As Bangladesh’s Factories Turn to Surveillance and Automation, Garment Workers Feel the Pressure
- Automation in Dhaka’s garment factories is leading to job cuts, especially for women.
- Smart surveillance devices monitor workers as factories struggle to compete globally.
- Brands are “pleased” by smart factories that produce efficiently and quickly.
The young woman quickly sewed a piece of gray fabric and handed it down the manufacturing line at one of Dhaka’s largest garment factories. She looked impatiently at the woman before her, as if willing her to work faster and pass on the next piece.
Atop her sewing machine, a screen glowed a red warning. She had made only seven pieces so far, it showed. Her target for the day was 101. As she progressed, the screen’s color would change to orange, and then, if she hit the target, green. If she remained consistently behind, she would be fired.
The tablet-sized screen is part of an internet-connected device called “Nidle,” short for “No idle.” Its sensors track how many pieces the woman sews in an hour, and how many minutes she is idle.
Nidle is among the newly adopted devices in Bangladesh’s top garment factories that fall in the category of “smart manufacturing.” These include fully robotic devices and partially automated machines that require some human guidance. The factories supply brands such as H&M and Zara, which rely on bringing mass-manufactured garments to retail quickly, before a trend dies out.
Having computerized machines drive human labor is meant to solve a critical problem facing Bangladesh’s garment sector: rising wages in a nation whose competitive edge historically has been its cheap workforce.
“Increasingly, workers are getting scarce in a country like Bangladesh, where per capita income is increasing. So workers are demanding more,” Khondaker Golam Moazzem, research director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka, told Rest of World. “There is a tendency, at least to some extent, to use machines to replace workers.”
The Nidle device has a sensor that can track how many items are sewn and how long the machine remains idle.
Smart technology has improved productivity and wages, and made Bangladesh’s top factories more globally competitive, factory owners and their industry association told Rest of World. After installing Nidle and semi-automatic machines in the factories owned by Team Group, a Bangladeshi conglomerate that supplies brands including H&M and Guess, production has increased by up to 10%, according to Abdulla Hil Rakib, the managing director. The machines can perform tasks such as attaching buttons or pockets with minimal human effort.
“The automated system helps identify bottlenecks, allowing us to use the same workforce for better production,” he said. “As my production rate improves due to automation, I can afford better salaries.”
But workers, union representatives, and academics told Rest of World that wages have increased only because of worker protests, and not smarter factories. Automation has cost jobs, especially for women, union leaders said. Only 57% of garment workers in 2023 were women, down from 85% in 1991. Semi-automated machines require workers to match the speed of the machines, increasing stress, they said.
“Use of such devices is creating an imbalance between the automated speed of the machine and human capacity, leading to the departure of female workers not being able to cope with automation,” Babul Akthar, secretary-general of the trade group Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, told Rest of World.
There is constant pressure, we feel like we are simmering on a stove.
About 3 million garment workers in Bangladesh sewed mostly T-shirts, pants, and other low-value garments, feeding the $1.7 trillion fast fashion industry last year. The sector is key to Bangladesh’s economy, and contributed 77% of the nation’s $50 billion in exports last year, according to Bangladesh’s Export Promotion Bureau.
With rising competition from other garment-producing countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia, top factories in Bangladesh are stepping up automation. A 2023 survey of 20 factories in Dhaka by Shimmy Technologies, an industrial edtech company that upskills garment workers, found that 80% of them were planning to buy semi-automated machines in the next two years.
“If we can’t bring in the automation, the competitors will win the market,” Ayaz Aziz, general manager at Shimmy, told Rest of World.
Each machine could replace between one and six workers, and the largest factories surveyed anticipated cutting 22% of their workforce. Workers and factory operators told Rest of World job cuts are already happening.
This comes at a time when garment workers in Dhaka are protesting low wages and poor working conditions. The political crisis last year that led to the ouster of the government also shut down 92 factories, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
One morning in January, the factory floor of 4A Yarn Dyeing Ltd. on the outskirts of Dhaka filled with the loud hum of 800 machines and the whir of exhaust fans. There was a flurry of motion, but no one talked because of a rule of silence. Sixteen assembly lines manufactured an ash-colored winter jacket for Tommy Hilfiger.
Mahmudur Rahman, manager at the factory, told Rest of World manufacturing lines have shrunk from 58 machines to 48 with automation. Some workers operate up to three machines at a time, he said.
The sewing machines had Nidle, made by Team Group’s subsidiary, Intellier. It monitored how efficiently the workers were completing tasks, and whether they were improving.
A 35-year-old worker at the factory, who requested anonymity to safeguard her job, told Rest of World her target had increased by 75% after Nidle was installed in 2022. The device collects real-time production data, allowing supervisors to identify slow workers. The floor manager no longer yells at her to boost output and instead uses data to ramp up pressure, the worker said.
She has stopped using the bathroom to keep up, she said.
The machines are partially automated and require some human guidance.
“Each worker is given more than they can handle. There is constant pressure, we feel like we are simmering on a stove,” said the worker.
Although her workload had increased, her earnings remained static until November 2023, when the government raised the minimum wage in the garment sector to 12,500 taka ($104), up from 8,000 taka ($66). Garment worker unions say even that is low, and have demanded 23,000 taka ($190) per month.
About a 10-minute walk from the factory, a 24-year-old worker lives with her husband, mother, and 3-year-old son in a single room. The woman, who requested anonymity to protect her job, told Rest of World she has gastritis and is not supposed to skip meals. But she often goes to work hungry, she said.
“Even when I’m starving, I avoid eating to stay on target. The device in front of me [Nidle] triggers anxiety, constantly making me worry about the target,” the worker said. After a week of skipping meals recently, her disease flared up and she was sent home without pay, she said.
The woman typically works from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., and then does overtime until 8 p.m. for higher pay. This is the only way her family can make ends meet, she said. Roughly 28% of her monthly earnings of 16,000 taka ($131) comes from overtime.
Use of such devices is creating an imbalance between the automated speed of the machine and human capacity.
Once back home, there usually isn’t time to learn how to operate automatic machines — something male workers are able to do.
“Male workers get a better opportunity to get trained outside the factory in their leisure time or the weekend,” Moazzem from the Centre for Policy Dialogue said. “[Women] need to rush to the home to cook and to take care of their children. … There is a discriminatory impact of automation that we very clearly see.”
The top international brands prefer smart factories, according to Kazi Ehtesham Shahid, deputy general manager of information technology at Urmi Group, whose buyers include H&M, Uniqlo, and Marks and Spencer. Urmi factories, too, have smart devices and semi-automated machines.
“Buyers are particularly pleased when they see such automation in place,” Shahid told Rest of World. Automation cuts labor costs while improving production, leading to better margins for Urmi, he said.
“The rate provided by the buyers [fashion brands] is not sufficient,” he said. “We have to manage within this, so we aim to increase productivity as much as possible while reducing manpower. In doing so, we have no choice but to move towards automation.”
Government official Anwar Hossain, who is also the administrator of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said automation can increase earnings for workers.
“It’s not true that automation increases the workload for workers,” he told Rest of World. As automated factories attract more orders, workers will have more opportunities to earn, he said.
Workers would support automation if its benefits are shared with them, Kalpona Akter, president of the nonprofit Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, told Rest of World. But that has so far not happened, she said.
“We want the use of technology, but it has to be worker-friendly, not exploitative,” Akter said. “The brands or factories that are allowing it to happen, knowing the fact, should have their business model questioned.”
Jesmin Papri is a Labor x Tech reporter based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.