2023-11-17 20:49:09
Bangladeshi textile workers return to work at their factory in Ashulia, north of Dhaka, on November 15, 2023. MUNIR UZ ZAMAN / AFP
The textile factory workers of Bangladesh did not win their case. After three weeks of strike, demonstrations and clashes with the police, those who manufacture Levi’s, Zara and other H&M clothing returned to work on Wednesday, November 15, without obtaining the almost tripling of their salaries requested.
The textile sector’s minimum wage committee decided to increase the basic remuneration by 56%, bringing it to 12,500 takas, or 104 euros, on Tuesday, November 8. An amount that the unions judge « ridicule » in view of the 23,000 takas, or approximately 190 euros, claimed.
Sheikh Hasina, the country’s Prime Minister who will seek a fifth term in the general elections on January 7, 2024, refused any further increase in the minimum wage and urged workers to return to work or risk losing their jobs and having “to return to their villages”.
Third largest global supplier
In fact, “it is out of financial obligation and under pressure from the government and the threat of the police authorities, including physical ones, that the striking workers returned to work”observes Christie Miedema, coordinator of the Clean Clothes Campaign, a federation of non-governmental organizations which campaign for respect for human rights.
“The situation resembles that of five years ago”, deplores Ms. Miedema. In 2018, the minimum wage in this sector, which employs four million people, was revised to 8,000 takas, or 65 euros, for five years. Since then, the sector has weathered the Covid-19 crisis and suffered galloping inflation, of around 35% since 2019.
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In the summer of 2023, for the first time, the government set up a committee to determine a minimum wage applicable in the ready-to-wear sector on December 1, without waiting for the 2024 deadline. However, none of the representative unions of the personnel of this powerful industry sit there. Obviously, local employers is reluctant to increase wages for fear of degrading the competitiveness of a sector which represents 85% of the country’s 55 billion euros of annual exports. Thanks to a network of 3,500 factories, the sector is known to be one of the cheapest in the world: the country is the third largest supplier of clothing, behind China and Vietnam.
Four dead in Dhaka
Ten years after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, killing more than 1,100 textile workers, working conditions have barely changed. In addition, Bangladesh is still in the crosshairs of NGOs who denounce attacks on union rights there. Last June, Luc Triangle, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, condemned the murder of Shahidul Islam Shahid, union leader of the Bangladesh Textile and Industrial Workers’ Federation, “beaten to death” by a gang after attending a union meeting. “This assassination comes against a backdrop of targeted attacks against trade union leaders in Bangladesh and will have a deterrent effect on the already very restricted labor movement”the American NGO Human Rights Watch then reacted.
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