Global technological change in a labor intensive industry: its impact on textile and garment workers

One of the challenges of globalization for the least developed countries is that technology change erodes the advantages of labor intensive technology. This paper examines key impacts of this technological change on job security, job satisfaction, and work relations of textile and garment workers in Bangladesh. It shows that the overall positive impact of technological change is associated with the suitable levels of job security, job satisfaction and work relations. Factors including uncertainty, frustration in terms of the job security; fairness, good supervision minimal conflicts, recognition, promotion and benefits concerned with job satisfaction. The change process, downsizing and strikes are related to the work relations. Both job satisfaction and work relations are significantly related to the overall impact on workers. Job security is related to the overall impact of technological change particularly because of the uncertainty and frustration among workers concerning their status.