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.
Thousands of workers marched in downtown Yangon, Myanmar, to demand fair labor laws as parliament appeared poised to pass legislation that would diminish worker rights.
“Respect our right to unionize!” shouted a march leader. “We want it! We want it!” thronged the response from protesters, most of whom toil between 10 and 12 hours a day, six days a week in the industrial zones surrounding Yangon. They are paid a minimum wage of $3.20 a day.
The country’s two largest unions led the march: the Confederation of Trade Unions–Myanmar (CTUM) and the Myanmar Industries, Craft and Services Trade Union Federation (MICS).
The unions pulled out of the official labor law reform process last month to protest two years of what they describe as fruitless talks with the government and employers to bring Myanmar’s labor laws into compliance with international standards.
“We have to get out and march. We can no longer be patient on this matter,” says Daw Phyo Sandar Soe, CTUM assistant general secretary.
Workers have waged dozens of strikes in recent months, protesting that the laws designed to protect them are broken.
New labor laws enacted in 2011 and 2012 gave workers the right to form unions for the first time in 50 years. Further reforms, including adoption of international labor standards, were promised to incentivize Western investors to do business in the country, where human rights abuses, including forced labor and child labor, have been widespread.
Union leaders fear that promises for further reforms will be broken and that the limited freedoms workers were granted earlier this decade will be largely taken away.
“The parliament doesn’t care about labor issues,” says MICS General Secretary U Thet Hnin Aung. If they failed to listen to worker voices, he added, “we will never vote for them in coming elections.”
CTUM President U Maung Maung says “if Myanmar is to catch up with our Asian neighbors and the rest of the world, we need fair labor laws that can bring us stable industrial relations. Otherwise, international investors will be reluctant to come here.”
The two-minute video explains the forms of gender-based violence at work, which include bullying, verbal abuse and stalking, systemic gendered imbalance between employers and workers that enables employers to get away with unsafe working conditions and other worker abuses.
Workers, employers and government officials currently are debating a proposed International Labor Organization (ILO) convention (regulation) that would address violence and harassment at work, and the video ends with a call to action tojoin the campaign.
Nearly 700,000 public employees in Tunisia won a salary increase after waging mass actions for months, including a one-day general strike, in which they protested the erosion of their ability to support their families as their salaries failed to keep up with rising costs.
The agreement, announced today between the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) and the government, will ensure workers directly employed by the government will get nearly the same wage increase in 2018 and 2019 as those employed in public-private enterprises. Further details have not been announced. The agreement comes less than two weeks before UGTT was to launch its second two-day general strike on February 20–21.
High school teachers, who for nearly two months have boycotted exams to protest their poor wages and who yesterday waged a mass action at the prime minister’s office, will be covered under a separate agreement. The union’s Administrative Committee for Education will review the draft agreement tomorrow.
Even as public-sector workers struggle in Tunisia’s difficult economy, they also have been the target of wage freezes mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has demanded the government cut spending and balance the budget. The IMF and the government in 2016 entered into a loan program worth around $2.8 billion to address the country’s economic crisis.
In Zimbabwe, a government crackdown continues this week on citizens who last month protested a 150 percent fuel price hike. Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) Secretary General Japhet Moyo and President Peter Mutasa were released from police custody yesterday on $2,000 bail each, but remain charged with subversion. Strict release conditions are preventing them from traveling to carry out duties they were elected to perform on behalf of the union members they represent.
“We call upon the government to respect labor rights and stop all forms of intimidation and harassment against trade unionists,” said ZCTU in a press release.
Mutasa must reportedly check in with police, in person, every day, while Moyo is required to check in similarly with police three times per week. Moyo, speaking with the Solidarity Center, says he was forced to give up the deed to his personal home as a guarantee against skipping bail.
Moyo was arrested January 21, 2019, and Mutasa presented himself for arrest in the company of his lawyer January 25, after being forced into hiding for several days. A few days prior to Mutasa’s arrest, police had broken into his home while he was out and allegedly assaulted his brother. While Mutasa was in hiding, ZCTU staff reported avoiding their offices for fear of police seeking his whereabouts, according to union members who spoke with the Solidarity Center.
ZCTU has faced other threats from authorities in recent months as Zimbabwe’s economy flounders, and inflation and price hikes further complicate Zimbabwean workers’ lives. Mutasa and Moyo—along with 33 other trade unionists—were arrested and later released in October last year during an attempt to stop a national workers’ protest against a financial tax increase and rising prices. Some trade unionists were beaten, ZCTU Harare offices were cordoned off by some 150 police and ZCTU leaders not already in jail were forced into hiding.
On Monday, meanwhile, Zimbabwean teachers announced they would go on strike this week.
The majority of Zimbabwean workers eke out a living in the informal economy, struggling to survive on less than $1 a day. Those with formal jobs often do not fare well either. A 2016 study by the Solidarity Center found that 80,000 workers in formal jobs did not receive wages or benefits on time, if at all. In many cases, they made only enough to get to work.
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