Workers call on fashion brands and Bangladesh’s interim government to end their repression

An international campaign condemning the inaction of fashion brands and calling for 36 legal cases against worker groups and protesters to be dropped has been launched in Bangladesh. Led by the labour movement, the campaign criticises fashion brands including H&M and Zara over their failure to protect workers’ basic rights in the country.

It has been over a year since a protest by Bangladeshi garment workers for higher wages was violently repressed by the government and employers. Four workers were killed, hundreds severely injured, and 131 were arrested. About 40,000 workers, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign, remain at risk of arrest due to ‘blank arrest warrants’.

Fashion brands are accused of putting profits before the safety of workers. “Brands such as H&M and Zara have a responsibility to ensure that complaints against unnamed protesters cannot be used to intimidate workers and their representatives. The refusal of brands to support union-backed wage demands despite extreme poverty, and their lack of willingness to get these cases dropped, is illustrative of who profits from the status quo and who doesn’t. Brands clearly do,” said Anne Bienias, a lead campaigner for the Clean Clothes Campaign.

The Clean Clothes Campaign says it has linked 45 fashion brands to suppliers who filed charges against garment workers in Bangladesh, and have been pushing these brands to ensure the cases are dropped. While some brands have taken initial steps, a year on, all brands and suppliers have failed to follow through and not a single case has been cleared.

The 36 largely baseless criminal cases are held against 40,000 ‘unnamed individuals’. Trade unionists are warning these blank arrest warrants could be used against any workers who raise concerns with factory bosses, or as a tool for settling personal or political grievances.

Workers and trade unions in Bangladesh have put forward a list of priorities to the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, which includes the request to issue an executive order to have all the politically motivated legal charges being brought against workers for participation in the wage protests in 2023 dropped at once.

Are your jeans stained with blood?

The brands linked to the outstanding warrants are listed by the Clean Clothes Campaign – H&M, Zara, Calvin Klein, Levi’s and Lee among them – and their inaction tracked. The situation in Bangladesh, shows that brands’ endless promises about living wages and freedom of association are hollow and an attempt to deflect from the effective outsourcing of worker repression to the Bangladeshi security forces and employer-aligned institutions.

The legal monthly minimum wage is one of the lowest in the world and has remained set at 8,000 taka (R1,158/US$67) since 2018. Workers in Bangladesh are not only faced with poor salaries but working environments are as hazardous as when the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in 24 April 2013.

Kalpona Akter, president of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, said: “In an industry where union repression is rife, getting the cases dropped is just a first but very necessary step on the way to an industry in which workers can live a decent life off their wages and in which barriers to freedom of association are taken down. We won’t live in fear. We are calling for living wages that support our families.”