DHAKA: Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers churning out clothes for top global brands walked off the job Sunday and clashed with police as protests over low wages entered a second week.
Police said water cannons and tear gas were fired to disperse huge crowds of striking factory workers in Savar, a garment hub just outside the capital Dhaka.
Bangladesh is dependant on garments stitched by millions of low-paid tailors on factory floors across the emerging South Asia economy of 165 million people.
Roughly 80 percent of its export earnings come from clothing sales abroad, with global retailers H&M, Primark, Walmart, Tesco and Aldi among the main buyers.
The protests are the first major test for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina since winning a fourth term in December 30 elections marred by violence, thousands of arrests and allegations of vote rigging and intimidation.
Garment workers have been demanding a wage rise, closing factories in the past seven days and taking to the streets in huge marches that have witnessed violence.
“The workers barricaded the highway, we had to drive them away to ease traffic conditions,” industrial police director Sana Shaminur Rahman told AFP about Sunday’s strike action.
“So far 52 factories, including some big ones, have shut down operations due to the protests.”
Union leader Aminul Islam blamed factory owners for resorting to violence to control striking workers.
“But they are more united than ever,” he told AFP. “It doesn’t seem like they will leave the streets, until their demands are met.”
Minimum wages for the lowest-paid garment workers rose by a little over 50 percent this month to 8,000 taka ($95) per month.
But mid-tier tailors say their rise was paltry and fails to reflect the rising costs of living, especially in housing.
Bangladesh’s 4,500 textile and clothing factories shipped more than $30 billion worth of apparel last year.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association, which wields huge political influence, warned all factories might be shut if tailors do not return to work immediately.
“We may follow the ‘no work, no pay’ theory, according to the labor law,” association president Siddikur Rahman told reporters.
Last year Bangladesh was the second-largest global apparel exporter after China. It has ambitious plans to expand the sector into a $50 billion a year industry by 2023.
But despite their role in transforming the impoverished nation into a major manufacturing hub, garment workers remain some of the lowest paid in the world.
The industry also has a poor workplace safety record.
The Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in 2013 killed more than 1,130 people in one of the world’s worst industrial accidents.
Following the disaster, major retailers formed two groups to introduce factory reforms. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association says its members have since invested $1 billion in safety upgrades.
Bangladesh garment workers clash with police as strikes roll on
Bangladesh garment workers clash with police as strikes roll on
- Bangladesh is dependant on garments stitched by millions of low-paid tailors on factory floors across the emerging South Asia economy of 165 million people
- The protests are the first major test for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina since winning a fourth term in December 30 elections marred by violence
Germany’s Merz vows to keep out far-right as he warns of a changed world
- “We will not allow these people from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” Merz told party delegates
- He avoided critising his coalition partners in the center-left Social Democrats
STUTTGART, Germany: Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed on Friday not to let the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “ruin” Germany and told his fellow conservatives to prepare for a raw new climate of great-power competition.
Merz’s message to the Christian Democrat (CDU) party’s conference in Stuttgart reiterated points he made at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, saying the “rules based order we knew no longer exists.” He also made calls for economic reform, and a rejection of antisemitism and the AfD, which is aiming to win its first state election this year.
“We will not allow these people from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” he told party delegates, who welcomed former chancellor Angela Merkel with a storm of applause on her first visit to the conference since stepping down in 2021.
Merz, trailing badly in the polls ahead of a string of state elections this year, said he accepted criticism that the reforms he announced during last year’s election campaign had been slower than initially communicated.
“I will freely admit that perhaps, after the change of government, we did not make it clear quickly enough that we would not be able to achieve this enormous reform effort overnight,” he said.
He avoided critising his coalition partners in the center-left Social Democrats and promised to push ahead with efforts to cut bureaucracy, bring down energy costs and foster investment, saying that economic prosperity was vital to Germany’s security.
He also pledged further reforms of the welfare state and said new proposals for a reform of the pension system would be presented, following a revolt by younger members of his own party in a bruising parliamentary battle last year.
Merz’s speech was greeted with around 10 minutes of applause as delegates put on a show of unity and he was re-elected as party chairman with 91 percent of the vote, avoiding any potentially embarrassing display of internal dissatisfaction.
Among other business, the party conference is due to discuss a motion to block access to social media platforms for children under the age of 16. However any legislation would take time because under the German system, state governments have the main responsibility for regulating media.
The elections begin next month with the western states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate before a further round later in the year, one of them in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD hopes to win its first state ballot.
