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This week’s Garment Worker Diaries blog, again guest-written by our partner SANEM, focuses on perhaps the most important aspect of the RMG industry’s mandate to comply with new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence directives being formulated in areas such as the European Union: worker well-being. This 3rd blog picks up where SANEM’s previous two blogs (which you can read here and here) left off, which was with a discussion of what the new CSDD directives mean for Bangladesh, and how the RMG industry there can evolve to ensure that workers are seen as integral components of the industry’s overall health.

This blog post can also be read in Bangla, here.

As always, you can send any questions you have for MFO, SANEM, the workers or about the project to questions@workerdiaries.org.

This week’s Garment Worker Diaries blog post discusses how Bangladesh’s ready-made garment sector might best comply with the European Union’s Human Rights and Due Diligence (HREDD) directives (the draft of EU Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, CSDD). It is a continuation of last week’s blog post and it has also been written by our collaborators at SANEM. As with last week’s post, where the macro-level content was regulatory and broad in scope, the inherent admission is simple and powerful, and it is that the well-being of workers matters.

As always, you can send any questions you have for MFO, SANEM, the workers or about the project to questions@workerdiaries.org.

Over the next two months we’re happy to be sharing with you a series of Garment Worker Diaries blogs guest-written by our partner in the field, SANEM. For just under five years now MFO and SANEM have been collaborating in Bangladesh. In many ways these blogs are a culmination of where we have been together, and at the same time a glimpse into the future of the RMG industry.

This 1st blog post introduces the European Union’s Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) regulations, and discusses the potential impacts of the regulations to the RMG sector in Bangladesh (a Bangla language version of the blog can also be accessed here). The 2nd blog post will delve deeper into how the RMG sector in Bangladesh can comply with the HREDD directives. Two further blogs will in turn discuss worker well-being and the sustainability of the RMG sector in Bangladesh.

Each of these blogs has been informed by years’ worth of direct conversations with garment workers. And as the well-being of workers’ minds, bodies, the environments they live in, and corporate accountability within international supply chains take the lead in due diligence conversations, we hope the value of these direct conversations with workers will only keep increasing.

As always, you can send any questions you have for MFO, SANEM, the workers or about the project to questions@workerdiaries.org.

This week’s Garment Worker Diaries blog post sees us discussing different aspects of well-being with workers. We ask respondents to describe any physical and mental exhaustion they might experience at work, as well as their stress and energy levels. We also ask them to talk about more social aspects of well-being, such as respect in the workplace, feelings of financial security, and whether workers feel they have a good work-life balance. We think the insights workers have provided into their inner lives are important and we’re happy to be sharing their thoughts with you.

As always, you can send any questions you have for MFO, SANEM, the workers or about the project to questions@workerdiaries.org.