Kyrgyzstan, May Day 2023. Credit: Aizhan Ruslanbekova/Solidarity Center
Sri Lanka, May Day 2023. Credit: Prasdhini Niroshika/Solidarity Center
Philippines, May Day 2023. Credit: Andreanna Garcia/Solidarity Center
Migrant domestic workers join with their Jordanian union brothers and sisters to celebrate May Day and campaign together for equal rights and wage protections for workers regardless of citizenship status. Credit: Sara Khatib/Solidarity Center
Kyrgyzstan, May Day 2023. Credit: Aizhan Ruslanbekova/Solidarity Center
Mexico, May Day 2023. Credit: Luis Iván Stephen
Philippines, May Day 2023. Credit: Andreanna Garcia/Solidarity Center
Following a 136-day strike, Montenegro’s telecom workers are celebrating a collective agreement that reverses a 14-year wage freeze and interrupts more than a decade of alleged union-busting tactics by Crnogorski Telekom (CT), majority owned by Deutsche Telecom since 2005.
The agreement won by the Trade Union of Telecom of Montenegro (STCG) immediately increases workers’ wages by 15 percent and provides an additional 5 percent total wage increase through 2025. Workers also negotiated improved benefits, job cut limits and, for the first time, severance pay.
“The company could not claim any more that the wage increase was inadmissible, given that every year it distributed dividends to shareholders and paid bonuses to already highly paid managers,” says Burić. “Since 2008, their profit has exceeded half a billion euros,” he says.
CT last gave workers a pay raise in 2008, even though consumer prices in Montenegro increased more than 45 percent from 2006 through 2021, and workers have been carrying an increased workload. The company slashed jobs by almost two-thirds since Deutsche Telecom took majority ownership, says STCG.
During its ongoing wage battle with the union, CT violated the country’s labor law by threatening to abolish the union’s collective agreement and refusing to negotiate with workers’ democratically elected leaders, say unions.
The agreement was won in spite of CT’s effort to violate numerous fundamental labor rights in the most egregious way,” says STCG President Željko Burić.
Solidarity support for STCG’s campaign was provided in Montenegro by the Union of Free Trade Unions of Montenegro (UFTUM) and its affiliates. Other union and worker rights organizations supporting the campaign included the Albanian Telecommunications Union SPPTSH, Alliance One Telekom Union (OTU), the Croatian Telecommunications Union HST, the cooperation project of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) under the European Commission with regional network Solidarnost, the Transport and Telecommunications Union of Serbia GS SITEL Nezavisnost, Germany’s Ver.di, ETUC, the Solidarity Center, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and UNI Global Union. STCG is an ITUC member and founding UFTUM member.
Ten years after the multi-story Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,138 workers and injuring thousands more, garment workers and their unions say that although safety has improved in some instances, much more needs to be done. And fundamental to achieving safe working conditions is ensuring workers have the freedom to form unions.
“When a trade union exists in a factory, the union committee, on behalf of the workers, can negotiate with management about the problems the workers face,” says Babul Akter, general secretary of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF).
Credit: Solidarity Center
In the wake of the Rana Plaza tragedy, which came months after a factory fire at Tazreen Fashions that killed more than 100 garment workers, unions and fashion brands created the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. The Accord, which covers factories producing ready-made garments, has been successful in large part because it is a legally binding agreement. Accord inspectors have conducted more than 40,000 inspections and required 513 factories to comply with remediation.
Yet with more than 4,000 garment factories and more than 4 million workers, 58 percent of them women, safety hazards remain. A series of developments have weakened implementation of the Accord, including the ejection of the Accord Foundation from its office in Bangladesh and its replacement with an employer- and brand-dominated process in which worker voice is limited. And workers seeking to form unions to improve safety and health increasingly are facing employer and government harassment and even violence. Democratic unions encounter stiff resistance from authorities when they apply for the registration required to operate legally.
“The greatest challenges exercising freedom of association is the adverse mindset of employers,” says Rashadul Alam Raju, general secretary of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF). “Whenever workers organize, the employers try different means, including harassing and using violence against the workers, filing false legal cases against them and terminating them to prevent them from organizing. The reluctance of government bodies to address the problems is the second challenge.”
Roadblocks to Forming Unions
In 2022, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) ranked Bangladesh among the 10 worst countries in the world for working people. In the garment sector, the country’s largest industry, industrial police have obstructed and brutally attacked striking workers seeking to form unions. In 2021, police fired live rounds and used batons and tear gas to disperse workers, killing six workers and severely injuring others.
Without unions, millions of garment workers who produce clothing imported by the United States and Europe are afraid to say “No” when asked to work in unsafe jobs—the same conditions that existed at Rana Plaza. Unable to collectively negotiate higher wages, garment workers often live in poverty conditions, even as the clothing they make accounts for nearly 82 percent of Bangladesh’s exports, making the ready-made garment industry vital to the national economy.
#RanaPlazaNeverAgain
Thousands of garment workers, like Mosammat Mukti Khatun (above, looking at the Rana Plaza rubble) who survived the Rana Plaza disaster, remain too injured or ill to work and support their families. Solidarity Center/Balmi Chisim
The day before Rana Plaza collapsed on April 24, 2013, structural engineers found cracks so severe in the building they advised that no one enter it. Yet factory managers threatened workers with the loss of a month’s pay if they did not return to work. Ultimately, building owner Mohammed Sohel Rana was arrested after trying to flee the country.
But for many of the workers who survived, the injuries they sustained were so debilitating they were unable to work again and support their families. Moriom Begum, a sewing operator at New Wave Style, one of five factories in Rana Plaza, was among many survivors whose stories the Solidarity Center chronicled over the years. Moriom remained pinned beneath furniture for two days before she was rescued. She lost her right hand, suffered constant pain and could not return to work. Yet survivors and the families of the deceased in most cases waited for years after the collapse to receive compensation.
“If there was a trade union, this incident would never have happened,” says Srity Akter, general secretary of the Garment Workers Solidarity Federation (GWSF), who spent days at the Rana Plaza site digging through rubble to rescue trapped workers. Garment workers like Srity long ago vowed #RanaPlazaNeverAgain, a phrase activists for safe factory conditions have adopted across social media and the name of site memorializing Rana Plaza workers.
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the preventable Rana Plaza tragedy this month, hundreds of garment workers, trade union leaders and their allies in Bangladesh marched through the streets, and held a workers’ conference to demand an end to harassment in workplaces when workers seek to form a union, and called for reforming laws that allow systematic oppression of workers.
Brands, Bangladesh Government Must Do More
When Halima joined with her co-workers at Hop Lun Apparels Ltd., they experienced many obstacles before they successfully formed a union. Now general secretary of the Hop Lun Apparels Ltd. workers’ union and a member of Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation (SGSF), Halima says workers have one of the most successful unions in the garment sector and have signed several collective bargaining agreements that have raised wages and improved safety. The contrast between working conditions at Hop Lun and Rana Plaza is stark.
Solidarity Center, working alongside partner organizations in many key garment exporting countries, are calling on governments and brands to take steps to establish an environment where all workers in the garment sector have safe, decent working conditions and earn a living wage. To attain that:
All fashion brands should sign the International Accord and take responsibility for the safety of workers in their supply chain.
The government of Bangladesh should remove barriers to trade union registration, amend the labor law to come into compliance with international standards.
The Bangladesh Department of Labor should uphold its responsibility to protect workers’ rights by rigorously investigating cases of unfair labor practices. It should act swiftly to prosecute employers who violate the rights of workers to freely organize, join and participate in labor organizations of their choosing and to collectively bargain.
Says Anju, president of Jesus Fashion Shramik Union: “No organization ensures dignity like a trade union does.”
A survey of tannery workers living in Hemayetpur, Bangladesh, is illustrating how the impact of industrial pollution, harsh working conditions and low wages is leaving workers, their families and their communities increasingly vulnerable to ever-increasing climate-related shocks in the country.
“When combined with the health consequences of environmental degradation and the climate crisis, the compounding impacts on workers, their families and their communities are devastating,” says Sonia Mistry, Solidarity Center climate and labor justice global lead.
More than 200 tannery workers were surveyed for a study conducted with Solidarity Center support by Jagannath University Associate Professor Mostafiz Ahmed. Survey findings include:
More than half of those surveyed say their employment prospects have been negatively affected by environmental impacts. Of this number, nearly 70 percent report consequences from environmentally related illnesses, including wage cuts.
More than 80 percent say their wages are too low to meet their family’s needs and more than 90 percent are working without a contract. Precarious employment exacerbates vulnerabilities to ongoing climate shocks, reducing resilience for entire communities.
The majority (75 percent) of participants have suffered work-related broken bones, and a similar number experience respiratory problems—including asthma.
Leather production is one of Bangladesh’s oldest industries, and the country’s leather exports satisfy one-tenth of world demand. For decades, tanneries in the main industrial site in Dhaka dumped 22,000 cubic meters of toxic waste daily into the Buriganga River, wiping out aquatic life and polluting ground water needed for drinking.
Amid increasing international pressure about toxic tannery-related environmental and working conditions, the government in 2017 ordered approximately 25,000 tannery workers and their families to move from Hazaribagh, a Dhaka neighborhood and one of the most polluted places on Earth, to the newly built Tannery Industrial Estate in Hemayetpur. Although the new site provides a central effluent treatment plant, all factory sludge and effluents are still not being treated and environmental threats remain.
“Engaging with workers and their unions through collective bargaining and policy development is essential to improving working conditions and developing climate and environmental solutions, both of which are necessary to build resilience for workers and their communities,” says Mistry.
In the Bangladesh tannery sector, the Solidarity Center partners with the Tannery Workers Union (TWU), which for almost 60 years has worked to protect the rights and interests of the workers in the sector.
For the second time this year a leader of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) was arrested, this time for suspicion of insulting a public official at a protest outside the country’s Ministry of Culture building. The arrest of the UGTT’s secretary for culture, Abdel Nasser Ben Amara last month—who has since been acquitted in court—is having a chilling effect on union work in the country and their efforts to represent workers’ interests, say unions.
The UGTT with civil society organizations last year convened a national initiative for the restoration of democracy after more than 90 percent of the country’s voters stayed away from Tunisia’s widely criticized December 2022 parliamentary elections. Workers last month took part in a series of rallies across the country to protest the government’s increased aggression against the union and its members, including arrest of general secretary of the highway workers’ union, Anis Kaabi. On Saturday more than 3,000 people joined a UGTT-organized rally calling for the government to accept “dialogue.”
Anis Kaabi’s January arrest after leading a strike by toll booth workers was denounced by a coalition of 66 human rights groups and Tunisian political parties as a “desperate attempt to criminalize union work.” European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) General Secretary Esther Lynch was ordered in February to leave the country after having addressed UGTT rally goers and called on Tunisia’s government to negotiate with workers to stabilize the economy.
Union members who legally exercise their rights in Tunisia, such as the freedom to strike, have been increasingly targeted, according to data from the UGTT, which found that the percentage of cases filed against union members rose in 2022, with a quarter of them directed against women. The government through February had filed more than 60 cases against union members for exercising their internationally recognized labor rights, according to UGTT, which says the numbers indicate a stepped-up effort to diminish the union’s power and turn public opinion against it.
The UGTT, which represents more than 1 million members, in 2015 shared a Nobel Peace Prize with three other civil society groups for promoting national dialogue in Tunisia.
Dozens of union leaders from across Africa took part in the first-ever Summit for Democracy event on the continent March 30, where they discussed the essential role of unions in strengthening democracy and shared strategies on how unions can step up efforts to advance democracy through one of its most essential components—worker rights. Co-hosted by the Multilateral Partnership for Organizing, Worker Empowerment and Rights (M-POWER) and the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the day-long conference included interactive sessions focused on strengthening democracy and opening rapidly closing civic space in Africa.
“Amplifying the Voices of Workers to Safeguard Democracy in Africa” was an official side event of the second Summit for Democracy, a global democracy initiative co-hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea, the United States and Zambia March 28–30, 2023. The second Summit showcased progress made by Summit partners on their commitments in the first year of the global initiative—M-POWER is one of the largest commitments made by Summit partners.
Said Joy Beene, secretary general of the Zambia Confederation of Trade Unions: “There’s no democracy without workers.”
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When Halima joined with her co-workers at Hop Lun Apparels Ltd., they experienced many obstacles before they successfully formed a union. Now general secretary of the Hop Lun Apparels Ltd. workers’ union and a member of Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation 
