluru being the hub with around 500 units of varying scales and employing more than 5 lakh workers. The industry is now gradually shifting to suburban areas. The use of a largely female workforce with highly irregular and insecure wages and working conditions has cast a long shadow on the sector in Karnataka.

Our study combined a survey of 200 women with qualitative discussions with workers, NGOs, and trade unionists. The women hailed predominantly from districts in Southern Karnataka, where poor, lower caste households framed the absence of opportunities for girls to educate themselves beyond a few years of schooling (typically 8th to 10th grade). 81% of the women said that they had wanted to study more. Resource-poor households preferred to support the education of their children. Early marriages (average age was 16) to men from indigent agricultural families, migration to Bengaluru, and an RMG job were typical trajectories.

The harsh realities

Despite having worked in the same factory for 10–15 years, the average salary (as of December 2022) remained below Rs 10,000. Many workers seek overtime (OT) opportunities; however, the lack of regulated payment for extra hours poses a significant challenge. Some of the figures are telling.

50 per cent of the workers serve as the sole or primary earners, being the highest or only earners in their households.

54 per cent reported a monthly household income ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000.

17 per cent of respondents stated they received no OT compensation, often linked to unfinished work or unscheduled leave taken.

16 per cent of women engaged in additional work, typically investing around two hours daily in domestic service, piece-rate work in garment factories, tailoring, or selling flowers to supplement household income.Verbal abuse from line managers, used as an instrument to augment production, is a well-known feature of the RMG sector, and all respondents reported this to be a daily experience.  Of the workers, 68 per cent said that their factory has imposed restrictions on toilet visits and time, enforced through surveillance and verbal abuse. Punishments such as physical isolation were reported, as was sexual harassment. Most companies have grievance redressal committees. However, worker dissatisfaction is rarely articulated as formal complaints, as 93 per cent of workers have not signed a written contract of employment, and their jobs may be easily terminated. In the words of Purnima, “There are so many workers who fear the violent body language of managers and thereby leave the factory.”

Annapurna does collar attachments for 80 shirts per hour. Sometimes she avoids drinking water as she will need to use the restroom, and she cannot afford to waste time. “There is production torture as well as quality torture,” she says. Sometimes she wonders whether she will have to work until she dies. Manjula says, “Managers force us to work OT during periods of heavy order; when we express unwillingness, we are asked to not come to work the next day. But even if I request a half-day leave due to sickness, they shout at me.”

High attrition

RMG work is marked by short tenures. Although the maximum number of workers (98 per cent) were in the peak years of their working lives (18–50 years of age), less than 5 per cent had spent 21–25 years in the garments sector. Workers quit, unable to cope with the stresses of low pay, shop floor coercion, and the periodic need to withdraw provident funds or gratitude for unforeseen expenditures, combined with the responsibilities of reproduction and care at home. They then move between home-based piece-rate work, domestic service, flower stringing, and street selling.

Quitting and rejoining the factory multiple times are common. This instability keeps their wages low and prevents the growth of a stable and robust workforce. The industry’s control stretches into homes. Pushpalatha does piecework at home. Since payment is based on the number of pieces delivered, she says there is a desire to do more. “Some days I have worked from 8 am to 8 pm. Doing this continuously for five years has affected my health.”

Crisis of Social Reproduction 

Garment workers’ hardships take on a different colour in their homes. After working eight hours or more at the factory, they spend an additional three hours in the morning and another three in the evening at home, providing care in a space they recreate daily. This cycle allows the worker to barely snatch a few hours of sleep, preparing to resume as a producer of value both at the factory and within their home the next day.

This highly overstretched day results in severe time poverty, impacting workers and their families materially, physically, and emotionally. In the words of one worker, sometimes there is so much stress that she “really curses God for making me go through this pain.” Close to 60 per cent said they faced violence or harassment at home.

With a work life scattered over several companies, depleted retirement benefits, and outstanding loans, retirement can mean extreme vulnerability. After working and quitting four different companies, Shashikala had only collected Rs 45,000 combined as a provident fund from two factories to face the future after 30 years in the RMG sector. Shashikala has stopped working due to ill health,
and her son, aged 21, started working at the age of 13 to support her and now earns Rs 10,000.

Neelamma worked for 12 years, during which time she quit the company three times to avail of her provident fund (a total of Rs 1.4 lakh). She stopped working due to health issues. Of the respondents, 53 per cent said that on stopping work, they planned to return to their native villages, where many retain a small piece of land or a small house. While rural economic distress pushed them out, two or more decades of urban work in garment factories did not enable them to buy a home or land. In fact, the rural economy and households sustain many migrant workers during crises (Covid-19 lockdown, critical illness, job loss, and retirement).

Equally significant is the absence of inter-generational mobility. Household earnings are not enough to afford private, English-medium schools, which most working-class parents aspire to send their children to. The vernacular medium may not provide the necessary fluency in English to gain a foothold in even the middle echelons of the urban salary structure. A demotivating school system leads to many dropouts. About 60 per cent of adult children of garment workers were found to be employed in services, 16 per cent in construction, receiving a monthly salary of Rs 10,000–15,000. The next generation is then produced as a class replica: unskilled, low-wage informal labour.

RMG companies have provided much-needed industrial employment to unskilled and poorly educated rural and semi-rural women.

However, low wages and harsh production targets, framed by the supervisor’s wrath, define the sector. Working extra hours alongside household responsibilities leads to self-exploitation, causing physical and emotional strain on women. Goldwin’s framework helps illustrate how constrictions imposed by both the natal family and the marital home impact women’s lives and are then carried forward into an unregulated work environment. Here we see the reproduction of culture and norms that reinforce dominant social relations in the household and workplace.

In the absence of an active presence of national trade unions, smaller unions have provided commendable leadership in wage bargaining as well as raising worker awareness. Unionisation, however, remains low, at 10 per cent. Wage revisions have been irregular and unsatisfactory to workers, despite the existence of a Wage Board. While governments have remained indifferent to the need for regulation of RMG women’s work, this sector additionally calls into question the model of urbanisation that appears to be in place, which is to bring unskilled or semi-skilled rural communities to cities to work in low-paid informal work, provide subsistence wages, and leave them with nothing when they can no longer work.

(The writer is a visiting professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru; Rekha is Director, CIVIDEP India, Bengaluru)