More than 1,500 garment workers in Bangladesh were fired after a strike forced a shutdown of dozens of factories that make high end American brands last week.
Thousands of garment workers commenced a walkout this month, in factories that produce popular brands including Gap, Zara, and H&M. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) closed 55 factories in a manufacturing suburb of the nation’s capital, Dhaka, in the middle of the busy Christmas shopping season.
In response, local authorities arrested hundreds of protesters for “instigating unrest” and the factories fired thousands of workers. Factory officials filed cases with local authorities, accusing the workers of both “instigating unrest” and “indiscipline.”
Workers in the manufacturing city of Ashulia have been demonstrating for higher wages, asking that their salaries be tripled from the current $67 per month. The government raised the federal minimum wage in 2013 after the garment industry came under intense international scrutiny following a series of large scale accidents and disasters.
The Rana Plaza Factory collapse in April, 2013, killed 1,135 people and forced western clothing brands to take increased steps to improve working conditions at their factories in the developing world. Forty-one people were charged with murder following the collapse.
While industry officials argue that the minimum wage can only be reviewed once every five years, protesters have been adamant in their demands. The prevailing wage of $67 per month technically meets the country’s minimum wage, but it is less than one fifth of what some experts claim to be a living wage.
The head of a workers union told The Guardian that authorities shut down the protests by using controversial “wartime-era” law. “They used the Special Powers Act to detain union leaders and workers,” said Babul Akhter, president of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation. “Up to 3,500 workers have been sacked and 50 leaders have gone into hiding,” he continued.
In addition to charging workers with crimes and firing thousands of others, factory management also suspended hundreds of workers, displaying their photos on a wall outside the factory gate.
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