Nov 22, 2013
Raoshonara is destitute. “I have no other option but begging to survive,” she said, and burst into tears. The 35-year-old garment worker is unable to support herself or her family after suffering severe injuries escaping the factory fire that decimated Tazreen Fashions where she worked as a finishing operator. Raoshonara, like her co-workers at the multistory factory, was forced to jump out of a window because the building had no fire escapes. Some 112 workers died in the November 24, 2012, tragedy at Tazreen, located just outside Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital.
Unable to work because of disability and pain—“I cannot even sit for more than 30 minutes at a stretch,” she said—she sent her children back to her home village because she cannot support them. “I am not even able to buy food for them,” she said. Raoshonara is living with her sister, who buys her food and medicine. But that assistance will soon end. Raoshonara says her sister “won’t be able to continue her support for very long because she has to maintain her family.”
Raoshonara paid her initial medical bills with the compensation she received from the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturing and Exporting Association (BGMEA) and the private, Jesuit-run organization, Caritas. But she needs far more medical care and neither the factory owner, nor the brands, nor the government is offering Tazreen victims any assistance.
Her backbone is damaged from falling three stories. She suffers severe pain from a leg fractured in the fall. Another leg was sliced by a machine in the melee before she jumped out the window, as panicked workers stumbled in the dark trying to escape. And like nearly all Tazreen survivors, she is psychologically traumatized. “I get frightened when I see any big building. Fear of death always keeps me frightful and makes me cry,” she said.
Raoshonara came to Dhaka in 2008 from a small village in the Jamalpur District, after she was abused by her husband who frequently demanded large amounts of money as dowry. To pay him, she sold the small property her father left her and her brothers in the village. Once in Dhaka, at Tazreen, she worked hard and planned to send her children through school. She was filled with hope for her new life.
Now, she says, she is begging just to survive.
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.
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.
Apr 24, 2013
Another four garment factories in Bangladesh became death traps today, and the Solidarity Center is mourning the senseless loss of life and the grievous injuries that have befallen hundreds of workers who were simply trying to make a living. The organization is calling on the Bangladesh government to enforce its labor and building codes, on brands 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.
At least 80 workers lost their lives and more than 600 people were injured when the eight-story building collapsed, according to the Bangladesh government. Hundreds remain trapped.
“The status quo cannot be that workers have to face death just to try to feed their families,” said Alonzo Suson, Solidarity Center country director in Bangladesh. “How many more workers have to die before the government, the manufacturers and the companies that source from Bangladesh start to obey the law and respect international labor standards?”
According to local news reports, the building had developed cracks that threatened the structure’s integrity on Tuesday. Workers report being forced into the building to work on Wednesday.
For more than two decades, the Solidarity Center has been supporting workers trying to gain their rights in Bangladesh, where the minimum wage for garment workers is less than the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
A major fire killed at least 112 Bangladeshi garment workers in late November, almost five months to the day of this latest disaster. Since then, there have been more than 41 fire
incidents at Bangladesh garment factories that have killed nine workers and injured more than 660 others, according to data compiled by Solidarity staff.
This Sunday, April 28, workers around the world will mark Workers Memorial Day, which provides a focal point to remember those killed and injured on the job, highlights the preventable nature of most workplace accidents and reiterates calls for workplace safety.
Apr 4, 2013
The Solidarity Center and the international worker rights movement are commemorating Bangladesh union leader Aminul Islam, who was brutally murdered one year ago today. His murderer or murderers remain at large.
Aminul, 39, was a plant-level union leader at an export processing zone in Bangladesh, an organizer for the Bangladesh Center for Workers’ Solidarity (BCWS), and president of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation’s (BGIWF) local committee in the Savar and Ashulia areas of Dhaka. He and his wife had three children.
In November, investigation of his murder was transferred to the Bangladesh Criminal Investigation Department, a move demanded by the Committee for Justice for Aminul Islam, of which the Solidarity Center is a founding member. To date, no arrests have been made.
“Aminul gave his life trying to achieve justice for millions of Bangladesh workers,” says Solidarity Center Asia Director Tim Ryan. “Yet the Bangladesh government has not expressed urgency in bringing justice to Aminul and his suffering family by identifying, locating and prosecuting those who murdered him.”
Aminul’s murder received worldwide condemnation, including from the global union movement, major apparel industry associations, U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Dan Mozena and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In recent months, the Bangladesh government issued a reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the case.
Aminul, who was on his way to a mosque after work April 4, was later found dead by the side of a road more than 60 miles from his home, his body tortured and beaten. Since his murder, more than 100 Bangladeshi garment workers have been killed on the job, including 112 workers at a horrific fire in the Tazreen Fashions factory in November. Aminul sought to change the conditions that have led to the dozens of fires that broke out at Bangladesh factories in the last year alone. He believed that the locked factory doors and lack of fire safety measures—which have led to unacceptable death tolls—could most effectively be addressed by workers who freely form unions and collectively bargain to improve workplace safety and health conditions.
Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest clothes exporter with overseas garment sales topping $19 billion in 2011, or 80 percent of total national exports. Yet garment workers in Bangladesh essentially risk their lives each day on the job for the equivalent of $37 a month—the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty.
The Bangladesh government recently has submitted a new safety plan for garment factories, though it has yet to be implemented or tested. Currently only a small percentage of the country’s thousands of garment factories see inspectors or face consequences when they do not meet safety or building codes. “We support any effort to ensure that workplaces are not death traps,” said Ryan. “However, promises are not progress. And when workers are not included in the process, such measures tend to fail.
