Big Backlash in Bangladesh: Workers Escalate Demands for Better Working Conditions

Violence has erupted in Bangladesh, following the world’s worst garment industry disaster last month, as thousands of workers gathered in the country’s capital on Monday demanding better pay conditions. Police charged batons and fired rubber bullets and tear gas as angry protesters demonstrated outside the capital’s main factory district, blocking the main highway in the Ashulia industrial area, home to the world’s largest manufacturing factories such as Walmart.

Up to 20,000 people took part in the protests, with more than 50 people injured by police intervention. Ashulia chief police Badrul Alam defended the action, arguing that workers had attacked police, throwing stones and striking police vehicles.

"They were demanding higher wages. We fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them after they became violent and occupied a road," he told the AFP.

The demonstration is part of a rising string of protests over the past month. Since the April tragedy, a million people have signed petitions calling on global corporations like Gap and Walmart to end unsafe labor practices in Bangladesh, with hundreds protesting at stores across the country.

Members from United Students Against Sweatshops and Jobs with Justice were arrested at demonstrations at the Gap shareholder meeting in San Francisco where they were calling upon the company to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh aimed at improving worker safety conditions.

The Gap and Walmart, two of the major producers in Bangladesh, have resisted signing any agreement that is legally enforceable to date. Instead, Walmart said last week that it will conduct its own investigations into its supplier factories. This is a questionable move that raises much concern particularly in light of yesterday’s Reuters report that a Bangladesh factory where Walmart inspectors spotted cracks in the wall this month, is still making Wrangler shirts for the world’s largest apparel maker, US-based VF Corp.

The incident highlights an increasing need for policy makers to step in and harden their stance on international manufacturing practices.  Moreover, there is a lack of government accountability and impetus to act to respond to tragedies despite their continual occurrence.

According to Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Fashion, increasing wages and conditions for workers would not only improve labor conditions in developing countries like Bangladesh, but also allow the United States an opportunity to once again compete in the garment industry.

Over the last 20 years, the amount of clothing imports into the US has risen exponentially with the US now only making about two per cent of its clothing domestically, Cline states. Not only does this feed the exploitation of cheap labor in countries like Bangladesh, but it also impacts upon the US job market.

Without the political will to promote fair-priced labor conditions in the US and implement laws aimed at protecting workers from unfair buying practices, workers at both ends of the spectrum continue to suffer.

While media coverage of the April disaster undoubtedly placed Bangladesh and its contentious labor practices under scrutiny, the tragedy was not the first of its kind; over 1,800 workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh since 2005. Despite such figures, it is now considered the second largest clothing manufacturer in the world with 80% of its annual exports deriving from a $20 billion industry.

Furthermore, with a population of approximately 150 million people living in a radius the size of Iowa state, the country is one of the most densely populated on the globe. While this has contributed to many of its social and economic problems, Bangladesh continues to remain economically resilient.