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.

中文翻译：

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孟加拉国针对服装工人的北美热线倡议


摘要 简介 孟加拉国发生一系列服装工厂灾难后，由29家北美大型零售公司组成的孟加拉国工人安全联盟（简称联盟），旨在改善孟加拉国这个第二大成衣生产国的工人安全。在世界上。目标 本报告重点关注联盟的工人赋权计划——工人帮助热线，并检查其接到的电话类型、内容和数量。方法 检索所有可在线获取的联盟已发表的报告。 2017 年、2018 年和 2019 年每个季度 (Q) 的数据根据​​ (1) 呼叫总数、(2) 实质性呼叫和 (3) 安全呼叫（紧急和非紧急）来提取。结果 截至 2019 年，第三季度帮助热线已覆盖 1091 家工厂的 150 万名工人。 2017 年第一季度，每 73 名工人有 1 个电话，每个工厂有 20 个电话，而在 2019 年第三季度，每 171 名工人有 1 个电话，每个工厂有 8 个电话。在安全电话方面，2017年第一季度有0.59个电话/工厂，但2019年第三季度下降到0.17个电话/工厂。2019年第三季度帮助热线收到了1283个实质性电话；其中 189 个是安全呼叫，其中包括 18 个紧急呼叫和 171 个非紧急呼叫。 2017年第一季度，32%的工厂没有打任何电话，2019年第三季度，62%的工厂根本没有打任何电话。结论 由北美公司发起的孟加拉国工人赋权倡议——帮助热线——仍未得到充分利用。