Nov 21, 2013
Aferza, 25, received no compensation after being seriously injured in the Tazreen Fashions factory fire and suffers from constant pain. Credit: Solidarity Center
To mark the one-year anniversary of the deadly Tazreen Fashions factory fire in Bangladesh, the Solidarity Center is highlighting stories of survivors and their families.
Aferza, 25, left her village in 2010 for Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, to escape poverty. She planned to help support her family and educate her children with the money she earned.
On November 24, 2012, she was working as a sewing operator on the fourth floor of the Tazreen Fashions Ltd., garment factory when a fire swept through the building. Like nearly all workers who escaped the blaze, she was forced to jump from a window because the building had no fire escapes. Her husband found her lying unconscious among dead bodies near the burning building.
Her skull was fractured and a broken chest bone punctured her lung. Now, she says, “I am unable to take a glass of water on my own. I cannot sit or lie down for very long. I feel intolerable pain in my whole body and cry constantly.”
Unable to work, she sold the small plot of land she owned in her home village to help pay for medical expenses and food for her family. She spent the compensation she received from the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturing and Exporting Association (BGMEA) and Caritas, a private, Jesuit-run organization, for her medical treatment. “Living here with my husband and children, I cannot contribute to the maintenance of my family,” she says. “My husband is a rickshaw puller whose poor income cannot cover all these costs. Almost all of his earnings are spent on the cost of my medicine.”
As a result, she said, “I starve with my kids and cannot buy medicine for me.”
Some 112 workers died in the Tazreen blaze, which began in a first-floor warehouse of the multistory building. Like other Tazreen garment workers who recounted their experiences to Solidarity Center staff, Aferza says the production manager told them to remain at their work stations, despite the ringing fire alarm. She remembers the lights going out after the fire alarm and falling on the floor as panicked workers ran toward the windows. A co-worker helped her up to a window, where she jumped to the ground.
Even as she suffers from relentless physical pain, Aferza has also been psychologically wounded, fearful of tall buildings and crowds.
With no compensation from the government, the international buyers or the factory owner—and no way to go to work again—Aferza is depending upon loans for her medical treatment. “I have nothing,” she says. “I don’t know how I will survive in the coming days.
“My only dream is now to have food three times in a day, get better treatment and educate my children.”
Aug 4, 2013
Women around the world work make up the vast majority of workers in dangerous, difficult and low-paid jobs—and in Bangladesh, garment workers, the majority of whom are women, often risk their lives for a chance to support themselves and their families. More than 1,100 workers were killed in the most recent garment factory disaster when the eight-story Rana Plaza building collapsed in April.
Morium Akter Sheuli, elected this year as general secretary of the 100,000+ member Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF), was 9 years old when she began work in a garment factory. At age 14, she began organizing co-workers to gain a collective voice on the job to improve workplace safety and wages.
Bangladesh has “more than 4 million garment workers, of which 80 percent are women (and) almost 70 percent of all women employment in the nation’s manufacturing sectors,” said Morium. She spoke last week in in São Paulo, Brazil, during a July 30-31 Solidarity Center conference, “Women’s Empowerment, Gender Equality and Labor Rights: Transforming the Terrain.”
Although garment exports account for 75 percent of Bangladesh’s exports, workers in the country’s 5,000 garment factories are paid a minimum of $38 a month while enduring dangerous and deadly workplaces.
Following the Rana Plaza tragedy and other mass deaths at Bangladesh garment factories, the United States in June suspended its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) reduced tariff benefits agreement with Bangladesh. In July, Bangladesh passed a new labor law, one that Morium says “is not enough for workers.”
“In some ways, the previous law was better than this one,” Morium said through a translator, in an interview with the Solidarity Center. “Workers are not very happy with the new law after Rana Plaza, thinking it is imposed on them.”
Although the government has made registering unions easier in recent weeks, the new labor code still does not apply to the hundreds of thousands of workers in the country’s export processing zones where a large number of garment workers are employed, according to an analysis by the AFL-CIO. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has found that current law that regulates labor relations in the zones violates core labor standards.
Like conference participants from a variety of countries, Morium, who has been actively involved in various union leadership positions and union organizing efforts, described how international support has been essential to improving women’s working conditions. She sees hope in the international Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally binding agreement committing the more than 80 major corporations that signed on to funding safety and building upgrades and holding independent factory inspections.
“I think that it will be a better tool for our workers in Bangladesh,” she said.
May 30, 2013
The freedom to form factory-level unions and negotiate job safety, living wages and fundamental social protections is key to any reform of Bangladesh’s labor laws, leaders and members of Bangladesh unions and worker organizations told U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). Over the weekend, Miller held two meetings at the Solidarity Center’s Bangladesh office with garment union leaders and more than two dozen workers from newly formed and registered unions at 20 garment factories.
“I come here to hear your stories,” Miller said as he opened one meeting, to heartfelt greetings. He assured participants he would bring their stories to his colleagues in the U.S. Congress and continue to support the struggle of Bangladeshi workers. When he asked for specific issues he should discuss with the Bangladesh government, the group suggested trade union rights, fire and building safety, and wages.
One factory union leader described how employer opposition made it extremely hard for workers at her garment factory to form a union—but how the work environment immediately improved after they succeeded in forming one.
“It was difficult to get our union,” said Maksuda, general secretary of the Sadia Garments Workers Union at Sadia Garments. (Like many in Bangladesh, Maksuda uses only one name.) “Workers were getting fired, thugs were in front of the factory gates harassing us and it was very discouraging. But we continued, and now we have our union registration. I am amazed that immediately we were able to hold a dialogue with management and were treated with respect right away. I am looking forward to changes that we can achieve with our union.”
Alamgir, a union president at a different factory, said benefit cuts and delays in receiving overtime pay pushed workers to form a union. Management fought their efforts. But once the union had its registration, the company engaged in talks with workers, returned benefits and gave workers a small, incremental wage increase.
Miller also met with leaders from Solidarity Center partners, including the Bangladesh Independent Garment Union Federation (BIGUF), the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), the Bangladesh Federation for Workers Solidarity (BFWS) and the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF).
BIGUF Joint Secretary Rashedul Alom Raju said that while the government of Bangladesh has announced it would raise the minimum wage for the nation’s 4 million garment workers and make forming a union easier, “it is too early to tell how serious the government is” regarding other amendments to the labor code, which may or may not benefit workers.
The government announcement came after at least 1,127 garment workers were killed when the Rana Plaza building collapsed in late April just five months after a deadly fire at another factory. In recent months, the government has registered 27 factory-level unions and called for the formation of a minimum wage board.
May 20, 2013
At least 23 garment workers were injured today when a structure the workers used for rest breaks collapsed in Cambodia. The collapse comes just days after two workers were killed when a ceiling caved in at a Cambodian shoe factory.
Over the weekend, the owner of the Wing Star Shoe factory said negligence led to the collapse of an overloaded storage bin. He also said in a press conference last week that he does not expect to be prosecuted for the deadly incident. Another Wing Star official called the tragedy “a small incident.” Meanwhile, workers have been told to report back to work, despite government assurances on the day of the tragedy that a full investigation would take place.
“Although Cambodian garment factories have been hailed as providing safer working conditions than those in Bangladesh, that does not constitute a safe industry,” says Solidarity Center Cambodia Country Program Director David Welsh. “Of the 100 factories audited on an ad hoc basis, 25 were found to have safety and health violations,” he said, citing a recent International Labor Organization (ILO) report.
The report found “a worrying increase in fire safety violations,” in which only 57 percent of factories kept paths free of obstructions. The study, part of the ILO’s “Better Factories Cambodia” project, showed a large drop in compliance in fire safety measures, with the number of garment and footwear factories abiding by the legal requirement to keep access paths free of obstructions “unprecedentedly decreasing from 87 percent to 57 percent compliance.”
The ILO findings belie a statement by the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia that the factory collapse was a one-time occurrence. A separate report on a pilot project on footwear factories found they were not in compliance with a host of labor standards, especially regarding occupational safety and health. Chemical safety is a special concern, because the use of toxic solvents is much more widespread than it is for clothing.
A spokesman for Wing Star Shoe factory also said the company will pay the cost of the two victims’ funerals and the medical bills of the 14 workers injured. The family of one of the workers killed said she was 15 years old.
Yet the Phnom Penh Post reports that families were told they had to take the amount the company offered or get nothing—and the compensation was significantly less than they had sought.
According to the Post: Rim Rorn, 29, uncle of Rim Roeun, 22, who died in the collapse, said talks between his family and factory representatives had broken down. “The representatives told us to accept their offer . . . or it’s hopeless for us.”
The garment and shoe manufacturing industry is Cambodia’s largest formal employer, with 500,000 workers in more than 500 factories, and generated $4.6 billion in exports in 2012. Most garments and shoes are exported to the United States and the European Union.
The May 16 tragedy follows the April 24 collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, where 1,127 garment workers were killed. The eight-story building housed five garment factories and a government inquiry pointed to shoddy construction as the prime trigger of the collapse.
