The Struggle for Workers Rights in Bangladesh

By Charles Kernaghan

Executive Director, National Labor Committee

An National Labor Committee (NLC) delegation has just returned from Bangladesh. There are 1.6 million apparel workers in 3,200 factories producing 980 million garments a year for export to the U.S. The workers, mostly young women, are in a trap, stripped of their rights. Forced to work 14 hour shifts, from 8am to 10pm seven days a week for 8 cents an hour.

Fourteen-year-old helpers are paid just 3 to 5 cents an hour. At least once a week, they are forced to work 19-hour shifts, from 8:00 a.m. right through to 3:00 a.m. the next morning. The workers then sleep a few hours on the factory floor and start work all over again. There is not one single union with a contract in any of the 3,200 factories. The factory managers hire thugs. We heard of many cases where workers were beaten in the factories. When a woman reaches 30 or 35 years of age she is fired. Fired for having a gray hair. Fired for being worn out, used up and exhausted.

There are only 11 government labor inspectors in all of Dhaka, where there are over one million garment workers. The Labor Ministry is doing absolutely nothing to enforce Bangladesh’s labor laws. The workers are living in misery, housed in the worst slums I have ever seen. Workers who speak up are beaten. Workers who try to defend their rights are fired. And for every 200 workers fired, there are another 200 ready to take their jobs.

On our trip we met with hundreds of workers from 42 factories. We asked the workers if they ever thought about the people in the U.S. who buy the clothing they make or wondered if the U.S. people cared about them, their working conditions, their wages, how they are forced to live. They responded, no, as if they were completely startled, as if it were incomprehensible that anyone in another country would care.

We brought with us clothing made in Bangladesh and sold in the U.S. At one point, we took out a pair of Arnold Palmer shorts, which several of the workers immediately recognized. They made those shorts. We asked them how much they thought these shorts would sell for in the U.S. They imagined about $1.50. When we showed them that the shorts sell for $38, the workers were stunned into silent amazement and disbelief. One pair of shorts would pay their whole wage for a month, yet they work on 1,000 pairs of these shorts a day.

What surprised us a great deal was that even under these conditions, the women wanted to fight back, they wanted their rights.

Before we left for Bangladesh, we were told that these women would be too timid and afraid to speak with us, and that given the history and culture of Bangladesh, women were used to being disempowered. We actually found just the opposite to be true.

We visited a slum neighborhood on a Friday, which is the weekly holiday in Bangladesh. We ran into an 18-year-old woman just returning from work. She had been forced to work three 20-hour shifts in a row, from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. She was allowed to sleep for two hours on the factory floor before beginning the next 20-hour shift. Her eyes were more bloodshot than I have ever seen before and she had nearly lost her voice.

Then, an 11-year-old girl, who had just run home for lunch, came over to us. She too was forced to work seven days a week in one of the garment export factories. When I asked her how they treated her at the factory, this 11-year-old child said: “Sir, I do not have the words to express to you how they treat us.” She said the supervisors used their shoes to beat the workers with.

The girl’s mother came over and told us that her daughter usually did not get home until midnight. Other people gathered around. Everyone wanted to fight for their rights, they wanted our help, only they said, please, make sure we do not lose our jobs.

The NLC has established close working relationships with the National Garment Workers Federation, the Textile and Garment Workers Union, the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, Hotline Bangladesh, Working Women, and the Institute for Integrated Rural Development, among other NGOs. We are entering into this collaboration as equal partners.

Together we agreed that the goal should be to pressure the U.S. companies to stay in Bangladesh, but to work with their contractors to clean up the factories and to guarantee that Bangladesh’s labor laws are respected, especially the right to organize.

If in any of our campaigns, the U.S. retailer tries to pull out, we will launch fasts in front of their stores or headquarters. We take it as a sacred commitment not to let the companies cut and run. Too much is at stake in Bangladesh.

Together, we decided upon a strategy to start out with concrete cases, trying to win the reinstatement of fired workers, guaranteeing that workers are paid on time, that women receive their full maternity benefits. This way a confidence will begin to build among the workers that they can win.

Later on, there will be a campaign to guarantee one day’s rest per week, without loss in pay. That will be followed by a call for the U.S. retailers to agree to open their factories to independent monitoring in Bangladesh by local, respected labor, women’s, religious and human rights organizations. Everyone agreed with the call for full public disclosure of factory locations. The end goal is to assist these workers in winning the right to organize and fair wages.