Safety culture or safety climate concept has become much more attractive to the researchers, academicians as well as different industry personnel worldwide after the Chernobyl accident in 1986. The wave of this concept is very new to the readymade garment (RMG) industry of Bangladesh amidst frequent accidents like the Rana plaza building collapse in 2013, the Tazreen fashion fire in 2012 etc.
This study focused on measuring safety climate level in the RMG factories of Bangladesh through a questionnaire survey in connection with the frequent accidents in three factories. The result showed that, a positive safety climate exists in the case study factories and these factories haven’t had experience any accident over the last few years. Factor analysis was performed to see which factors represent safety climate in the RMG industry of Bangladesh. Three factors or components namely ‘safety management and employee’s involvement’, ‘management safety priority, ability and justice’, and ‘worker’s trust and safety communication’ explain the safety climate. The principal component analysis method was used with varimax rotation for the factor extraction.
This study also focused on the relationships between the demographic characteristics of the respondents and safety climate or its factors. Interesting results came up in this study. Educational qualification of the respondents has negative impact on the overall safety climate as well as on ‘safety management and employee’s involvement’, ‘management safety priority, ability and justice’, and ‘worker’s trust and safety communication’. Managers have negative safety climate perceptions compared to that of workers. Those who heard about safety culture before, have negative perceptions compared to those who haven’t heard about safety culture before the survey. And the same goes for if the safety culture was known to the respondents.
Some suggestions from the respondents regarding safety climate improvement in the respective factories was collected in this study. They put much more emphasis on the implementation of the existing laws and regulations as well as on the commitment, safety communication, management’s safety priority and leadership in the factory level of the industry.
Stakeholder analysis suggests that the employer and worker associations should place more concentration on the workplace safety to improve safety climate in the RMG industry of Bangladesh.