¨Photo: Clean Clothes Campaign.
Photo: Clean Clothes Campaign.
Campaigners, labour rights advocates and trade union representatives are calling on fashion brands, like H&M and Zara, to do more to protect the rights of Bangladeshi workers who make their clothes by ensuring that the 36 legal cases filed against groups of workers and demonstrators during the 2023 wage protests in Bangladesh are dropped.
Last year, the government of Bangladesh and employers violently repressed garment workers who were protesting for a living wage. As a result of the violent police response, four workers were killed, hundreds were severely injured, and 131 were arrested. Today, more than 40,000 workers remain at risk of arrest due to repressive legal charges filed against specific individuals, but also mass arrest warrants issued for unnamed protesters.
Worker representatives warn that the blank arrest warrants could be used against any worker who raises concerns with factory management, or as a tool for settling personal or political grievances.
Anne Bienias, a lead campaigner for the Clean Clothes Campaign, is calling on the brands to take swift action: “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.”
The Clean Clothes Campaign, of which MSN is a member, has linked 45 fashion brands to suppliers who filed charges in 36 cases against garment workers in Bangladesh. For a year, the CCC has been lobbying the brands that source from these factories to ensure their suppliers drop the charges. While some brands have taken initial steps, all brands and suppliers have failed to follow through, and not a single case has been withdrawn to date.
The Clean Clothes Campaign’s tracker exposes which brands are linked to the outstanding warrants, including H&M, Zara, Next, Matalan, Levi’s, Bestseller and more. Campaigners hope this tool will shed light on the complicity of the industry and motivate leading brands to follow through with suppliers to ensure the charges are dropped.
Kalpona Akter, president of the Bangladesh Garment & 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.”
Workers and trade unions in Bangladesh have also asked the interim government led by Dr. Muhammad Yunus to issue an executive order that would clear all politically motivated legal charges filed against workers for participation in the 2023 wage protests. Unions are encouraging brands to support this request.
The 2023 response from government security forces and factory owners to protesting workers, followed two decades of pro-industry policies under Sheikh Hasina’s governments in which the economic interests of brands and manufacturers were prioritized over labour rights and workers’ wages.
Despite promising commitments regarding living wages and freedom of association, brands continue to profit from repression and poverty wages in Bangladesh and choose to remain silent again and again.
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