Bangladesh: Labour rights activist tortured and killed

Aminul Islam, a Bangladeshi labor rights activist and former apparel worker was tortured and murdered last week in Dhaka. His body was dumped outside of the capital city and was found by local police last Thursday. According to the police report, Aminul Islam's body bore signs of brutal torture. It is most likely that Aminul was murdered because of his labour rights work.

Aminul Islam worked for the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF). He was last seen on Wednesday evening 4 April, 2012, when he left for a meeting with a worker who had called him seeking assistance. Earlier that evening, after having observed a police van parked outside, Aminul and a colleague had closed the local BCWS office fearing harassment or arrest. Aminul's family and friends searched for him until Saturday, when his wife recognised a photograph of his body, published in a local newspaper.

Repression against trade unionists and labour rights activists in Bangladesh is a serious problem, and worker protests have been met with violence many times over the last years. In particular, the wage protests of 2010 resulted in hundreds of arrests of workers and trade unionists, including Aminul Islam. In June 2010 Aminul had been detained by officials of the National Intelligence Service (NSI). According to Aminul, he was subjected to severe and repeated beatings, which his captors said would stop only if he agreed to give false testimony against his colleagues at BCWS. Dozens of labour leaders are still facing charges of instigating riots and related activities; charges regarded as baseless by international labour and human rights organisations.

CCC is calling for the Bangladeshi authorities to launch an immediate and impartial investigation into the killing and for them to work tirelessly to bring the perpetrators to justice. We are also calling on supporters worldwide, including EU missions and other organisations to generate similar pressure on the Bangladeshi authorities in order to stop the culture of impunity that has led to this tragic murder. Our heartfelt condolences go out to Aminul’s family and friends at this time.

What is AQL (Acceptable Quality Level)

The “AQL tables” are statistical tools at the disposal of buyers (for product inspections). They help determine two key elements:

• How many samples should be inspected?
• Where is the limit between acceptability and refusal, when it comes to defective products?

The need for an objective measurement of quality
In virtually every production batch, there will be defective products. It is true even after the manufacturer has checked each individual product and has repaired the defective ones.
Thus, in a supplier/buyer relationship, the supplier cannot be expected to deliver defect-free goods. However, the buyer wants to control the quality of purchased goods, since he does not want too many defects. But what does “too many” mean?
How to set the limit between acceptability and refusal in a way that can be agreed upon and measured?

Definition and application of ‘AQL’

The limit, as described above, is called the ‘AQL’. It stands for ‘Acceptance Quality Limit’, and is defined as the “quality level that is the worst tolerable” (ISO 2859 standard).
For example: “I want no more than 1.5% defective items in the whole order quantity” means the AQL is 1.5%.
In practice, three types of defects are distinguished. For most consumer goods, the limits are:

• 0% for critical defects (totally unacceptable: a user might get harmed, or regulations are not respected).
• 2.5% for major defects (these products would usually not be considered acceptable by the end user).
• 4.0% for minor defects (there is some departure from specifications, but most users would not mind it).

These proportions vary in function of the product and its market. Components used in building an airplane are subject to much lower AQL limits.

Getting familiar with the AQL tables

Before using the AQL tables, you should decide on three parameters:

• The ‘lot size’. If you ordered different products, the quantity of each product is a lot size, and separate inspections should be carried out for each lot. If you ordered only one product, the lot size is your total order quantity.
• The inspection level. Different inspection levels will command different number of samples to inspect. In this article, we will stick to the so-called “level II”, under “normal severity”.
• The AQL level appropriate for your market. If your customers accept very few defects, you might want to set a lower AQL for both major and minor defects.

There are basically two tables. The first one tells you which ‘code letter’ to use. Then, the code letter will give you the sample size and the maximum numbers of defects that can be accepted.
First table: sample size code letters

How to read this table? It is very easy.
If you follow my example, I assume your ‘lot size’ is comprised between 3,201pcs and 10,000pcs, and that your inspection level is ‘II’. Consequently, the code letter is “L”.

Second table: single sampling plans for level II inspection (normal severity)

How to read this table?
Your code letter is “L”, so you will have to draw 200pcs randomly from the total lot size.
Besides, I assume you have set your AQL at 2.5% for major defects and 4.0% for minor defects. Therefore, here are the limits: the products are accepted if NO MORE than 10 major defects AND NO MORE than 14 minor defects are found.
For example, if you find 15 major defects and 12 minor defects, the products are refused. If you find 3 major defects and 7 minor defects, they are accepted.
Note: in quality inspections, the number of defects is only one of the criteria. It is sometimes called “quality”, or “quality findings”. The other criteria are usually on the inspector’s checklist, which typically includes:

• Packaging conformity (barcodes, inner packing, cartons, shipping marks…).
• Product conformity (aspect, workmanship…). If all the products are in red color instead of orange, there is no need to count each sample as a defect. It makes more sense to refuse for product conformity.

Specific tests defined in the inspection protocol (they might not be performed on all samples).

How To Control Shrinkage And Twisting In Fabric

What Causes Shrinkage and Twisting?

During spinning, weaving, bleaching, dyeing and the various finishing processes, yarns and cloth are under a continuous tension that causes Shrinkage And Twisting in the fabric. Yarns and/or fabrics are not fixed materials. They consist of separate, stretchable fibers which submit to the tension. In other words, fabrics do stretch in length and width. The tension within the yarns, which is caused by
This stretching, can be eliminated when the friction within the fabric is reduced. This reduction in friction occurs during laundering where both water and soap act as a lubricant. The lubricant, along with the mechanical action of the washer, helps the fibers relax and contract to their original length before the elongation takes place. This means that the fabric shrinks and recaptures its original equilibrium.

Controlled Comprehensive Shrinkage and Twisting Process:

The internationally well-known and most important shrinking process today dates back more than 70 years. Though the correct expression for this process is Con-trolled Compressive Shrinkage, the average person knows it as SANFORIZED. The process is a purely mechanical treatment without any addition of chemicals. The word SANFORIZED is derived from the first name of the inventor of the compressive shrinkage process, Mr. Sanford L. Cluett. The Sanforized Company, a division of Cluett Peabody & Co., Inc., New York, USA, is sole owner of the registered trademarks Sanforized, Sanfor and Sanforizado. The Sanforized label means dimensional stability for
garments made up of Sanforized labeled fabrics. The purpose of the process is to shrink fabrics in such a way that textiles made up of these fabrics do not shrink during washing.
The amount of potential wash shrinkage must be determined prior to shrinking. A full width sample is wash-tested according to the test method. After the lengthwise and widthwise shrinkage has been deter-mined, the compressive shrinkage machine can be adjusted accordingly.

The shrinkage and Twisting Control Process Can be Described by the Schematic Below:

Fabric (F) passes through the skyer (S) or other moisten-ing device and is moistened by water and/or steam. This will lubricate the fibers and promote shrinkability within the fabric. Normally, a fabric must be moistened in such a way that every single thread achieves a moisture content of approximately 15%. This allows compression of the fabric with very little resistance. When the fabric passes through the clip expander (C), we obtain the required width. The clip expander also trans-ports the fabric to the most important part of the machine: the rubber belt unit (indicated by arrows in above figure). In the close-up of fig. 1, we see the endless rubber belt (R). By squeezing rubber belt (R)
between pressure roll (P) and rubber belt cylinder (RB), we obtain an elastical stretching of the rubber belt surface. The more we squeeze the rubber belt, the more the surface is stretched. This point of squeezing is known as the pressure zone, or the nip point. Fabric (F) is now fed into the pressure zone. When leaving the pressure zone, the rubber belt recovers itself and the surface returns to its original length carrying the fabric with it. The effect of this action is a shorting of the warp yarn which packs the filling yarns closer together. At this actual moment, shrinkage occurs. After compaction within the rubber belt unit, the fabric enters the dryer (D). Here the fibers are locked in their shrunken state by removing the moisture from the fabric. After the compressive shrinkage process is completed, another sample of the fabric is taken. This sample is also wash-tested. The final result of this test must meet the Sanforized Standard in length and width before it may carry the Sanforized label. All Sanforized Licensees are contractually obligated to follow the required test method and meet the standards set forth by The Sanforized Company.

Shrinkage and Twisting Standards for Woven and Knit Fabrics

Standards for Shrinkage of Sanforized Labeled Woven Fabrics: Woven fabrics shall not either shrink or gain in excess of 1% in either the warpwise or the weftwise direction when subjected to the wash-test method of the United States Federal specification number CCC-T-191A or ISO 675.
Standards for Shrinkage of Sanfor-Knit: Labeled Knit Fabrics Knit fabrics shall not either shrink or gain in excess of 5% in either the longitudinal or the cross direction when subjected to the wash-test AATCC 135-1987 or ISO 6330 (60 degree, tumble dry).

http://www.garmentsmerchandiser.info/shrinkage-and-twisting/

Sanforization

Sanforization is a process of treatment used for cotton fabrics mainly and most textiles made from natural or chemical fibres, patented by Sanford Lockwood Cluett (1874–1968) in 1930. It is a method of stretching, shrinking and fixing the woven cloth in both length and width, before cutting and producing to reduce the shrinkage which would otherwise occur after washing.

The cloth is continually fed into the sanforizing machine and therein moistened with either water or steam. A rotating cylinder presses a rubber band against another heated rotating cylinder, thereby the rubber band briefly gets compressed and afterwards shrinks to its final size. The cloth to be treated is transported between rubber band and heated cylinder and is forced to follow this brief expansion and recontraction and thus gets shrunk.

The bigger the pressure applied to the rubber band the bigger the shrinking afterwards.

The aim of the process is a cloth which does not shrink during clothes production by cutting, sewing or by wearing and washing the finished clothes.

For technical application, cloth may be specified to have a shrink-proof value of under 1%.

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