Well it’s been a while! Another year has passed at University, which means it’s time for my next adventure. And this time I’m in…
Well, you can probably guess from the title of my next blog:
To find out more, click on the link just above, and just as before you are very welcome to follow me, quiz me on any aspect of my travels, and enjoy the next couple of months of blog posts!
Great to be back online š
One of the managers of the factory, Lahiru Sir, gave me a detailed tour of the factory today, and showed me the nearby washing plant. Although Baba G has also given me a tour of the factory, I decided it would be good to get a tour from Lahiru Sir too, so I could ask him questions as we walked around in a walking tour style interview. Lahiru Sir was very keen to show his knowledge of the factory though, having only been employed for a week or so, so much of the tour was taken up by him explaining operational functions of the various parts of the factory.
I managed to ask a few questions as we were going around. He says about 95% of the workforce are women, and that men are generally employed to do the jobs involving heavy machinery, which are higher risk. Women employees are mostly young, although a few are older. A lot of the women are wearing fine gold jewellery, and most have long hair, tied back in braids or pony tails. In the washing plant, as itās much more heavy duty machinery, the vast majority of the 200-strong workforce are men. Some of the employees come from Colombo, but these tend to be those in management, who will live in Ampara for work but commute back to Colombo once or twice a month to see their families. I later asked Bandula Sir why their families didnāt move to Ampara too, and he explained the education system was better in Colombo, so it was better for his family to be there. The factory has 25 production lines, with roughly 45 employees to each production line, including 35 machine operators, 3 helpers, 2 checkers, and then a leader, time checkers and a supervisor.
All three religions are employed in the factory: Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala. At one point Lahiru Sir called over a Muslim girl from one of the production lines. She must have wondered what on earth was going on as she stood next to us whilst Lahiru Sir spoke to me about the communications between the workers. He told me they canāt speak English very well, and that I could ask simple questions to them but they might not understand. He said some words to her too in Sinhalese, although Iām not sure what, and then let her go back to her machine. All I could do really was smile reassuringly at her, and she did smile back, but I mentally kicked myself afterwards for not even attempting to introduce myself to her in Sinhalese. I know how to say āMy name is Lucyā now, thanks to Baba G ā Iāll make sure to put it to practice tomorrow in the packing line! Despite this girl’s apparent lack of understanding of English, Lahiru Sir said the girls could speak English well enough to understand factory commands, especially seeing as there are minimum qualification entry levels required for employment in the factory. I noticed that many of the women would take umbrellas with them if they ventured outside, to keep the sun off them.
Once the tour was finished, Lahiru Sir introduced me to Gihan Sir, a manager in the HR department. He provided me, verbally, with a few statistics regarding employees. There are 1572 employed in the factory, of which 321 are male (although later I was given different figures). They recruit people aged between 17 and 35, although most of them are at the younger end of the age scale because many join straight after they leave school. They will allow new recruits who are older than 35 if they have certain skills, but will not recruit unskilled workers above this age. Gihan Sir told me that of the workers, 350 are Muslim and 300 are Tamil (although again, I was told different figures later). The factory is structured so that there are 23 managers and deputy-heads, 8 assistant managers, 24 supervisors, 20 leaders and 200 sub-leaders. Working hours are 7am until 5:30pm 6 days a week, with regular tea breaks and a lunch break. Work doesnāt actually start at 7am though ā Iām to experience the morning routine tomorrowā¦ A few hundred employees live in Ampara, and the rest are collected on company owned buses, of which there are 15 in total.
I glanced through some employee files too, and asked Gihan Sir if he had a map of the bus routes, which he said he did:
Lucy: āDo you have a map of the bus routes? Where the buses go?ā
Gihan Sir: āYou want math?ā
L: āNo, map.ā
G: āMath, yes?ā
L: āNo, map.ā
G: [Head waggle and smile]
L: āā¦A map…? Bus routesā¦?ā
G: āOh! M. A. P. Map! Yes, yes, we have.ā
He asked one of the women who work in the HR department something, and we waited for about 15 minutes, although Iām not entirely sure what for, and then he changed his answer and said they didnāt have a map. Aiyooo, language problems!
I noted, whilst walking up and down the production lines, watching the workers watching me, that they would only smile at me if I smiled at them, but when I did smile at them I got huge smiles in return. A reminder that smiles can go such a long way, and the phrase āSmile, and the world smiles backā is often very true.
I recognised one man from yesterday: a checker at the end of one of the lines. I only just glimpsed him out of the corner of my eye, but then made sure to pause and smile and nod at him. He looked genuinely pleased when I recognised and acknowledged him, which made me think how important it is, in a factory so large, to be noticed and remembered. I think that because of the way the production lines are arranged, with a team set-up, employees are less likely to feel like faceless production units, but I think itās still important that I try to remember and acknowledge as many workers as I can.
The production lines are set up in a long line, with pairs of workers in the long chain. Each worker has a specific role, be it ironing pockets flat, or sewing belt loops on, to make the process as efficient as possible. It also means that there wonāt be much if any rotation of position, so communication is limited to the four people closest to you during operative hours, and even then communication must be a little difficult as their heads are often bowed over their machines in concentration. This said, I wandered back through at around 10:30 and workers from four of the production lines had vanished, lights were off, and machines deserted. I asked where they all were, and it was one of their tea-breaks. Tea breaks really do seem frequent.
I was shattered today; couldnāt get to sleep last night, and woke up itching because mosquitoes have decided to attack my feet. I quite literally have two bites per toe. I thought Iād be asleep by 9pm tonight, and I lay down trying to sleep for a good hour, feeling very tired, but my mind was buzzing still. This is one aspect of social research that I hadnāt really considered or expected; the research very quickly takes over so that youāre always thinking about it, making it very hard to actually shut down. It’s now midnight and Iām really not looking forward to a 6am start tomorrow.
I had an ad-hoc interview with Bandula Sir, another HR manager, later on in the afternoon, after Iād taken a trip into town to see if I could find a map of the Eastern Province (no luck). It was a really helpful, interesting interview, which I shall endeavour to tell you about in the next couple of days. I had thought it would be a negative thing, to hold a spontaneous, unrecorded interview, and was initially reluctant to get into any long discussions with him. I wasnāt able to write down everything Bandula Sir said, but I was able to get most of it. He seemed in no hurry to get anything done, and we were sitting in his office. Heās a long serving manager in the factory, and is quite senior now and very sweet. He didnāt rush me to think of questions, and I didnāt rush him for answers, so there were lots of long silences as I thought about things and wrote down notes. This didnāt seem to matter in the slightest. The long but unawkward silences actually seemed to prompt Bandula Sir to think more about his answers and my research topic, so after long pauses, he would add in extra bits of information. We were also waiting for some print outs of employee statistics, and once weād both had a cup of tea and had been chatting for well over an hour, I really couldnāt come up with any more questions.
If you have any questions for me, please do fire away! For now though, it’sĀ attempt 2 at getting to sleep. Important day tomorrow!
A small garment factory
This is a picture I took inside the small satellite factory we visited yesterday. This factory is almost entirely devoted to machine operations, but only has around 150 employees and just 3 production lines. The factory I’m starting work in tomorrow has about 1600 employees (this figure keepsĀ changing depending on who I ask), 25 production lines, CAD, fabric and trim stores, marking and cutting (both machine-operated and manual), trimming, 4 packing lines, a washing and dyeing plant nearby, and more. The only thing I’m qualified enough to try is packing, so that’s where I’ll be tomorrow. For those who are justĀ joining the blog – I’ll beĀ joining in with factory workĀ in order to conduct participant observation, which is a very useful and insightful social research method.Ā Baba G reassures me it’s pretty much ‘monkey see, monkey do’ kind of work, but I’m stillĀ a little concerned I’ll make a mistake… Yikes, wish me luck!
IĀ managed to get a couple of hours of sleep last night, perhaps almost three hours even, so as you can imagine, I wasnāt exactly feeling fresh and fantastic when my alarm went off at 5:30am this morning. I tried to get a little sleep in the car on the way across to Ampara though, and although I didnāt get to enjoy much of the countryside, I was feeling a little better by the time the car pulled up outside one of the satellite factories.
The glimpses I did catch of the scenery were just stunning. Palm trees blossom out of the ground wherever you look, lakes and rivers shimmer in the shady green of dense vegetation, and emerald mountains proudly challenge the sapphire overhead. Nestled amongst the fronds of tropical jungle are little houses, some made of little more than wattle and daub, with enormous leaves woven into their rooftops. These homes, or gayas, are spread far apart to create large sprawling communities, some with electricity, some without, some with running water, some with wells. Every now and again, atop a hill, you can spot a large Buddha, reflecting golden sunlight off golden skin, and when you reach a town, the everyday hubbub fills the streets as tuk tuks motor around, street dogs meander from shop to shop, women stroll under colourful umbrellas, and plantation workers crowd into the trailers of old rusty tractors.
Iām not attempting to be hyperbolic with the above description; rural Sri Lanka is just like something out of a film, making the distance between Ampara and Colombo ā which is barely a six hour drive ā feel much longer. The roads have been greatly improved recently, and most are smooth and free of potholes, although they are not quite as well kept as you reach more Eastern parts. The first factory we reached was a small factory with about 150 employees. It was shut, because itās the weekend, but the manager came to let us in, and I had the chance to ask him a few questions about the factory. Whilst the workforce is predominantly Sinhalese, there are also employees of Tamil and Muslim ethnicity, but this does not cause problems in the factory as most of them are able to speak Sinhalese. Even in the small canteen, apparently, employees will all sit together regardless of ethnicity. They come from a roughly 10km radius, and are collected in a lorry each morning from selected pick up points in each community. One of the first things I noticed was the brand of the sewing machines; āOh! Juki!ā I exclaimed, and then explained that the book Iād just finished reading was all about the āJuki girlā stigma. I asked if any of the girls here were labelled with the āJuki girlā nickname, and the manager laughed and said āNot any moreā.Ā Baba G went on to confirm that this is a respectable job, unlike some of the city-based garment factories. Overhead in the factory were lots of motivational signs, one of which read āUnity is Powerā. I also noticed that there were two flags displayed in the factory: the Sri Lanka flag and the Sinhala Buddhist flag, and in one of the offices was a large golden Buddha, visible to the factory floor.
We moved on from there and went to Baba Gās house in Ampara to dump our things and freshen up before visiting the big factory that Iāll be researching. I was expecting this one to also be empty, but various stations had people working at them, getting various pieces finished off. Today, the workforce seemed to be surprisingly evenly constituted of men and women, however, there canāt have been many more than 400 workers there today, and Iām told there are nearly 2000. Theyāll all be there tomorrow, so Iāll see then what the workforce dynamics are like. Baba G took me on a tour of the factory, and introduced me to various supervisors and other employees whom she knows from previous visits. I was also introduced to the manager of the factory, whoās a very jovial man whoās going to give me a thorough tour of the factory tomorrow morning. Everyone seems to be very amused by the idea of me coming to work in the factory, but not unpleasantly so. I had a couple of gentle punches on the arm from one woman, and a few giggles accompanied by ā(something something) Sinhalese?ā from another, to whom I smiled and shook my head. Iām learning bits, although apparently a lot of the workers have a basic grasp of English too. On the whole, everyone Baba G introduced me to seemed very welcoming, but I will admit I am a little nervous. The speed of the girls who were stickering pieces of fabric was phenomenal, so will I keep up? And language is not going to be straightforward, so I really hope I donāt make mistakes. Iāll only be putting things into boxes with labels I think, but thereās always space for error. I have no idea what Iāll do at lunch time, who Iāll sit with or what Iāll eat, and I donāt even know whether I should take a bottle of water with me or quite what. Apparently all the other workers have their own cups, so should I take my own also? Whilst there are these unanswered questions, I think these are all things Iāll learn in the next couple of days. And Iām also excited. Realistically, I donāt think for a minute that Iāll be shown the slightest bit of hostility, judging on the responses I saw today.
As far as what I should be wearing is concerned, the women in the factory were wearing long skirts, knee length skirts, or trousers, with a t-shirt or blouse, so thatās easy enough to replicate. And the majority seem to slip their shoes off too while working, which saves hot and sore feet by the end of the day. I might go shopping tomorrow for some more basic t-shirts though: the manager told me that Tuesday would be a 7am start, and I wonāt finish until around 5pm, so I want to be comfortable on what are likely to be quite long and tiring days. Iām now shattered ā thereās probably more I should be writing about today but Iāll have to amalgamate it into tomorrowās observations. Night for now!
P.S. Baba G has just decided to go through my blog.Ā The elderly gentleman previously mentioned who appeared in the kitchen the other day was her driver, he’s not that elderly, and he was wearing a sarong, not a towel. Also, she’s told me what the maids call me: Sudhu Baba. White Baby.
Sri Lanka: A Research Project 