Bangladesh Unions Say Garment Workers Are Being Fired for Protesting

Jasmin Malik Chua
·5 min read

Garment factories in Bangladesh have sacked hundreds of workers following October and November’s violent protests over the revised minimum wage, while still more are in hiding from potential arrest, unions representing half a million workers told Reuters.

The unions—the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation, the National Garment Workers Federation and the Bangladesh Garments Workers Unity Council, estimate that between 1,000 and 5,000 workers have either been fired over the past two months or are currently on the run.

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But Faruque Hassan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, an influential trade group, told the outlet that he was unaware of any contractions in the workforce, adding that it would act if “any such incidents are brought to our notice.”

Bogu Gojdź, campaign coordinator at the Clean Clothes Campaign, the garment industry’s largest consortium of trade unions and labor rights groups, told Sourcing Journal that its members on the ground are keeping track of terminations, which they peg at somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000, though a clearer picture will emerge over the next two weeks.

Nazma Akter, president of the union Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation and executive director of the advocacy group Awaj Foundation, also puts the number of axed workers at around 3,000, though she said the number could be more.

“The workers are still miserably suffering,” she said. “Many of them have lost their job [or faced] attendance deduction. Furthermore, injury, lack of proper treatment and medical cost, Legal support, food and other daily necessities of living are missing. So now they are [living] a very insecure life with multiple crises, including mental trauma and fear, to save both life and job.”

Akter said that the police have continued to threaten workers. Even factory owners, she noted, have been forcing their employees to resign from their jobs without compensation. Her organizations have been doing what they can to ameliorate the situation.

“They are still scared to come forward, to complain and come to us,” she said. “We gave shelter to some of the workers in our office against whom false cases were filed. We tried to come to an agreement with the factory management for the withdrawal of the lawsuits. Also we have helped those workers to reinstate their jobs who have lost their jobs.”

Conditions are particularly fraught as the South Asian nation heads into general elections this weekend, with 300 parliamentary seats up for grabs. The ruling Awami League’s chief rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is boycotting the Jan. 7 polls over its insistence that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government cannot ensure free and fair votes. This all but guarantees that the 76-year-old leader will cinch her fourth straight and fifth overall term in office despite a wobbly economy and shrinking dollar reserves that necessitate a $4.7 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.

In December, the IMF executive board cleared its first review, instantly releasing a second tranche of $468.3 million that brought total disbursements under the extended credit facility to $936.6 million. The board’s approval also unlocked $221.5 million in support of the country’s climate financing needs.

“Bangladesh’s economy has continued to face economic challenges. External headwinds, coupled with initially inadequate domestic policy response, have made macroeconomic management challenging,” Rahul Anand, IMF mission chief for Bangladesh, said at a press briefing at the time. “An unprecedented reversal of the financial account deteriorated the overall balance of payments in FY2023, leading to continued pressures on FX reserves and the taka.”

It was skyrocketing living costs that brought garment employees to the streets en masse to demand a higher floor wage, one that was ultimately set at 12,500 Bangladeshi taka ($114), or far less than the 23,000 taka they said would rescue them from the knife-edge of poverty and starvation. Four workers were killed in the ensuing chaos and at least 115 were thrown in jail alongside political dissidents who were demonstrating at the same time. Scores more risk arrest: some 43 First Information Reports listing more than 20,000 unnamed workers have been filed in police stations, according to the Worker Rights Consortium, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

Those in the know say that separating politics from the wage-setting process has been difficult, meaning that a better understanding of where things stand will only be possible after election day. Security will have an outsized presence at the polls with the deployment of nearly 750,000 police, paramilitary and police auxiliaries, plus members from the army, air force and navy. Some 127 foreign observers will be overseeing the voting process, the initial results of which should be available by Jan. 8.

An appearance of democracy, at minimum, will be crucial. Already, the United States has said that it would impose visa sanctions on “individuals undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.” That, along with a recent presidential memorandum outlining the Biden administration’s commitment to global worker rights, including a desire to hold to account those “who threaten, who intimidate, who attack union leaders, labor rights defenders, labor organizations” has created an additional frisson of unease.

Meanwhile, opposing stories have emerged from workers and their employers. Delowar Hossin, a garment worker with Ducati Apparels, a Boohoo supplier in Ashulia, told Reuters that he was fired in early December without explanation or severance. “I was just blocked from entering the factory,” he said.

Ducati’s managing director, Khayer Mia, on the other hand, said that no workers had been axed. And that even though the factory had to shutter for 10 days at the height of the protests, during which 15 to 20 workers vandalized the facility, Ducati paid full salaries to all its employees. “I love my workers and factory like my family,” Mia said.

Gojdź said that brands sourcing from Bangladesh must publicly condemn any retaliation against the workers, as well as immediately investigate cases of firings and blacklisting among their suppliers.

“Many brands sourcing from Bangladesh, including Inditex and Puma, have publicly committed to protecting the workers’ right to freedom of association specifically in the context of the Bangladesh minimum wage revision, yet failed to take meaningful action to fulfill this commitment,” she said. “Brands need to live up to their own promises and use their leverage to end the retaliation against workers who exercised their right to protest poverty wages.”