Photo : Collected

DHAKA, Sep 4, 2025 (BSS) - Bangladesh Employers' Federation (BEF), together with major sectoral associations, reaffirms its full commitment to strengthening labour standards and rights in line with international obligations. 

At the same time, employers stress that reforms must be rooted in Bangladesh's ground realities, industrial context, and institutional capacity-not in prescriptions driven by external pressure.

For the past two decades, successive governments have repeatedly amended the Bangladesh Labour Act (BLA). 

While recent dialogue has produced consensus on over 90 percent of proposed changes under the ILO and EU roadmaps, the constant cycle of amendments has left little opportunity to test effectiveness on the ground, said a press release today.

Employers underline that reforms will only work if they are practical, nationally owned, and institutionally enforceable.

Bangladesh's challenges are not about passing laws on paper; they are about ensuring the institutions and workforce having the capacity to make those laws meaningful. 

The real gaps lie in under-resourced institutions, weak labour inspection, and ineffective monitoring and dispute-resolution mechanisms. 

Unless there is a parallel investment in strengthening regulatory bodies, enhancing inspection systems, and building trust among social partners, further amendments will achieve little. 

What the labour market urgently needs is capacity building-training, upskilling, and reskilling of workers and management to meet new industrial realities, alongside equipping officials with the tools and know-how to enforce compliance. 

Without addressing these fundamentals, repeated legal tightening will not improve outcomes; it will only add uncertainty, discourage investment, and risk chaos in the labour market.

Employers, therefore, call upon the ILO and development partners to uphold the principle of tripartism and ensure that any further observations are discussed transparently among government, workers, and employers.
 
At the same time, the government bears the primary responsibility to steer this process in a pragmatic, balanced, and consultative manner-one that protects national interests, sustains Bangladesh's competitiveness, and advances labour rights in ways that are both credible and workable. 

By taking ownership of reforms through genuine dialogue with social partners, the government can ensure outcomes that are not only aligned with international standards but also sustainable within Bangladesh's socio-economic realities. 

Employers caution that unrealistic amendments may temporarily satisfy certain external quarters but would do so at the expense of the long-term sustainability of enterprises, the stability of the labour market, and the livelihoods of millions of workers.