May 14, 2013
The Bangladesh cabinet approved a change to the nation’s labor laws that it says would enable workers to more freely form unions. The proposal, which must be approved by Parliament, would allow workers to join unions without showing the list of union supporters to factory owners to verify their employment—a practice that effectively makes it impossible for unions to gather sufficient support to register with the government because factory owners often penalize or fire workers who support unionization.
The move follows an announcement that the Bangladesh government would raise the minimum wage for the nation’s 4 million garment workers. Bangladesh garment workers at minimum are paid $37 a month, the lowest wages in the global garment industry, while often risking their lives just to be at work.
The government’s step toward improving Bangladesh labor laws is welcome, but significant issues remain, says Solidarity Center Asia Regional Director Tim Ryan.
“Registering unions is only part of the difficulty workers experience when they seek to form a trade union,” Ryan says. “In the ready-made garment industry, workers who want to join a union report they face anti-union harassment and discrimination on the job. Until the government takes steps to afford workers their fundamental right of freedom of association by bringing its labor laws into full compliance with international standards, Bangladesh garment workers will not be able to have a voice on the job that they need to improve safety and health conditions.”
Ryan also points to the lack of movement in finding those responsible for the murder of Aminul Islam, a union organizer in the garment sector who was tortured and killed last year. “Finding the perpetrators of those who murdered Aminul and obtaining justice for him would emonstrate that Bangladesh respects the rights of its workers.”
On Monday, major retailers that represent the largest purchasers of clothes made in Bangladesh announced they would help finance safety upgrades at apparel factories. This move follows the collapse of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, which resulted in the world’s worst industrial disaster since the 1984 Bhopal explosion in India. The announcement comes as rescue efforts ended at the site, with the bodies of 1,127 workers recovered from the rubble. The building housed five garment factories.
These actions by the government and brands follow weeks of protests and walkouts by garment workers across the capital, Dhaka, who joined together to demand safe working conditions and wages that can support themselves and their families.
Three factories closed Monday after workers spotted cracks on a wall. They immediately evacuated the building that housed the factories and began protesting outside. After cracks surfaced in the Rana building on April 24, garment workers were told to report to work. Within hours, the building pancaked in on itself.
In Ashulia, near Dhaka, garment makers said yesterday they are indefinitely closing all factories in the area because of worker protests. Workers have been demanding pay increases, benefits and workplace safety for the past 12 days. Ashulia’s more than 300 garment factories account for nearly 20 percent of total garment exports.
Also on Monday, several hundred workers at a ready-made garment factory blocked a road in Mirpur area of the capital for more than two hours, protesting dismissal of 13 co-workers.
Arati Bala Das, 18, was among those pulled from the Rana building after being pinned under a concrete pillar for three days. “When the building collapsed, I felt that I was going down,” she told Solidarity Center staff in Dhaka. “When it stopped, I found myself in the dark. It was difficult to breathe. I could not see anything. I could not move a bit. I realized that two dead bodies had fallen on my legs and a pillar had fallen on those dead bodies. I was very much afraid and I thought I would not be able to return alive.”
Arati’s mother, Titon, was killed in the collapse and Arati’s right leg was amputated. Both worked at New Wave Style Ltd. factory. Her father Adhir Chandra Das, a day laborer, now faces the likely impossible task of supporting Arati and her three young sisters without the additional wages of his wife and eldest daughter.
In November 2012, a fire at Tazreen Fashions killed at least 112 garment workers. Since that blaze, 18 garment workers have died at their workplaces and more than 650 have been injured in 43 fire incidents, according to data compiled by Solidarity Center staff in Dhaka. Just days after the Rana collapse, eight workers were killed at the Tung Hai Sweater Factory.
May 3, 2013
More than 500 people have now been confirmed dead in last week’s building collapse in Bangladesh, the country’s worst industrial disaster on record. The dead are among the 2,868 victims pulled from the rubble of the eight-story building, which housed five garment factories where thousands of workers toiled on the upper floors. No one has been rescued alive for the past three days, and estimates of the number remaining in the rubble vary widely, from less than 200 to more than 1,000 people.
The mayor of Savar, where the Rana Plaza building is located, has been suspended on charges of failing to take proper action after several cracks developed and were reported by a structural engineer a day before the April 24 collapse. The mayor, Md Refatullah, also was charged for “irregularities” in approving the design.
A government inquiry concluded today that substandard construction materials and the vibration of heavy machinery in the five garment factories were prime triggers of the building’s collapse. The building owner, Sohel Rana, a prominent leader in the nation’s ruling party, was arrested over the weekend and his assets frozen. Despite the engineer’s warnings, Rana told factory operators the building was safe. Factory owners then demanded workers return the next day.
A 16-year-old garment worker whose right hand was amputated after she was pulled from the wreckage told the Solidarity Center that the factory owner said she would lose a month’s wages if she did not go to work. Solidarity Center Bangladesh Country Director Alonzo Suson and local staff are speaking with survivors, ensuring that they understand their rights and that their stories are not forgotten.
“If those workers had a collective voice to stand up to factory managers, this tragedy might never have happened,” says Solidarity Center Asia Regional Program Director Tim Ryan.
Thousands protested in Dhaka, the capitol, on May 1, internationally recognized May Day, demanding justice for those killed and injured at Rana Plaza. But garment workers from a variety of factories have been out on the streets of Dhaka for days, “demanding more safety” at the workplace, Suson told the Rick Smith Show. “Without a union at the workplace, there is no workers’ voice in making sure that safety of working conditions happen.”
While global apparel brands have taken steps to demand factories observe the nation’s job safety and health laws, they have not pushed for strong unions at the workplace—and without freedom of association, say Ryan and Suson, individual workers cannot press for safe workplaces. Nor can they demand wages they can live on. Bangladesh garment workers are paid $37 a month, the lowest in the world, to toil in conditions Pope Francis this week described as “slave labor.”
As Ryan told Public Radio International, “The brands can also be helpful when it comes to communicating with their contractors, with their companies, and say ‘Look, freedom of association is the law of the land.’
“Many of these brands have codes of conduct, which, again, are often just words on a page, but often they (mandate), ‘implementation (of) all existing labor laws and freedom of association,’ he said. “This is where the brands can put their money where their mouth is.”
For more than two decades, the Solidarity Center has been supporting workers trying to gain their rights in Bangladesh.
Apr 26, 2013
More than 300 workers now have been confirmed dead from Wednesday’s building collapse in Bangladesh. Some 2,200 survivors have been pulled from the ruins of what is being called one of the worst manufacturing disasters in history. More than 3,000 garment workers were on the job when upper building floors pancaked on top of each other.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ordered the arrest of the building’s owner, Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of ruling Awami League’s youth front, who told factory operators the building was safe. Hasina also has ordered the arrest of five garment factory owners.
Cracks in the multistory building, located in Savar, just outside the capital, Dhaka, were reported in the local media after they appeared on Tuesday. Although workers in the retail shops on the building’s first floor were told to stay home on Wednesday, operators of five garment factories in the building’s top floors ordered employees to report to work. According to the Bangladesh Daily Star, video shot before the collapse shows cracks in the walls, with some attempts at repair. The video also shows columns missing chunks of concrete.
Bangladesh’s BDB News24 reports workers say factory owners forced them to work on Wednesday, including Aklima, a garment worker. “I did not want to go to the factory since a crack appeared yesterday (Wednesday),” she said. “But the factory’s officers forced us into the building in the morning.” Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq told the press that the collapse “was not an accident, it was a killing incident.”
The Solidarity Center has called on the Bangladesh government to enforce its labor and building codes, on multinational companies that source from the country to prioritize health and safety conditions in factories, and on both to respect the rights of workers and to recognize that the only way Bangladesh will have safe factories is if workers have a voice on the job. Human Rights Watch noted to the Associated Press that “none of the factories in the Rana Plaza were unionized, and that had they been, workers would have been in a better position to refuse to enter the building Wednesday.”
Media reports describe Dhaka and Savar as chaotic, with thousands of garment workers protesting the collapse and demanding arrest and punishment of those responsible for the tragedy, and families of missing workers pressing to get access to the ruins to find their loved ones.
The building collapse took place five months after a fire killed 112 garment workers at the Tazreen Fashions factory. Since then, there have been at lest 41 fire incidents at Bangladesh garment factories that have killed nine workers and injured more than 660 others, according to data compiled by the Solidarity Center.
Bangladesh’s apparel industry is the country’s largest source of export revenue—78 percent of the country’s $23 billion in export revenue in 2011. Yet garment workers are paid $37 a month, the lowest in the world, as factories seek to minimize costs to meet the price demands of the global apparel brands. Workers often are prevented from forming unions and these vulnerable and impoverished workers cannot fight alone for their rights.
A New York Times editorial today concisely summed up the solution to Bangladesh’s ongoing workplace tragedies, writing that the government must “enact meaningful changes for the country’s 3.5 million garment workers, many of whom are women.” The most essential change is to “enforce Bangladeshi labor laws and safety standards, which theoretically provide protection but are rarely honored. The laws allow workers to form unions and bargain with management on wages and working conditions, but the government has not defended those rights despite promises to do so to international agencies and the United States.”
Apr 26, 2013
“The factory caught fire about 6 p.m. After the fire, they did not allow us to go out,” says Nazma. “They locked the gate. The workers were screaming together.”
Tazreen Factory Fire Survivors Describe Death Trap from Solidarity Center on Vimeo.
Nazma is among the Tazreen Factory fire survivors in this video who describe the horrific workplace conditions that killed 112 garment workers in November. The unsafe and deadly working conditions at Tazreen are similar to those many Bangladesh garment workers face every day.
But for many, living through the fire is just the beginning of their ordeal. The meager compensation Tazreen fire survivors have received from the government and the global apparel brands is not enough to replace the wages many no longer can earn because they are too injured to work.
For Nazma and the other mostly female survivors who sustained extensive physical wounds, the inability to support their families and the cultural stigma attached to their injuries means, in Nazma’s words, “death was better than living this kind of life.”
Solidarity Center staff in Dhaka, Bangladesh, compiled this video.
Apr 25, 2013
Workers Memorial Day, internationally observed each April 28, is more timely than ever this year. The rising death toll from yesterday’s building collapse in Bangladesh and the recent workplace deaths at the fertilizer factory in West, Texas, serve as tragic reminders of how much more needs to be done to ensure the safety and health of workers around the world. As part of Workers Memorial Day events, the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., is hosting a symposium: “From Mourning to Mass Movements: Garment Workers, Fire Safety and the International Fight for Social Justice.”
Sumi Abedin, a 19-year-old Bangladesh garment worker, was among the survivors of another horrific workplace tragedy, the disastrous Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory fire that killed 112 workers in November (injured survivors describe their efforts at survival in a video here). Sumi recently traveled to the United States on a trip to meet with congressional lawmakers and describe the unsafe and deadly working conditions at Tazreen—conditions similar to those many Bangladesh garment workers face every day. Solidarity Center staff compiled this report from her discussions in Washington, D.C.
On Nov. 24, 2012, Sumi finished lunch and, as she did every other work day, returned to stitching clothes on the fourth floor of the Tazreen garment factory. Hours later, she heard co-workers talking about a fire on the first floor. Her managers told them to get back to work—they said there was no fire. After a while, smoke began rising through the stairwells, and workers panicked. Along with her colleagues, Sumi ran for the stairs, but the two women’s stairwells were locked. The third, reserved for men and official visitors, was overwhelmed with workers who had fallen while trying to escape the burning building.
The electricity had gone out, and the stairwell was clogged with thick smoke. Unable to reach the first floor, Sumi made her way to the third floor, following co-workers who used their cell phones as flashlights. As some workers fought to open the barred windows, one of the mechanics managed to pry open the exhaust fan. Sumi faced a choice—risk death by remaining in the building or by jumping. She wanted her parents to be able to identify her body, so she chose to jump from the third floor.
Sumi passed out after the fall, but when she regained consciousness, she saw that her male colleague who had jumped with her lay dead next to her side. When she tried to stand, she realized that her right leg was broken, as was her left hand. She called to another worker to help her get home, where she found her grieving parents mourning her death.
Sumi’s parents rushed to a neighbor’s house to borrow money so she could go to the hospital. After receiving treatment for smoke inhalation, Sumi was sent to another hospital that was better equipped to treat her broken bones.
As compensation, Li & Fung, a multinational supply-chain management company, paid Sumi and some of the other survivors $1,200 through the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association (BGMEA). She was required to sign documentation she did not understand to receive the payment. The majority of the money has been spent on her medical bills, and she is still unable to work. The ready-made garment sector is her best hope for employment, but her injuries prevent her from holding a stitching job. Sumi also has nightmares about the fire and says she is too afraid to go back to a factory. Other workers sustained injuries even more debilitating than Sumi’s, but they, too, received only $1,200 and back-pay.
Sumi says responsibility for compensating survivors and families of those deceased should be shared among the factory owners, BGMEA, the Bangladesh government and the corporate brands that sourced from the factory. Sumi, who started working in garment factories at age 13, recounts that while she was at Tazreen, factory auditors representing a variety of buyers visited the factory regularly, often several times a month. Yet managers always knew about the audits in advance, and before each visit, they coached workers on how to answer questions. Managers also provided temporary safety equipment and “fire committee” T-shirts to workers, even though a real fire committee did not exist.
Managers told workers to lie about factory conditions, such as access to clean drinking water and timely payment of wages. Managers also doubled as translators for workers who were interviewed. As soon as auditors left, managers removed safety equipment, locked stairwells and returned fabric stockpiles to their “storage” spaces—which often were building exits. For survivors of the Tazreen fire who have received compensation, the funds fail to provide the long-term health care that many require. Meanwhile, 41 other factories in Bangladesh have had fires or fire-related incidents since the Tazreen tragedy, according to statistics compiled by the Solidarity Center in Bangladesh, illustrating the continuing disregard for human rights and human lives in Bangladesh’s garment industry.
