Tens of thousands of Bangladesh garment workers waged weeks-long strikes in December and January to protest low wages and unequal pay increases—and now workers say factory employers are using the walkouts to further repress their efforts to form unions and collectively bargain better wages and working conditions.
More than 11,000 garment workers have lost their jobs or faced repression as a result of the wage protests, and employers and the police have filed cases against more than 3,000 workers, according to the global union IndustriALL. Many workers fired say they were not involved in the protests.
Factory walkouts began the second week of December, when mostly nonunion garment workers from roughly 350 factories in Gazipur, Ashulia and Narayanganj protested the elimination of the 5 percent annual wage increase for 2018 and a basic wage increase applied unequally to workers with various skill levels.
Recent Repression of Worker Rights Part of Longer Trend
Following the deaths of more than 1,200 garment workers in the 2012 fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory and the 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse, workers vigorously organized to form unions and negotiate contracts, as the Bangladesh government and ready-made garment (RMG) employers responded to international pressure to improve safety and wages.
At the same time, Bangladesh’s highest court threatens the expulsion of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh established after the Rana Plaza disaster. The legally binding agreement between hundreds of primarily European corporate retail brands and unions conducted safety inspections at more than 1,000 factories and educated workers on safety and other workplace rights.
Bangladesh is the biggest producer of garments in the world after China, with apparel exports totaling more than $30 billion last fiscal year. Although the Bangladesh RMG industry is by far the country’s biggest export earner, wages remain the lowest among major garment-manufacturing nations. Yet the cost of living in Dhaka is equivalent to that of Montreal.
Although the government of Uzbekistan has made progress on ending child and adult forced labor in the cotton fields after more than a decade of international pressure, a new report finds that forced labor remains rampant in other arenas of Uzbek life, affecting public-sector workers in particular. This practice undermines the quality of public services and depletes workers’ earnings, as they must bear the costs of their own forced labor.
The report, “There Is No Work We Haven’t Done: Forced Labor of Public-Sector Employees in Uzbekistan,” released today by the Solidarity Center and Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF), outlines the devastating toll forced labor has on workers and essential public services, particularly in health care and education, where trained specialists are taken out of work for hours, days or even weeks to perform manual labor at the whim of officials.
Last March, 23-year-old teacher Diana Enikeeva was struck and killed by a truck while she and other teachers were cleaning the highway in the Samarkand region in preparation for a visit by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. According to the report, although Enikeeva’s death raised a public outcry in popular and social media, prompting the president to order officials to stop using public-sector employees and students for “public” work such as street cleaning in May 2018, the work was not out of the ordinary for public-sector employees, including teachers, and did not stop.
Interviews conducted by a team of UGF monitors in nine regions in Uzbekistan over two months in spring 2018 with public employees and others affected by forced labor revealed that government officials were using public-sector employees under threat of penalty as a constant source of labor and funds to fulfill local needs or centrally imposed mandates. Some workers reported that their unions—which are weak and subordinate to government and/or employers—sometimes assisted in organizing or directing their forced labor.
Public-sector workers, among the lowest-paid professionals in the country, reported that they were forced to provide manual labor for community maintenance and beautification, street cleaning, wheat harvesting and collection of scrap metal and paper. Teachers, health care workers and employees of state agencies said they were routinely sent to clean streets, plant flowers, do construction work, dredge ditches and perform public maintenance for hours or days every week, without extra pay. Under the community maintenance program “Obod Kishlok” [Well-Maintained Village], announced by the president in March 2018, local officials forced public employees to bear full responsibility for repairing, painting and gardening, even at private houses. Workers reported often paying for costs associated with forced labor, including for food and transportation to forced labor assignments as well as for construction supplies, tools and flowers and seedlings for planting. Several children and farmers also reported that children and teachers were taken out of class to harvest silk cocoons under threat of penalty.
“Given that forced labor continues in Uzbekistan, even after the president and some other government officials have publicly condemned it, authorities must urgently and immediately address the systemic root causes of forced labor—the lack of independent and representative labor unions, absence of effective complaint and accountability mechanisms, rampant corruption, lack of accountability of local authorities, centrally imposed mandates and a punitive and exploitative agricultural system,” said Abby McGill, senior program officer for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the Solidarity Center.
Worker rights advocate Apantree Charoensak, vice chair of the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee, Women’s Division, was honored this week for her work protecting and promoting human rights by Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
Courtesy Apantree Charoensak
Charoensak led the successful 2017 struggle for collective bargaining rights for collective bargaining rights for fast food workers at one of Thailand’s largest KFC franchises, in which 3,100 workers won a contract that includes an early retirement program, 23 meals provided by the company per year and motorcycle maintenance funds for delivery workers. The workers are among 2,400 members represented by the Cuisine and Service Workers’ Union, a Solidarity Center partner and IUF affiliate.
“I am proud to have advocated for human rights for the past seven years,” Charoensak said in a statement on the award, granted to 13 human rights defenders as part of International Human Rights Day December 10.
Charoensak has been leading the struggle for fast food workers across Thailand for nearly a decade. During negotiations at KFC, she was fired from her position at Yum! Thailand, which operates some of the KFC franchises.
As a manager at the corporation where she supervised up to a dozen restaurants, Charoensak says she began union organizing to rectify what she saw as a large pay disparity between front-line workers and managers. Ultimately two unions formed, one covering front-line employees and one for supervisors. Over the years, she says management also tried to end her union activism by offering her large sums of money, which she refused, and isolated her at work, giving her little to do—time she filled by completing a master’s degree in political science and addressing union members’ concerns.
Seeking a job to support her family but lacking opportunity in her native Bangladesh, Shahida became a domestic worker far from her home. Beyond duties in her employer’s home, she was forced to work at the houses of several of his relatives, giving her little time to sleep. Shahida was provided stale leftovers for her meals. She faced harassment and abuse from many quarters.
“They misbehaved with me a lot… This was often accompanied by physical abuse,” says Shahida. (See video.)
More than 50 percent of female migrant workers in Bangladesh are employed as domestic workers. Isolated in private homes, they often are targets of violence and abuse because they are women. And as migrant workers, they often face exploitation across the migration experience—from labor recruiters, transport workers, border guards, employers and legal systems that protect employers over workers.
Yet joining with other migrant domestic workers through the Bangladesh Obivashi Mohila Sramik Association (BOMSA), Shahida is now among women demanding gender justice on their jobs, in their communities and at the global level, where they are championing an International Labor Organization standard on gender-based violence at work.
The Solidarity Center is partnering with BOMSA to promote fair migration through awareness-raising, policy reform and improved access to justice under the global labor program supported by the USAID.
By engaging in collective action, Shahida says, “now, we feel empowered.
The U.S.-based Amalgamated Bank has selected the Solidarity Center as one of its featured nonprofits in an online contest. The organization that receives the most votes will receive up to $5,000 and be recognized as a prominent social justice organization making change for workers.
The Amalgamated Bank campaign is part of “#GivingTuesday,” an annual event that takes place on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving. Amalgamated Bank’s contest is designed to encourage bank customers and others to give to organizations that inspire them and raise awareness about social-justice groups that deserve support. The Amalgamated Bank #VoteToGive contest is open anyone in the United States.
#VoteToGive!
Amalgamated Bank is the largest union-owned bank and one of the only unionized banks in the United States. Founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Amalgamated Bank today is a leading philanthropic organization for social change and worker justice. The contest goes out to the broader labor, pro-labor and progressive community including Amalgamate’s clients as well, and has the potential to introduce us to many unions and allies in the United States.
If you are on social media, please retweet and “like” and on Twitter, and like and share our Facebook posts to help spread the word. Use the hashtag #VoteToGive.
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