Ahead of Eid, Bangladesh’s Garment Workers Protest Over Unpaid Wages, Bonuses

Nearly 250 garment workers descended upon the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association headquarters in the country’s capital of Dhaka on Sunday to demand the wages they say they’re still owed after their layoffs three months ago. Their sit-in continued through Monday evening, according to local media, interfering with activities at the factory owners’ trade group.

BGMEA administrator Anwar Hossain told the Daily Star that he wasn’t “fully aware” of the blockade because he was busy with his responsibilities at the Export Promotion Bureau, where he is vice-chairman. Hossain has helmed the BGMEA’s interim committee since Muhammad Yunus’s caretaker government ordered the dissolution of the organization’s board of directors ahead of fresh elections. He said the trade body has been tracking factories that have been struggling to pay salaries and Eid bonuses on time, but that the Roar Fashion case is unique because the owner, former Awamaki League lawmaker Sifuzzaman Shikhor, has been untraceable.

“It’s the usual—,” Miran Ali, a member of the BGMEA’s interim committee, told Sourcing Journal, using an expletive to emphasize his point. “The guy’s absconded, buggered off, didn’t pay the wages.”

Roar’s former employees aside, similar demonstrations have been brewing elsewhere in Dhaka, as well as in manufacturing hubs such as Chittagong, where one protestor, who had been calling for the payment of arrears, also on Sunday, died after he suffered a stroke. Workers have also been increasingly hitting the streets to demand a 10-day Eid holiday—the official respite is three days, though individual factories can choose to extend this—in line with what government officials receive.

Despite what appears to be a modest recovery in orders since disgraced prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s August ouster—garment exports grew 10.6 percent to $26.79 billion during the July-February period—there remain caveats involving the improvement of “law and order” before Bangladesh can take complete advantage of higher tariffs on China and potentially Mexico, Faruque Hassan, a former BGMEA president, told the Daily Star. The American Apparel & Footwear Association, the Fair Labor Association and member brands such as Calvin Klein owner PVH Corp. and The North Face parent VF Corp., have also called for the industry to reform Bangladesh’s labor laws and tackle longstanding issues such as wages and better workplace conditions.

“We are united around shared goals for a more competitive, socially responsible and sustainable industry in Bangladesh,” Nate Herman, senior vice president of policy at the AAFA, said in January, before the Trump administration’s aggressive cost-cutting measures kneecapped civil society organizations working to accomplish just that.

As of Tuesday, more than 200 of Bangladesh’s 3,500 garment factories had yet to dole out bonuses ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan and is expected to fall on March 29 or 30 this year, the BGMEA estimates, even though they were instructed to dispense bonuses by the 20th and pay half of March’s salaries before the weekend. Some 11 BGMEA-member factories face a high risk of unrest due to the non-payment of workers’ wages and Eid bonuses.

“We are pushing to get it done,” Ali said of payments. “We have identified about a dozen which are significant.”