Almost 5,000 Bangladeshi garment workers sacked over strikes

[Black_cats]

Almost 5,000 Bangladeshi garment workers sacked over strikes
Workers sewing clothes for international brands had protested earlier this month over wages.

18 hours ago

The average monthly salary for a garment worker in Banglades is 8,000 taka ($96) [Salahuddin Ahmed/Reuters]
Nearly 5,000 low-paid Bangladeshi garment workers sewing clothes for global brands have been sacked by factory bosses for taking part in strikes over wages earlier this month that turned violent.

Thousands of labourers walked out of factory floors across the country in days-long protests that disrupted the $30bn industry and saw police fire rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators.

One worker was killed and more than 50 injured in clashes in Ashulia, a key industrial town outside Dhaka where clothes are sewn for retail giants H&M, Walmart and many others.

Police said thousands of factory workers accused of looting and vandalism during the protests have been fired, but unions have accused the industry of intimidation and a crackdown.

"So far the factories have dismissed 4,899 workers due to the unrest," a senior police officer told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators earlier this month [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Fear and panic
More than 1,200 garment workers - whose wages start at $95 a month - were dismissed from a single factory.

Unions say the real number fired is much higher, closer to 7,000, and that nearly 100 more have been arrested in roundups. Police would not comment on allegations of widespread arrests.

Salauddin Shapon, general secretary of industry body IndustriAll Bangladesh Council, said many workers were afraid to return to work.

"Cases have been filed against 3,000 unidentified workers which has created panic. Many have opted to stop going back to work," he said.

Rohingya refugees stitch together new lives in Bangladesh (2:17)


Police were deployed in a bid to break the strikes, which only ended when the government agreed to a paltry pay rise which amounted to as little as a few cents a month for some workers.

"The fact remains that, even after recent amendments, workers in Bangladesh still earn poverty wages," said Ben Vanpeperstraete, from the Amsterdam-based activist movement Clean Clothes Campaign, on Monday.

"The government is undertaking measures to intimidate workers and squelch any attempt of workers to organise."

Widespread protests
Bangladesh is home to 4,500 clothing factories employing 4.1 million workers and is the second-largest exporter of garments worldwide after China.

Roughly 80 percent of Bangladesh's export earnings come from clothing sales abroad, and the industry wields considerable power.

The strikes spurred demonstrations outside Bangladeshi embassies and consulates around the world and came just weeks after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was re-elected.

“When our government came to power in 2008, the average wage of a garment worker was 1,600 taka ($19). Today, even though I will agree that it is still low, it is 8,000 taka ($96),” Hasina’s adviser Gowher Rizvi told Al Jazeera in December.

"I agree that it should be higher, but our record of increasing it five-fold should be applauded and the government should not be blamed,” he added.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019...acked-bangladesh-strikes-190129121804896.html

 

[Mage]

Pathetic

 

[UKBengali]

Excellent that the government recognises that the minimum wage of just under 100 dollars is still a low salary.
Credit that they have raised it five fold in 10 years.
I feel for the workers but BD garment industry cannot afford to pay them more at this stage.

 

[Nilgiri]

whose wages start at $95 a month

Thats just horrid.

"I agree that it should be higher, but our record of increasing it five-fold should be applauded and the government should not be blamed,” he added.

LOL inflation did that (and its looking increasingly like it was not enough), not the govt out of its good graces.

@Skies

 

[Skies]

Thats just horrid.

LOL inflation did that (and its looking increasingly like it was not enough), not the govt out of its good graces.

@Skies

RIGHT.

The Riksha fare which was 5 taka in 2008 is now 20 taka. That is 4x increase.
Similarly, the wage was $19 in 2008, and now $96. That is 5x increase.

So the govt is claiming of increasing it five-fold is basically 2x increase considering the inflation.

Minimum wage should be 12000 taka.

 

[UKBengali]

RIGHT.

The Riksha fare which was 5 taka in 2008 is now 20 taka. That is 4x increase.
Similarly, the wage was $19 in 2008, and now $96. That is 5x increase.

So the govt is claiming of increasing it five-fold is basically 2x increase considering the inflation.

Minimum wage should be 12000 taka.

All that counts is that minimum wage is rising faster than inflation. Inflation has averaged 7% a year over the last decade and so the real increase in wages for garment workers has been 5/2 = 2.5 times. That would be great but the garment workers are only getting the increase around every 5 years and so maybe in real terms they are 1.5x better off.

Remember that 95 US dollars a month is the absolute minimum wage for someone newly trained. More experienced machinists will earn higher salaries.

As for 12,000 Taka a month, the problem is that BD is facing stiff competition and cannot risk losing it's business to other countries. Hopefully if the boom in garments exports keeps continuing then simple supply and demand will mean that the factories will have to start paying a little more to attract and keep their workers.

@Nilgiri : True that 95 US dollars a month is a low salary but it is better that than nothing at all. Also remember that nearly all of these women have a husband who will be earning anywhere from 100-200 US dollars a month.
Monthly income of a low-wage family in BD is around the 250 US dollar mark and so at least they can meet the basic needs.

 

[Mage]

So the govt is claiming of increasing it five-fold is basically 2x increase considering the inflation.

Won't be 2x either. More like 1.5x-1.8x.

Which is not bad imo. Without garments factories, these people would most likely be unemployed. Or work in someone's house for 1000-1500 taka.

Minimum wage should be 12000 taka.

I said the same too few months back. Underemployment is the biggest problem in BD. Starting salary for engineers, unless from BUET or DU is dangerously low. Few of my friends had to join at a starting salary of 15000-18000 taka.

But no one raises this issue. I wonder why?

 

[Sam.]

Won't be 2x either. More like 1.5x-1.8x.

Which is not bad imo. Without garments factories, these people would most likely be unemployed. Or work in someone's house for 1000-1500 taka.

I said the same too few months back. Underemployment is the biggest problem in BD. Starting salary for engineers, unless from BUET or DU is dangerously low. Few of my friends had to join at a starting salary of 15000-18000 taka.

But no one raises this issue. I wonder why?

Same problem in India and seems we suffer the same.

 

[Mage]

Same problem in India and seems we suffer the same.

It was better years ago. Engineers would start at minimum 25-30k back in 2009-10..which would be equivalent to 50k today. But there are too many engineers today and they get salary of a professional driver. Although I have haeard, salary increases with a couple of years experience.

 

[Skies]

@Nilgiri

Although it would be secrete information, but do you have any idea about how much in general is the "Total wage cost to Total profit ratio", the profit taken by the manufactures/owners in USA/Canada or China or India?

As people are taking about stiff competition. I am interested to know if owners can take less profit themselves and compensate for the workers' wage.

According to "Asia Floor Wage", the 2017 Asia Floor Wage figure is PPP$ 1181.

As in the video, there needs to have same wage in every country in terms of PPP.

Asia Floor Wage

Won't be 2x either. More like 1.5x-1.8x.

Which is not bad imo. Without garments factories, these people would most likely be unemployed. Or work in someone's house for 1000-1500 taka.

Well, in that case, I would like to leave it to the matter of 'demand and supply'. If the workers have demand with less supply, the garment owners will agree to pay even 20,000.

I said the same too few months back. Underemployment is the biggest problem in BD. Starting salary for engineers, unless from BUET or DU is dangerously low. Few of my friends had to join at a starting salary of 15000-18000 taka.

But no one raises this issue. I wonder why?

Very unfortunate. Two reasons are,

-The students from private universities will do the same job at low salary

-And since the supply of students from private universities is unlimited, the owners will make high profit margin by hiring them and firing them if asked for increment.

And the solution is to create enough high-skilled job positions where only BUET students can compete as they did in the admission test after HSC.

 

[Nilgiri]

All that counts is that minimum wage is rising faster than inflation. Inflation has averaged 7% a year over the last decade and so the real increase in wages for garment workers has been 5/2 = 2.5 times. That would be great but the garment workers are only getting the increase around every 5 years and so maybe in real terms they are 1.5x better off.

Remember that 95 US dollars a month is the absolute minimum wage for someone newly trained. More experienced machinists will earn higher salaries.

As for 12,000 Taka a month, the problem is that BD is facing stiff competition and cannot risk losing it's business to other countries. Hopefully if the boom in garments exports keeps continuing then simple supply and demand will mean that the factories will have to start paying a little more to attract and keep their workers.

@Nilgiri : True that 95 US dollars a month is a low salary but it is better that than nothing at all. Also remember that nearly all of these women have a husband who will be earning anywhere from 100-200 US dollars a month.
Monthly income of a low-wage family in BD is around the 250 US dollar mark and so at least they can meet the basic needs.

The workers should be allowed to bargain better and fairly with the production companies....rather than be suppressed and even fired by the govt like this. It is anti-free market for argument of "greater good"....which is always a slippery slope in first place.

There is not enough difference from the average GDP per capita (going with 95 as starting wage, and whatever amount it is as average worker wage once you put in some time)....so I don't buy that these people would be unemployed or earning nothing if it weren't due to RMG.

More and more it seems RMG is a big govt+elite scam perpetuated on the BD people....by forcing one labour industry production pooling for forex (outside of worker export).

Some 81 billion USD was extracted illicitly out of BD (just by trade) in 9 years or so...and 10 billion in 2015 (last available year estimate) alone. If the govt cared about investment buffer argument, it would be fixing that first rather than firing workers that were striking because of low wages (given they do not have any proper fair venue for wage bargaining). I mean what would the yearly wage increase be for each worker if those 10 billion dollars were made available to them?

@Skies @bluesky if BNP were smart they would start organising a big movement regarding this....get the RMG workers consolidated as a larger bargaining power....right now its too easy for top down elite to control them at their whim by making examples out of smaller numbers of them.

@Nilgiri

Although it would be secrete information, but do you have any idea about how much in general is the "Total wage cost to Total profit ratio", the profit taken by the manufactures/owners in USA/Canada or China or India?

As people are taking about stiff competition. I am interested to know if owners can take less profit themselves and compensate for the workers' wage.

According to "Asia Floor Wage", the 2017 Asia Floor Wage figure is PPP$ 1181.

As in the video, there needs to have same wage in every country in terms of PPP.

Asia Floor Wage

Well, in that case, I would like to leave it to the matter of 'demand and supply'. If the workers have demand with less supply, the garment owners will agree to pay even 20,000.



Very unfortunate. Two reasons are,

-The students from private universities will do the same job at low salary

-And since the supply of students from private universities is unlimited, the owners will make high profit margin by hiring them and firing them if asked for increment.

And the solution is to create enough high-skilled job positions where only BUET students can compete as they did in the admission test after HSC.

You hit the nail on the head...it comes down to

a) bargaining power + wage competition available (allocation of the worker/managerial/owner/backer ratios of splitting the earnings)

b) the industry at hand (for the overall scale of the production per worker)

You can look up some numbers for what you are talking about here:

https://www.ilo.org/ilostat/faces/wcnav_defaultSelection;ILOSTATCOOKIE=17qmQacWjzGDcsNwKuCjKN8wUq18NUiZTqfozSprwNDbTM_pdMjR!526841564?_afrLoop=897772086153501&_afrWindowMode=0&_afrWindowId=null#!@@?_afrWindowId=null&_afrLoop=897772086153501&_afrWindowMode=0&_adf.ctrl-state=ch8u9qbf5_4

BD labour productivity in 2017 is estimated at 2845 in constant 2010 USD.

In current (2017) USD dollars that's about 4000 USD per worker ( can look up world bank multiplier for it for BD...its roughly 1.4).

Yet RMG pays their starting wage at 95*12 = 1140 dollars.

So you can clearly see what the depressed bargaining has led to. This is why real household consumption has started to decline in BD given how the median/mean shift is manifested there compared to per worker (given households are more than just workers). That is not good news and it needs reform yesterday itself....yet BAL govt seems to think it can double down on this autocratic intervention that benefits its chosen few immensely.

@bluesky @Tanveer666 @Atlas

Coming back to the ~ 10 billion per year illicit extraction from BD total trade:

https://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2018/03/03/womens-participation-rmg-workforce-declines

According to the survey, the there are 3,596 active RMG factories in Bangladesh with 3.5 million workers, of which 60.8% are female and 39.2% are male.

If 3.5 million (or whatever X million it is) is indeed the total worker population in RMG:

You can do the math per year (10 billion/ 3.5 million at some % capture rate) as to what could be the dividend to help both workers + re-investment buffer etc... if BD govt focused there rather than on firing striking workers who are rebelling likely because of real household income decline perpetrated on them by the same govt.

So the question becomes why BD govt does not go for this more low hanging fruit...but instead resorts to making such an example out of its own people (who's votes now don't matter either it has been made plainly apparent)?

Something is clearly rotten in the state of Bangladesh (Apologies to Shakespeare).

 

[bluesky]

Monthly income of a low-wage family in BD is around the 250 US dollar mark and so at least they can meet the basic needs.

If the salary for the low-wage family is $250 how about the garments workers? They also deserve to earn at least $250 per month. They are deprived and the excess profits are sent abroad by the Owner group to the safe haven in Switzerland.

 

[VikingRaider]

Excellent that the government recognises that the minimum wage of just under 100 dollars is still a low salary.
Credit that they have raised it five fold in 10 years.

Yet you demanded income taxes from such low salary!

I feel for the workers but BD garment industry cannot afford to pay them more at this stage.

And yet you do not want them to send to Arabian countries to work as housemaid , because there is a possibility that they can be harassed by Arabian rich , and that can harm the reputation of govt . So tell me sir , why govt do not give them ration so that those poor can eat some food and can live a slightly better life ( that is still less than human life ) ?

provide them ration so that they can buy some goods in very cheap price ! It will be the real development for the poor!

 

[Tanveer666]

If the salary for the low-wage family is $250 how about the garments workers? They also deserve to earn at least $250 per month

250$ a month? Many entry level " white collar" jobs don't even provide that amount. But i see your point.

 

[UKBengali]

Yet you demanded income taxes from such low salary!



And yet you do not want them to send to Arabian countries to work as housemaid , because there is a possibility that they can be harassed by Arabian rich , and that can harm the reputation of govt . So tell me sir , why govt do not give them ration so that those poor can eat some food and can live a slightly better life ( that is still less than human life ) ?

provide them ration so that they can buy some goods in very cheap price ! It will be the real development for the poor!

I said tax anything more than 12000 Taka a month at 10%.
Hardly any garment workers would be affected at all.
This would bring in a few billion dollars a year to improve health and education that would directly benefit these workers and their families.
We all want better pay and conditions for these workers but it is not possible to do it immediately. It has to be a gradual process that will take many decades to complete.