Workers’ quality of working life and privatisation: Insights from a developing country

Abstract

Privatisation affects tens of thousands of workers in Bangladesh, though most research has focused on the relationships between privatisation and profitability of this developing country’s privatisation programmes. This study, therefore, is an attempt to shed light on workers who are very vulnerable and examines the impact of privatisation on workers’ quality of working life. Employing document analysis and semi-structured face-to-face interviews with privatised and state-owned organisations’ workers in Bangladesh, this study finds that workers’ compensation, job security, access to trade unions, and leave entitlements in most privatised case study organisations are less than their counterparts in comparable state-owned organisations. These findings aim at contributing to the body of research by empirically investigating the impact of privatisation on workers who are left behind and possess important implications for the privatisation programmes in Bangladesh as it informs that there is a need to reassess the privatisation programmes through greater awareness of the negative effects of privatisation on workers and renew efforts to develop an approach that is sensitive to the Bangladeshi context.