Vol. 79/No. 1      January 19, 2015

During a reporting trip to Bangladesh in October, Militant reporters spoke with dozens of garment workers and unionists who gave a vivid picture of these developments.

When Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan in 1971, it had little industry and became heavily dependent on U.S. “aid,” which perpetuated underdevelopment. In the late 1970s, however, capitalists in the international clothing trade were attracted to the low wages in Bangladesh. The number of garment factories here mushroomed from nine to 5,000. Many have up to several thousand employees.

More than 4 million rural workers, overwhelmingly women, have migrated to Dhaka and Chittagong to seek jobs in the apparel industry, which generates 80 percent of the country’s foreign earnings. While the owners are largely Bangladeshi, the industry supplies major European and U.S. retailers such as Walmart, Sears, Gap, Swedish-based H&M, and Carrefour of France. Bangladesh is now the world’s second biggest garment exporter after China.

The industrial revolution in Bangladesh has been marked by brutal conditions, including widespread use of children’s and women’s labor. At the same time, the concentration of workers has increased their sense of collective power to organize and fight those conditions.

“I started working when I was 12 years old, in 1989,” Kalpona Akter, a longtime trade unionist and now executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, told Militant reporters in her office here Oct. 29. “My 10-year-old brother worked in the same garment plant. We helped support a family of seven.”

Akter described work shifts of up to 19 and a half hours. She would work until 3:30 a.m., sleep on the factory floor, and start again at 8 a.m. — often 15 or 16 days in a row.

“It was routine for bosses to slap and beat us and subject us to verbal abuse,” she remarked. “I didn’t know anything about my rights when I started.

“Once, the company promised us 10 hours’ overtime pay but then backtracked and gave us no extra pay. We said, ‘Enough is enough.’ We had counted on the money for the holidays,” Akter said. Some 1,500 workers went on strike. The bosses paid the overtime premium. “That was my first lesson. They only listen to us when we take to the streets.”

Surge of union organizing
As tens of thousands of workers engaged in strikes and street protests, they pushed back some of the worst conditions. A 2006 labor law prohibits employment of children under 14 and stipulates a 48-hour workweek with a maximum of 12 hours overtime. Child labor is now rare in the apparel industry, Akter said, but is still widespread elsewhere, especially in agriculture and domestic service.

“There have been important changes over the years, and especially since the Tazreen and Rana Plaza disasters,” she said. “In the last 22 months we have registered unions in nearly 200 garment factories. In all the years before, only a handful of factories had been registered.”

In November 2012, unsafe conditions led to a fire at the Tazreen Fashions plant, trapping workers behind locked doors and killing 112. In April 2013, the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed and 1,129 garment workers were killed.

After months of street mobilizations, garment workers forced a 77 percent increase in the minimum wage, changes in the labor law easing some obstacles to union organizing, and a safety and fire accord between unions and companies.

“But we are still far from enjoying dignity — a decent wage, a safe workplace, union rights,” Akter said. “When workers organize, bosses retaliate with harassment, violence, firings and factory closings.” Only a handful of unions have won bargaining rights or contracts.

Even with the raise, the minimum wage, now $68 a month, remains the lowest among major clothing exporters in Asia. The minimum garment wage is $156 in China, $100 in Cambodia, $90 in Vietnam.

“As a skilled sewing machine operator I earn 6,800 takas [$85] a month,” said Adilah when we met her and a dozen of her co-workers from the Ha-Meem Sportswear factory Oct. 30. She had invited us to her home, a rented room near the plant in the Tejgaon industrial district. Translating for us was Lopa, an organizer for the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), which arranged the visit.

“My rent is 5,000 takas and I send 1,000 takas every month to my family in our home village,” Adilah said. Her husband, also a garment worker, earns 6,000 takas. “Even with two incomes it’s hard. We have no medical insurance and a visit to the doctor plus the medicine will easily cost 1,000 takas.”

Adilah and her co-workers, members of the NGWF, are fighting to win back their jobs since the owners of Ha-Meem Sportswear closed the plant Oct. 13 in an effort to stop them from organizing a union.

All the workers, most of them in their 20s, said this was their first job. They moved to Dhaka from rural villages to work in garment, but like millions in Bangladesh’s working class, they still have strong ties to the land.

“My son, who is in the eighth grade, lives with my parents in our home village,” said Shimul, another Ha-Meem worker. “I can visit him twice a year, during the two Eid [Muslim] holidays.”

Although legally required to provide child care facilities, most garment factories do not, workers explained. When bosses are tipped off that state inspectors will show up, they hastily set up a makeshift “child care” area.

Lopa accompanied us to another apartment to talk with a dozen workers from Nassa Group, a plant of 2,500 where a union-organizing fight is underway. They were among 30 fired after they protested the dismissal of a co-worker for taking two days off to attend her father’s funeral in her home village.

“I’m pregnant, so now the company doesn’t have to pay the maternity leave that is required by law,” said Shinly, a worker with 14 years’ service. She said firing workers who get pregnant is not uncommon.

Changing attitudes about women
The influx of millions of women into industry and their involvement in union struggles are having a big impact on the working class and Bangladeshi society as a whole, beginning with women themselves.

Shila Begum, a member of the NGWF national committee, said she had been a housewife in the rural southwestern district of Barisal and moved to Dhaka after her husband, a construction worker, died in a road accident. She worked two years at Rana Plaza, and was one of the survivors of the 2013 building collapse, which damaged her wrist, leaving her unable to work as a sewing machine operator.

“It’s important to be active in the union,” she said. “It’s our only protection.” The NGWF and other unions have led big mobilizations demanding compensation for survivors of Rana Plaza and orphans of workers killed in the disaster.

Several workers noted that their union involvement has won support from husbands and families who previously opposed women working outside the home. “They don’t want the women to die on the job. They don’t want starvation wages,” Kalpona Akter said.

“Men’s attitudes toward women workers are changing — even compared to a few years ago,” said Nazma Akter, a former clothing worker and today general secretary of the Awaj Foundation, which campaigns for the rights of women garment workers. “Today some men are even cooking and doing the laundry because their wives work long hours.”

“Of course, it’s very uneven,” Kalpona Akter said. “My husband wasn’t supportive of my union activity, and was even abusive. So I filed for divorce.

“With greater economic independence, you find more and more single mothers here, and the divorce rate is going up. Divorce now is widely accepted in the working class.” Domestic violence, however, is still a taboo subject, she added.

Migrant workers, rising expectations
Another source of increased working-class expectations here is the 9 million Bangladeshis working abroad — the majority in Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and Malaysia. In 2013 their remittances totaled almost $15 billion, 13 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Several hotel workers in Dhaka told Militant reporters they had worked in hotels in Saudi Arabia or Dubai. “Migrants don’t have many rights in Dubai,” said Abdul, a 24-year-old room attendant, who asked that his full name not be used. “But there I made four times as much as the 10,000 takas [$125] a month I get here for doing the same job.”

Abdul said his jobs in the Mideast had exposed him to the world. “My best friend at the Dubai hotel was from Mexico, and I learned a lot from him,” he said.
 
 
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