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 in Dhaka is equivalent to that of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Luxembourg and Montreal.
The workers receive few or no benefits and often struggle to support their families. Many risk their lives to make a living.
On November 24, 2012, a massive fire tore through the Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing more than 110 garment workers and gravely injuring thousands more.
In the wake of this disaster, garment workers throughout Bangladesh are standing up for their rights to safe workplaces and living wages. With the Solidarity Center, which partners with unions and other organizations to educate workers about their rights on the job, garment workers are empowered with the tools they need to improve their workplaces together.
Tahera Tahera cannot remember much about her life before the day she was trapped in the Tazreen fire. She is unable to care for her four-year-old son and rarely comes out of her room. “It seems to me that something dark comes to my door and is calling me,” she says. “When I see the darkness, I become unstable and want to go far away from here,” she said.
On November 24, 2012, women and men working overtime on the Tazreen production lines were trapped when fire broke out in the first-floor warehouse. Workers scrambled toward the roof, jumped from upper floors or were trampled by their panic-stricken co-workers. Some could not run fast enough and were lost to the flames and smoke.
Hundreds of those injured at Tazreen, like Tahera (above), will never be able to work again. Survivors say they endure daily physical and emotional pain, and often are unable to support their families because they cannot work and have received little or no compensation.
Some 80 percent of export-oriented ready made garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh need improvement in fire and electrical safety standards, despite a government finding most were safe, according to a recent International Labor Organization (ILO) report.
TAZREEN NOT UNIQUE
The Tazreen fire was not an isolated incident. Months after the Tazreen disaster, more than 1,000 garment workers were killed when the Rana Plaza building collapsed.
Approximately 2,500 people were injured—many of them losing limbs and thousands more severely traumatized.
Workers were forced to return to the building despite the warnings of structural engineers that the building was unsound.
On the five-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, women garment workers rally in Savar, Bangladesh with the relatives of those who died or were grievously injured. Credit: Solidarity Center/Musfiq Tajwar
FACTORIES CAN BE MADE SAFE
From November, 2012 to March, 2018, Bangladesh’s garment sector has suffered 3,875 injuries and 1,303 deaths due to fires, building collapses and other tragedies, according todatacollected by the Solidarity Center.
The Tazreen fire and Rana Plaza collapse were preventable. Workers at Tazreen and Rana Plaza did not have a union or other organization to represent them and help them fight for a safe workplace.
Without a union, garment workers often are harassed or fired when they ask their employer to fix workplace safety and health conditions.
They are not trained in basic fire safety measures and often their factories, like Tazreen, have locked emergency doors and stairwells packed with flammable material.
Unions have helped to improve these conditions.
A young woman protests garment worker deaths in Bangladesh. Credit: Solidarity Center/Sifat Sharmin Amita
WORKERS DEMAND CHANGE
Garment workers throughout Bangladesh have staged rallies to demand that multinational corporations respect their human rights.
Women rally for their rights with labor rights organization and Solidarity Center partner Awaj Foundation near the Dhaka Press Club on May 1, 2018. Credit: Solidarity Center/Musfiq Tajwar
They have joined together to form workplace unions and bargain for safe working conditions, better wages and respect on the job.
Credit: Solidarity Center
WORKERS STAND TOGETHER
When workers stand together, they can make their voices heard without fear.
The Solidarity Center partners with numerous unions and worker associations in Bangladesh. Credit: Solidarity Center
Workers learn fire prevention measures, find out about safety equipment their factories should make available and get hands-on experience in extinguishing fires.
The Solidarity Center has also trained more than 6,000 union leaders and workers in fire safety, helping to empower factory-floor-level workers to monitor for hazardous working conditions and demand safety violations be corrected.
Union leaders participate in the Solidarity Center’s 10-week fire safety certification course. Credit: Solidarity Center
CHANGE IS POSSIBLE
Salma (below), a garment worker, and her co-workers faced stiff employer resistance when they sought to form a union.
With assistance from the Solidarity Center and the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), to which their factory union is affiliated, workers negotiated a wage increase, maternity benefits and safe drinking water.
The factory now is clean, has adequate fire extinguishers on every floor, and a fire door has replaced a collapsible gate.
More than five years later, 445 factories with over 216,000 workers have unions to represent their interests and protect their rights.
Salma, a garment factory union leader in Bangladesh, says with a union, the factory is safer and workers have better wages. Credit: Solidarity Center
“CHANGES ARE POSSIBLE IF YOU HAVE UNION AND YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK.” – SALMA
Garment workers learn fire safety and other measures to improve their working conditions. Credit: Solidarity Center
INVISIBLE NO LONGER
When women workers form unions, they improve their working conditions. Through Solidarity Center workshops and leadership training, more women are running for union office.
Women now make up more than 61 percent of union leadership in newly formed factory level-unions.
As workers strengthen their collective voice in their workplaces and beyond, their hard work, their lives and their humanity become visible once more.
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 workers, usually to work more for less. The last five years in the Bangladesh garment industry have been particularly dizzying, following the deadly November 24, 2012, Tazreen Fashions fire—and the Rana Plaza collapse six months after—that impelled intense, though not-quite permanent changes.
For workers and their unions, some changes have been historic and empowering. In an unprecedented burst of organizing in 40 years of the garment industry in Bangladesh, more than 400 unions recruited 90,000 new members. Now, however, we are seeing the government’s and industry’s reactions to that empowerment. Their dismissive attitude toward workers, their rights and their role in a booming sector runs the risk of harming not only Bangladesh garment workers but the very trade deals that make the country’s garment and textile sector its economic engine.
The young women union leaders of Bangladesh have surged forward against difficult odds, and the scars of the Tazreen factory fire that killed 112 garment workers are still raw. Many workers who were badly injured in the disaster, as documented by the Solidarity Center, are still unable to work. And the unions that workers continue to organize are facing an uphill battle for recognition, dignity and rights at work.
In 2012, prior to Tazreen, 12 unions applied for registration, a government requirement, and only one received it. Following Tazreen and with the world focused on how our clothes are made, 157 unions applied for registration and 84 were registered in 2013. Through their unions, the mostly woman workforce learned fire safety, gained maternity benefits and even improved their wages. But a backlash began to set in by 2015. Intimidated by employers determined to limit organizations that would represent worker interests, workers formed fewer unions.
Last December widespread labor unrest over poor wages in Ashulia, a suburb of Dhaka, led to hundreds of fired workers, police repression and trumped-up legal charges against worker rights activists. In response many Western clothing brands boycotted the annual high-profile “garment summit” in February, organized by the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA). In the spring the European Union (EU) held a first-ever meeting in Dhaka to discuss Bangladesh’s ill-treatment of workers and disregard for freedom of association in light of the garment industry’s preferential trade status. Still not getting the message, the Bangladesh police surveilled union activists, temporarily shut down union offices and raided worker education programs supported by the U.S. government, while ignoring coordinated attacks, verbal and otherwise, on labor organizers.
The events of the past year are building to a moment of truth for the government of Bangladesh and its garment sector. Bangladesh lost its preferential tariff benefits under the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in 2013, when the U.S. Trade Representative suspended it from the program. The EU has a similar tariff program and has demanded significant changes, to be unveiled this month, in Bangladesh’s labor law and practice in order to keep those benefits.
In a new white paper, the Clean Clothes Campaign, European Trade Union Confederation, International Trade Union Confederation and the IndustriALL and UNI global unions provide clear evidence that, despite signing a sustainability compact with the EU a year after the Tazreen fire, Bangladesh remains in violation of the deal. In the compact, the government pledged to reform labor laws, implement freedom of association in export-processing zones, improve union registration and curtail anti-union discrimination.
International Trade Union Confederation General Secretary Sharan Burrow says, “The government of Bangladesh is consistently failing to meet its obligations under international law to protect workers’ rights. The result is continued exploitation and poverty wages for workers in the garment industry. An EU investigation would help break the stranglehold that factory owners in Bangladesh have over the parliament and government, and would provide vital support for workers and their families.”
The EU has an important choice to make: whether to accept more empty promises from the Bangladesh government or institute a review of GSP trade benefits, the report’s authors say.
“Despite promises made, it is still extremely difficult for workers in Bangladesh to exercise their fundamental labor rights,” says Jenny Holdcroft, IndustriALL assistant general secretary. “The continued failure of the Bangladeshi government to take the necessary action to protect workers’ rights is ample reason for the EU to launch the much-needed trade investigation.” Bangladesh’s powerful employers and government have demonstrated little interest in changing the status quo, but a day of reckoning may be upon them. They can grant workers the respect and rights they deserve, or they can risk their flagship industry and economy. After five years, garment workers familiar with fast fashion are counting on eventual justice.
At least 13 workers were killed and dozens injured when a boiler exploded at a garment factory in Bangladesh on Monday, ripping through the six-story building and causing a portion of it to collapse.
Officials have now called off the search for survivors. The death toll was not higher because most of the factory’s 5,000 garment workers were on holiday and not in the building, officials say.
Harunur Rashid, a worker at the factory, says the boiler’s safety light was flashing danger, but the device’s operators assured them there was nothing to worry about, according to reports in the Bangladesh news media.
“Within 10 minutes after we returned to work, the boiler exploded,” he says. “It’s absolutely the authorities’ negligence.”
Witnesses report the blast ripped doors, windows, machinery and a section of the second floor wall, all of which went airborne.
The plant in the Gazipur industrial district is owned by manufacturer Multifabs.
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 (NGWF), which sponsored the event, the orphaned children prayed for their parents and stood vigil outside the Dhaka Press Club as union leaders vowed to never compromise when it comes to worker safety.
The Rana Plaza building, which housed five garment factories, collapsed April 24, 2013. Although the workers, mostly women, were evacuated because of cracks in the building the day before, managers forced workers into the building the next day, threatening their jobs if they failed to do so. Some 2,500 garment workers were injured—many of them losing limbs, and many more severely traumatized.
“If there was a union at Rana Plaza, (the collapse) may not have happened,” says Mohammad Ronju, a long-time organizer with the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF).
Garment Workers Empowered through Solidarity Center Safety Training
On World Day for Safety and Health at Work, as workers across the globe remember the dead and vow to fight for the living, a new Solidarity Center video highlights how Bangladesh garment workers are forming unions at considerable risk and negotiating for safer workplaces, better working conditions and dignity and respect on the job.
And many are doing so with the support of the Solidarity Center, which provides workers with the tools they need to improve their working and living conditions through a collective voice so that tragedies like Rana Plaza and the Tazreen Fashions factory fire never happen again. For instance, through Solidarity Center fire safety training, garment workers learn how to protect themselves and their workplaces, and advocate for safety and health improvements.
“After we completed 10 days of (fire safety) training, we could identify the risks around us,” union leader Saiful Islam says in the video. Following the training, Saiful and his co-workers talked with management and, ultimately, fire doors were installed and the building underwent fire and safety checks.
“We are able to talk to management about our different demands,” he says. “If there were no union, all these things would not be possible. A union is here, so these things are possible.”
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 organizers who were arrested in December on baseless and dangerous charges, following wage strikes in the Ashulia garment district in December.
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, police entered the BIGUF office in Gazipur, arrested Ronju and later charged him in a January 2015 political opposition explosive substances case, in which he had no involvement. The case carries a sentence of three to twenty years in prison.
After being denied bail repeatedly, Ronju was eventually granted bail and was released on February 16, 2017 after spending over 50 days in jail. The case is still pending.
Ronju, targeted for helping garment workers form unions, faces up to 20 years in prison.
“I grew up in Dinajpur (northern Bangladesh) and then moved to Dhaka to live with my aunt when I was 8 years old. As I got a little older, I knew I needed to do something to earn money so I got a job in a garment factory.
“At the age of 12 or 13 years old, I started working in a factory in Dhaka as a helper in the finishing section making 600 taka a month ($7.40).
“In 2006, I began working in a different factory in Gazipur where some of my co-workers first introduced me to BIGUF when there was a problem with unpaid wages. About 25 of us went to the federation office, and they worked with us to resolve the problem.
“Sometime later in 2011, when I worked in another factory, I tried to organize a union but I was fired. Another worker and I led the effort to sign up workers for the union and submitted an application for registration to the government. I was terminated for union activity but BIGUF fought to get me reinstated in the factory. However, management later brought armed men into the factory to force me to leave my job and move from the area for good. They also went to my home and threatened my family.
“I left that factory and became a union organizer with BIGUF. I’m doing this because I was an abused worker and I want to do something for other workers. A union is the road to worker rights.”
With Union, Rana Plaza Disaster Would Not Have Happened
“Since Rana Plaza, workers are now able to formally have their unions registered (by the government; a legal requirement) where they were not able to before. Workers are now more familiar about what trade unions are and what they do. Workers are also more aware of their safety. If there was a union at Rana Plaza, (the collapse) may not have happened. Union leaders could have talked with the owners about the problems there, and maybe so many workers would not have lost their lives. Maybe the leaders would have been harassed by the management, but so many workers would not have died.”
No Food, No Bed in Prison
“On December 27, I was at our BIGUF office in Gazipur when several police entered. They began reading a list of names of people that they were looking for and read my name. They arrested me and took me away in their car. I asked them what was my (reason for being arrested). They told me that there was no case against me but that they had received instructions to arrest me, so that is what they did.
“They brought me to a police station. I didn’t want to get in touch with my family because I didn’t want to worry them. Two days passed and I didn’t know what was going on. In lock-up we weren’t allowed anything—no shoes, no bed. I slept on the floor. The police didn’t feed me but some of the other prisoners shared their food. Eventually, they transferred me to the main jail where one of the officers at the gate used bad language with me.
“I was in jail for one month and 19 days. The first week in jail was really tense. I knew BIGUF would help me but I have a family and wasn’t sure how they would handle the situation. I also had communication with lots of factory workers and wasn’t sure what would happen to them. But after I was able to establish communication with everyone outside, I felt lighter.”
‘Police Instructed by Higher Authorities to Arrest Us’
“Asad and Arif (two other BIGUF organizers arrested in Gazipur several days before Ronju) were also with me in jail. Asad and I slept in the same place, and Arif slept in a different place. Every morning we had to wake up at 5 a.m. and kneel on the ground so that the guards could count the prisoners. This would happen several times a day. The authorities would provide little and very low-quality food. No one could eat the vegetables and the small amount of rice provided was full of insects. But BIGUF arranged other, better quality food and items like blankets and plates to help us inside the jail.
“The false charges against me are about a political opposition case [and explosives?]. They put me in this case just to harass us (BIGUF). There is nothing there. The police were instructed by higher authorities to arrest us. BIGUF really works for the workers and that is why we were targeted.
“I have a wife and an 11-year-old son. I have received some pressure from my family, but I cannot leave my organization. This work is in my blood. We have not made any mistakes but we are harassed. We hope for the case to be withdrawn so we can again work more openly with the workers again.
“Although I’m on bail, because I have a case pending against me I still have to appear in court one day a month. The case is such that I cannot miss a hearing or I will be arrested and put in jail again.”
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