The North American Helpline initiative in Bangladesh for garment workers

Abstract Introduction After a series of garment factory disasters that had taken place in Bangladesh, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (Alliance) was formed by 29 large North American retail companies to improve worker safety in Bangladesh‐ the second largest ready‐made garments producing country in the world. Aims This report focuses on Alliance's Worker Empowerment initiative—Worker Helpline and examines the types, contents and volume of calls received by it. Methods All published reports of Alliance that are available online were retrieved. Data from each quarter (Q) in 2017, 2018, and 2019 were extracted in terms of (1) Total calls (2) Substantive calls, and (3) Safety calls (Urgent and Non‐urgent). Results By 2019, Q3 Helpline covered 1.5 million workers in 1091 factories. In Q1 2017, there was 1 call made per 73 workers and 20 calls made per a factory whereas in Q3 2019 there was 1 call per 171 workers and 8 calls coming from a factory. In terms of safety calls, there was 0.59 calls/factory in Q1 2017 but went down to 0.17 calls/factory in Q3 2019. Helpline in 2019 Q3 received 1283 substantive calls; of that 189 were safety calls which included 18 urgent and 171 non‐urgent calls. In Q1 of 2017, 32% factories did not make any calls and in Q3 2019, 62% of factories did not make any calls at all. Conclusions The worker empowerment initiative‐ Helpline‐in Bangladesh initiated by the North American companies remained underutilized.