16,000 Bangladesh workers’ wage equivalent to one US CEO’s

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A Bangladeshi garment worker earns $0.13 an hour, one of the smallest hourly rates, compared to $7,283 an hour compensation for one of 350 top chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United States.

Forbes magazine has made this comparison following the latest report by Oxfam that highlighted a dire economic inequality globally.

The Forbes, referring to the Oxfam report, mentioned that a Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 CEO earns in a year as much as 10,000 people in garment factories in Bangladesh. Some of the factories, the report said, are being subjected to poor treatment and slavery.

A California-based research body, Independent Institute, painted a bleaker picture about the Bangladeshi garment workers’ earning at $0.13 an hour.

Forbes made the comparison in an article “What The Wealth Of World's 8 Richest Tells Us About Asia's Poorest Workers like Bangladesh” published on Monday.

In contrast, it pointed out, the average compensation for a CEO of the top 350 US firms in 2013, based on research conducted by Economic Policy Institute, was $15.2 million.

“Divide that by the accumulated yearly hours of a standard full-time 40-hour work week, and the hourly rate is roughly $7283 (USD), pre-tax,” the Forbes article noted.

“This would roughly equate to the hourly rates of 16,000 employees from Bangladesh combined.”

The Oxfam report titled “An Economy For The 99%” estimates that just eight billionaires share the same wealth as that of the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.

Focussing the “stark discrepancy between the world’s haves and have nots”, Oxfam reportedly drew on the some Asian countries’ workers, who, according to the report, are being “squeezed” to assure the wealth of the few.

“It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when 1 in 10 people survive on less than $2 a day,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International in a statement.

“Across the world, people are being left behind,” Byanyima said. “Their wages are stagnating yet corporate bosses take home million dollar bonuses…their voices are ignored as governments sing to the tune of big business and a wealthy elite.”

The Forbes article quoted a report, by Baptist World Aid Australia, which claimed that India employs almost 17 million workers (as of 2015) in the garment sector.

In Bangladesh, it said, the figure is 4.2 million.

The report added that monthly minimum wages for the industry in the two countries are just $78 and $71 respectively, which equates to roughly $0.45 (USD) per hour.