8. Bangladesh

This chapter provides a picture of wage theft in the Bangladeshi garment industry in 2020 through a special focus on unfair dismissals and union busting during Covid-19.

The global apparel industry has played a crucial role in pushing Bangladesh, a predominantly agrarian economy, to rapid industrialisation and to lower middle-income status in 2015. Bangladesh is the second largest exporter of ready-made garments and the industry contributes to about 11% of the GDP, accounts for approximately 80% of Bangladesh’s total exports, and employs around 4.4. million workers, most of whom are women.1

Despite the tremendous growth of the industry, industrial safety was by and large neglected until tragic incidents like the Tazreen fire in 2012 that killed 117 workers and the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 that killed 1100 workers. Though measures have been taken over the years to improve industrial safety, especially through the creation of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, the garment industry continues to rely excessively on women workers from marginalised communities who are paid poverty-level wages to perform basic Cut and Make (CM) tasks.

As per a survey by the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR) in March 2020, after the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, more than half of the suppliers in Bangladesh reported that the bulk of their in-process or already completed production was cancelled and 70-90% of brands refused to pay for raw materials and the production cost, leaving more than one million workers fired or furloughed.2

Many garment factories in Bangladesh used the Covid-19 crisis as a cover to attack freedom of association by unfairly dismissing unionised workers or workers who engaged in protests for unpaid wages

Chapter Highlights

• Workers reported an overall wage theft of 27% in 2020, with a very sharp decline in wages by 60% in November and December.

• For workers who were unfairly dismissed and could not find jobs in the garment industry in 2020, monthly wages fell sharply from 110 USD in the pre-pandemic period to 37 USD by the end of the year.

• 99% of the workers reported that they had taken on debt during the pandemic.

• Many workers who were unfairly dismissed and could not find jobs in the garment industry in 2020, were pushed below the extreme poverty line (living on less than 1.90 USD a day), which is the lowest yardstick of poverty measurement by the World Bank.