My name is Shamima Aktar and I am a responsible member of my society working as an organizer at Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers’ Federation (BGIWF). This was not the case 10 years back. My father was diagnosed with cancer and our family of seven had...
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Bangladesh Garment Worker Organizer: Lives Are Being Transformed’
I am Monira Akter, working with Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF) as an organizer for the past six years. I saw how my elder sister was abused and sometimes beaten in her garment factory, and that is when I decided that I wished to work...
Giving Voice to Hope in Bangladesh
The three-year anniversary of the November 24, 2012, fire that killed 112 Bangladesh garment workers at the Tazreen Fashions Ltd., factory offers a time to reflect on garment workers’ ongoing struggle for workplaces where they will not be killed or injured and for...
The Bangladesh Sustainability Compact: An Effective Tool for Promoting Workers’ Rights?
The impetus for the Bangladesh Sustainability Compact was the Rana Plaza industrial disaster, which took the lives of roughly 1,200 garment workers. The compact required the fulfillment of several time-bound commitments by the Bangladesh government—labor law reform, protection of the right to freedom of association and ensuring fire and building safety. Jeffrey Vogt argues the compact has not been effective for much of its four years. [READ MORE]
Dying for a Job: Commemorating the Anniversary of the 2012 Tazreen Factory Fire
Four million garment workers, mostly women, toil in 5,000 factories across Bangladesh, making the country’s $25 billion garment industry the world’s second largest, after China. Wages are the lowest among major garment-manufacturing nations, while the cost of living...
5 Years after Tazreen, Workers’ Progress at Risk
Five years is a lifetime in the fashion industry. The fast fashion cycle demands quicker and quicker turnarounds, sometimes in months or even weeks. This puts downward pressure on suppliers in terms of prices for the goods they produce and increases demands on...
Joining Across Borders: Solidarity Center Celebrates 20!
Some 300 allies, coalition partners and sponsors of the Solidarity Center packed the Longview Gallery in Washington, D.C., last night to celebrate the organization’s 20th anniversary. The day began with a book launch and discussion on informal workers and collective...
Youth Day 2017: Young Workers Stand up for Their Rights at Work
With youth unemployment rates at record highs and working poverty levels increasing, young workers around the world faced with a lack of decent jobs increasingly are joining with union movements and worker associations to challenge policies that do not promote an...
Solidarity Center Safety Training: Empowering Workers
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, this week, 50 children held torches alight, “beacons of life” to mark the four-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed 1,130 garment workers—including their parents. Together with the National Garment Workers Federation...
‘A Union Is the Road to Worker Rights’
As we approach April 24, the fourth anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,130 garment workers and severely injured thousands more, the Solidarity Center is posting first-person stories of three garment worker union...
Ronju: Helping Garment Workers Form Unions despite Danger
Mohammad Ronju, a long-time organizer with the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF) that has helped thousands of workers in 36 factories form unions, was one of the more than 35 people arrested in the December crackdown. On December 27,...
Dedicated Bangladesh Union Organizer Targeted for Work
As we approach April 24, the fourth anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,130 garment workers and severely injured thousands more, the Solidarity Center is posting first-person stories of three garment worker union...
Arif: From Child Garment Worker to Safety Trainer
As we approach April 24, the fourth anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,130 garment workers and severely injured thousands more, the Solidarity Center is posting first-person stories of three garment worker union...
BANGLADESH: Wage Strike Sparks Government Crackdown
In mid-December, a strike in Ashulia, an industrial suburb of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, and a ready-made garment sector hub, quickly snowballed into widespread unrest. Garment workers abandoned their factories to call for a living wage in response to ever-rising...
“We Are Nothing but Machines to Them”
Solidarity Center’s director of Bangladesh programs, Alonzo Suson, comments on union organizing efforts following the Rana Plaza collapse.
Rights Groups Decry Detention of Nepali Domestic Workers
Some two dozen human rights organizations are condemning the detention of two Nepali domestic workers in Lebanon, one of whom was deported. Sushila Rana and Roja Maya Limbu were detained “without formal and clear explanation of the charges levelled against them,”...
Shawna Bader-Blau: ‘Work Should Be about Dignity’
On the eve of the tragic Tazreen Factory Ltd. fire that in 2012 killed 112 garment workers in Bangladesh, Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau discussed on the Working Life podcast published today how global inequities led to Tazreen and to the 2013...
Garment Workers Take Safety into Their Own Hands
Three years after the deadly Rana Plaza building collapse killed more than 1,100 garment workers in Bangladesh, Solidarity Center safety training is helping empower workers to take safety into their own hands. A new Solidarity Center photo essay shows how garment...
Bangladesh: ‘Changes Are Possible if You Have a Union’
More than 1,100 garment workers died April 24, 2013, when the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangladesh, a preventable disaster that injured thousands more workers in the world’s worst industrial accident in years. Yet their lives likely would have been spared “if...
Fighting With Fire: Bangladesh Garment Workers Take Safety into Their Own Hands
On April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Bangladesh collapsed, trapping thousands of workers and ultimately killing more than 1,130 garment workers in a preventable workplace disaster. The tragedy came five months after a fire tore through Tazreen...