he recent ups and downs in the readymade garment industry bring the industry in light from Bangladeshi context. The readymade garment industry of Bangladesh is a labor-intensive industry. Because of the industry's nature, the matters relating to human resource management comes first. Quality of work life signifies the whole scenario of human resources, mainly the workers working in the industry. Our work concerns mainly the workers and their quality of work life under the industry.

Bangladesh, located in Southeast Asia, is a developing country among the third world countries. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Bangladesh holds 146 th position on human development index among 208 countries and territories in 2013 1 . The country has her population of about 15 crore 36 lacs 2 . The country has huge opportunities of growing business, especially labor-intensive businesses, like garment industry, jute industry, shrimp and leather industries. The total contribution of the industrial sector to the national income of Bangladesh is 31.98% 3 . Among these industries, garment industry occupies a considerable part to total industrial portion and contributes a significant amount to the country's revenue. The readymade garment industry alone consists 79.60% of the total industrial sector's contribution to the national income.

In the field of human resource management, the concept of quality of work life, the methods of ensuring holistic well-being of human resources or employees, is getting well-liked in recent times. Kashani (2012) tried to define quality of work life as a philosophy or set of principles which say employees are trustworthy, responsible and capable to make contribution and treating employees with respect. Quality of work lifemainly refers to those activities relating to the life span of an employee whiling working in an organizational setting. In other words, quality of work life emphasizes those human welfare aspects of employees which include compensation, health and safety, growth, job design, job settings, labor-management relation, work load and related activities. Sirgyand his coauthors (2001) labeled the term quality of work life as the impact of the workplace on satisfaction in work life, satisfaction in non-work life domains, and satisfaction with overall life of an employee.

The paper has been designed to highlight the existing condition of quality of work life of the readymade garment industry based on eight factors. The objectives cover: i. To identify demographic factors of the readymade garment workers. ii. To explorethe satisfaction level of the workers relating to quality of work life in the readymade garment industry. iii. To recommend possible suggestions as way-outs to get rid of the problems.

iii.

The literature review refers to the reviewing of existing concepts and theories relating to the concerned fields. The reviewing of the literature relating to quality of work life in different industries with special emphasis on garment industry highlights in the below paragraphs.

While studying comparatively the Quality Work Life of commercial banks Tabassum, Rahman, and Jahan (2011) focused their work on eight dimensions of quality of work life comprising adequate and compensation, work and total life space, opportunities for growth and security, development of human capacities, safety and health, work schedule and job assignment, attention to job design, and employee relations. They found that the local private commercial banks are lagged behind in connection with quality of work life or in other words foreign bank employees exercise more qualified work life in mostly all dimensions the authors conducted their study.

In a work on quality of work life in tobacco industries in Bangladesh, Elias and Saha (2005) emphasized on, for first, quality of work life of workers of polluted tobacco industries and non-polluted tobacco industries, second, health, well-being, job satisfaction and quality of working life of the workers in the polluted tobacco industries are worse than those of the nonpolluted tobacco industries.

A paper worked by Kaur (2010) mainly concentrated on quality of work life policies and practices adopted by ICICI Bank Ltd. The factors considered by the author were compensation, safety and health, performance appraisal, training and development opportunities, and growth of employee's career. Major findings of the paper represent that the employees working for ICICI bank ltd, are satisfied with the current quality of work like they are provided but in some context like career growth opportunities hampered. Kornbluh (1984) catered on a paper to show the work place democracy and quality of work life. In the paper the author showed a relation of union and owner, and quality of work life through showing motive of management as are increasing productivity and quality of the work, enlarging the quality of work life of the new comers, and meeting the international contest.

Hong, Tan, and Bujang (2010) related work life quality of teaching staffs with work commitment, their stress and satisfaction in the Malaysian context. The authors emphasized on teachers' background, work life quality, work commitment, work stress, work satisfaction. The authors found that there exists a positive relationship between work life quality and work commitment and weak negative relationship between work life quality and work stress.

In accordance with the publication of Bolhari and others (2011) that shows a relationship between quality of work life and demographic characteristics of staffs working in information technology field in the context of Iran. The paper is based on some demographic characteristics e.g., gender, age, work experience, and salary. Quality of work life factors include social relevance, total life space, social integration, development of human capacities, adequate and far compensation, safety and health effort, growth prospectus, and constitutionalism. The paper has not found relationship between gender and quality of work life but they found a significant relationship between age factor, work experience, and income with quality of work life. At last, the author described some implications.

Another article by Rethinam and Ismail (2008) showed quality of work life's constructs in the information technology sector in the Malaysian context. The article is a descriptive one which shows mainly the quality of work life constructs namely, health and wellbeing, job security, job satisfaction, competency development, and work and non-work life balance. After a bulky discussion on the constructs of quality of work life, the authors recommended some suggestions.

Hamidi and Mohamadi (2012) in their work show quality of work life of teachers in secondary schools in the Iranian context. Compensation, safety and health, career growth, security, social relevance, total life space, social integration, constitutionalism, human progress capability are the factors relying on these factors the authors tried to measure the teachers' quality of work life condition. iv.

Demographic factors described in the work of Bolhari and others (2011) cover age, gender, experience level, and income. In our study we mainly consider demographic factors such as age group, gender, marital status, education, income level, experience, and birthplace (division).

Tabassum, Rahman, and Jahan (2011) mentioned eight components of quality of work life in their work, e.g., fair compensation, work and total life space, opportunity to grow, opportunity to develop human capacity, health and safety, work schedule, attention to job, and employee relation. The factors in our work as indicators of quality of work life in the garment industrycompromise: i.

Compensation package ii.

Health and safety effort iii.

Work load iv.

Career growth prospect v. Workenvironment vi.

Job design vii.

Informal relationship viii.

Worker participation

The total number of readymade garment companies inside the Dhaka city consist the population of the study. The sampling process, undertaken for the study, is sample random sampling. In Bangladesh, Dhaka city contains most of the readymade garment factories. We select 20 garment factories in Dhaka city at random using lottery technique. The total number of respondents is 226 and these people are workers only. Approximately 12 workers have been selected from each of the company.

Data, used in the study, are primary. Data have been collected using a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire is based on Likert's 5 point scale. 1 represents strongly dissatisfied stance, 2 represents somewhat dissatisfied, 3 represents neither dissatisfied nor satisfied, 4 represents somewhat satisfied and 5 represents very satisfied stances against the statements on the questionnaire. The whole questionnaire covers mainly three areas of data that are demographic data, quality of work life dimensions, and possible way out.

The data analysis has done using SPSS. The frequency distribution, mean, standard deviation and varianceof the data have been analyzed using the software SPSS. The presentation of the data analyzed has been given in three sections, first one is for demographic characteristics of the respondents, second section is for quality of work life, and the third section comprises suggestions as way outs based on quality of work life factors.

V.

The section outlines data presentation, analysis of the data found, and at the same time findings thereof. The part of data presentation, analysis and findings has three parts. The first part consists of demographic information, second part consists of quality of work life, and the third part consists of possible suggestions.

This section delves into the socio-demographic dimensions of the workers in the garment industry with a special drag down in Dhaka city area. Age, gender, marital status, education, experience, income level, and birthplace are taken under study. The above table shows the frequency distribution of the gender of the garment workers under study. It represents that the male workers are the dominating class in the industry. The male workers cover 71.6 percent, female workers cover 28.0 percent and others cover . 4 The table shows the frequency distribution of the marital status of the workers in the garment industry. It portrays that the number of married workers in the industry covers the significant portion. But there are unmarried and divorcee working in the industry. Married workers are of 60.0 per cent and female workers are 39.6 per cent as well as . 4 The table delineates that the frequency distribution of income level of the workers in the garment industry. It represents that the workers with their income level varies. Most significantly it ranges from BDT 4,001 to BDT 8,000. 50.4 per cent of workers in the garment industry haveincome level of BDT 4,001-8,000 and 18.1 per cent, 18.1 per cent, 13.3 per cent, as well as 8.4 per cent have salary ranges of BDT 8,001-12,000, BDT 12,001-16,000, and BDT 16,001-20,000 respectively. Furthermore, 4.9 per cent and another 4.9 per centof workers in the industry have a salary range of <=BDT 4,000 and >= BDT 20,001 respectively. The data represent a lower salary scale of the workers in the industry. The table shows that the workers in the industry mostly come from Dhaka division. The workers in the garment industry from Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong, Rangpur, Barishal, Khulna, and Sylhetdivisions cover 27.4, 20.4, 13.7, 12.8, 11.5, 9.3, and 4.9 per cents respectively. Most significantly it shows that the maximum workers come from Dhaka division and the minimum number of workers comes from Sylhet.

This part represents and analyzes the data pertaining to quality of work life of the workers in the garment industry with special emphasis on Dhaka city The results from the statistics showed it that the workers are in 'somewhat disagree' stance with the compensation package providing by the garment companies and are also tending to 'neither agree nor disagree' stance. This stance is very cautious to the parties making decisions in the industry. The standard deviation and variance are 1.054 and 1.111. The above table shows that the frequency distribution, percent, valid percent and cumulative percent on the satisfaction of the workers in the garment industry with compensation package. Among the respondents, 12.4, 20.9, 28.9, 36.9, and .9 percent respondents strongly disagreed, somewhat disagreed, neither agreed nor disagreed, somewhat agreed, and strongly agreedrespectively with the existing compensation facilities in the garment industry. The results of the statistics (mean, std. deviation, and variance) show that the workers in the garment industry are standing on a 'neither disagree nor agree' position on the Likert five point scale and it has nce.

The mean value is 3.02 on a scale from 1 to 5. The standard deviation and variance are .970 and .941. The table above shows the frequency distribution, percentage, valid percentage and cumulative percentage. It indicates that 3.6, 31.0, 28.8, 32.3, and 4.0 per cent of the garment workers are strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree, and strongly agreed respectively with their health and safety efforts providing by the garment companies. Here the most significant thing is the garment workers are somewhat agree consisting of 32.4 per cent and somewhat disagree consisting of 31.0 per cent and neither disagree and nor agree consisting of 28.9 per cent. The statistics portray the existing work load scenario of the workers working for the garment industry. It indicates that the garment workers are neither dissatisfied nor satisfied with the current work loaded on them but it starts going toward 'somewhat agree' stance. The statistical measures show that the workers are in a 'neither disagree nor agree' stance with their career growth opportunities providing by their respective garment companies and it is tending toward 'somewhat agree' stance. The standard deviation and variance are .865 and .748 respectively. The above frequency distribution table summarizes the extent to which the workers are satisfied. It explores that 4.0, 14.7, 33.3, 47.1, and .9 per cent of the workers in the garment industry are strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree, and the rest are strongly agree with their career growth opportunities. Most importantly 47.1 per cent of the workers are in the 'somewhat agree' stance. The statistics result that the workers in the industry are in a 'neither disagree nor agree' stance and tending toward 'somewhat agree' stance. The standard deviation shows a dispersion of 0.997 in the opinions with work environment of workers. Again the variance is 0.994. The results from the statistics outlines that the workers in the industry are in a 'neither disagree nor agree' stance and are now tending toward the 'somewhat agreed' stance with the job designing perspectives in their work settings. The standard deviation and variance are .961, and .923. The above table shows the existing practice of the workers' participation in decision making in the readymade garment factories. It indicates that 4.1, 19.1, 35.9, 39.1, and 1.8 per cent of the workers are strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree, and the rest are strongly agree respectively with their participation in decision making.

The suggestions are provided by the respondents in a structured way. The respondents mostly emphasized the compensation package.

Accordingly 35 per cent of the respondents indicated the better compensation package should be there in the garment industry to support for first the workers working in the factory shops. Other suggestions cover ensuring of good health and safety efforts from the employers, working schedule should be flexible, career growth opportunities should be there, working environment should be safe and well decorated, open communication, better opportunities for participation in the decision making, and job designing is also a good factor to be considered by the employers in the industry.

[Source: Data collected through field survey using a self-completion questionnaire.] VI.

While wrapping up the study we see that quality of work life of the workers in the readymade garment industry is neither in a good or bad stand. More specifically, the quality of work life in the readymade garment industry with a special emphasis on Dhaka area is in a neutral stance where the workers are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with their quality of work life factors. Earlier the study tries to show the sociodemographic dimensions of the workers and at last the study recommends possible suggestions where to emphasize. The quality of work life of workers in the garment industry in the selected area represents vulnerable situations in practice and need to erect the industry robustly through ensuring quality of work life for sustainable and safe and sound as well as well remunerated workers and their lives.