Employment Relations of Bangladesh — страница 2

of the labour force. The unions are organized in 700 union federations, which are very active. They entered into agreements with the government in 1984, 1991, and 1992 to raise legislation labour benefits and protections, whereby the government provided a high protection to the domestic industries, like textiles, soap and detergents, iron and steel. There is also a strong resistance to trade liberalization in Bangladesh, mostly from the labour unions.[5] There is a strong connection between unions and political parties. Almost all unions are affiliated with a political party. Of course you will also find unions that are militant and do engage in intimidation and vandalism, lost production, and transportation delays causing missed shipping dates for exports. Also battles occur

between members of rival unions regularly.[6] There are no special regulations in the Bangladesh law to ban discrimination by employer against union members and organizers. Usually private sector employers do not like any union activity and sometimes even work in collaboration with the local police. The Registrar of Trade Unions tries to come against such activities but is often not powerful enough to do anything.[7] Economy: Bangladesh improved its economic sector enormously since its independence in 1971. It is world-famous for his largest and comprehensive garments industry. The first years after Bangladesh’s independence the economy was characterized by its large jute industry but were overtook by polypropylene products soon. The biggest part of the GDP belongs to service

sector, followed by the industry and agriculture. Bangladesh’s main produced commodities are jute manufacturing, cotton textiles, garments, tea processing, paper newsprint, cement, chemicals, light engineering, sugar, food processing, steel, and fertilizer. Soon after independence Bangladesh had a peak economic growth of 57%. Later the economic growth decreased to 29% in the Eighties and 24% in the Nineties. The rising population forced Bangladesh to increase its food outcome. It became the third largest rice producing country in the world. Also wheat production increased in recent years, but nevertheless the country faces serious nutrition risk of 10% to 15% of the population. Bangladesh’s agriculture is dependant on the monsoonal cycle and still faces problems in power

supply throughout the country, which has large reserves of natural resources like gas, as well as some limited like coal and oil. Since Bangladesh’s independence the country received about $30 billion in aid and loans from foreign donors, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UN Development Programme, the US, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and West European countries. But the poverty level of Bangladesh is still high: 138 million people live beneath the poverty line, which is the highest amount of poverty in South Asia. There is also lack in quality of the social service in the country. The major problems still remain, although improvements have been made by the government: inefficiency of state-owned enterprises, a rapidly growing labour force that cannot be absorbed by

agriculture, inefficient power supply, and slow implementation of economic reforms. Nevertheless, the situation for foreign investors and the liberalization of the capital market changed positively, as well as agreements with foreign companies to export oil and gas, better distribution of cooking gas within Bangladesh, building of pipelines and power stations. Foreign aid also declines, exports rise ($10.5 billion in 2005) and investments increase. To summarize the current economic situation: The GDP was $275 billion in 2004, the GDP-real growth rate was 5.2% in 2005, GDP-per capita was $2,000 in 2004, and aid-per capita was $10.1 in 2003. The compositions by sectors of the GDP of 2004 are 20.5% by agriculture, 26.7% by industry, and 52.8% by services. The inflation rate of

consumer prices was at 5.8% in 2000. The unemployment rate was at 3.6% in 2002. Exports with the amount of $6.6 billion (2001) went at 31.8% to the United States, 10.9% to Germany, 7.9% to United Kingdom, 5.2% to France, 5.2% to the Netherlands, and 4.42% to Italy. Exports grew by 21.63% 2006. Imports with the amount of $8.7 billion (2001) came from India (10.5%), European Union (9.5%), Japan (9.5%), Singapore (8.5%), and China (7.4%). Imports grew by 12.05% last year. Foreign Direct Investment was at $800 million in 2005.[8] Education System: During the Nineties the Bangladesh’s government noticed that investments into the education system result in better future economic performance of the country. Therefore highest allocations in the national budget were made with topmost