A recent randomised controlled trial (RCT) conducted by a non-profit research organisation in India aimed to investigate whether providing garment factory workers with eyeglasses would improve their vision while simultaneously boosting performance and productivity. While seeming benevolent, this approach raises disturbing questions pertaining to the ethics and efficacy of linking basic worker rights and well-being to productivity and profit, and the appropriateness of RCTs in this context.

The researchers assumed that low-wage women workers avoided wearing glasses due to financial constraints and social taboos. However, conversations with garment workers in the same factories in July 2024 unveiled a far more nuanced reality. Women tailors said they often avoid wearing glasses during hiring to prevent being relegated to lower-paid positions. This practice continues throughout employment due to fear that wearing glasses might be perceived as a liability, potentially leading to blame for missed production targets and demotion.

This case exemplifies how such supposedly 'benevolent interventions' often fail to address systemic issues in the supply chain such as trade union repression and various forms of labour exploitation, misdiagnosing underlying problems. In the process, these approaches risk devaluing inviolable basic rights, casting them as negotiable tenets that can be subject to experiments and evaluated for their impact on productivity and profitability. At another level, the study raises larger issues related to the approach of "building a business case for worker well-being through RCTs" – a method gaining traction among businesses and international NGOs.

Given garment factory work is known to cause vision impairment, it's questionable why more RCTs are needed to link eyewear provision to productivity. A more direct approach would be to provide spectacles as a basic health measure through partnerships with healthcare providers. Moreover, it is self-evident that providing spectacles to vision-impaired workers for precision tasks like tailoring would boost productivity while protecting eye health. This principle extends to other labour welfare measures, such as providing clean bathrooms and menstrual hygiene products, which have been shown to boost women's labour force participation.

The insistence on conducting RCTs for straightforward interventions and developing tools to assess the real-time impact of basic rights on business metrics appears redundant and potentially counterproductive. It raises critical questions: Could this set a worrisome precedent where other health rights and established Occupational Safety and Health Guidelines become contingent on their demonstrable link to productivity?

The collection and utilisation of workers' health data in these contexts also raises concerns. Will access to this data be restricted to researchers, or might factory management and third parties gain access? Could it then surreptitiously shape performance evaluation or termination decisions without workers' knowledge or consent?

While RCTs have been employed since the 1990s to evolve solutions for poverty alleviation, their use has also faced sharp criticism for its failure to challenge the systemic roots of the very problems they aim to address. Despite this evidence, some academics have recently started promoting the adoption of RCTs across diverse industries. These proponents prioritise building a business case through RCTs to address a broad spectrum of workplace issues including implementing functional grievance redressal mechanisms and tackling gender inequality at the workplace. This shift carries dangerous implications for labour rights, especially at a critical juncture when many Global South countries are implementing labor reforms that chip away at critical worker protection mechanisms by placing overriding emphasis on productivity and business profits.

At its core, it is a deeply flawed notion that workers' rights and well-being should be contingent on improvements in productivity and profitability. These are basic human rights, enshrined in the ILO Core Conventions, the International Bill of Human Rights and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The troubling implication of this research approach is clear: if these fundamental rights do not demonstrably increase productivity, would such institutions advise businesses against investing in them?

Further, most such research is conducted in factories where workers lack access to trade unions and collective bargaining. For example, garment factories where many such RCTs are being conducted are well-documented for extreme power imbalances, with mostly young women workers from marginalised backgrounds, while management is predominantly male and from powerful local communities.

Within this context, can workers genuinely decline participation in RCTs, especially if management expects compliance? What repercussions might they face for refusing? Moreover, what are the psychological and physical impacts when one group receives necessities while another does not, for research purposes?

Can studies conducted under such conditions be truly impartial, especially given how similar business-funded social audits have consistently failed to identify or address critical issues, leading to disasters like the Rana Plaza collapse that killed more than a thousand workers?

The approach also alarmingly mirrors discredited practices from the Industrial Revolution, such as tying healthcare access to worker productivity, risking the perpetuation of workplace inequalities rather than their resolution.

The growing trend of conducting RCTs and developing business cases for purported improvement in worker welfare is not just a misallocation of resources; rather, it represents a dangerous shift in how we perceive and value labour rights. A more holistic, rights-based approach that addresses systemic issues in supply chains would be more effective in genuinely improving worker well-being and protecting worker rights.

All views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the organisations she works for.

Nandita Shivakumar is a researcher specialising in gender justice and sustainability in global fashion supply chains. She works with multiple garment workers’ unions to develop their campaigns and communication strategies.