Starving for Justice: Bangladeshi Garment Workers in a ‘Post-Rana Plaza’ World

Abstract

On the afternoon of August 2, 2014, I walked into Hossain Market, one of the many nondescript multistoried buildings lining the commercial thoroughfare in Uttor Badda, Dhaka. I had gone to show solidarity with hunger-striking garment workers of the Toba Group, three of whose units were housed in the building. Since July 28, several hundred workers had occupied the upper floors, demanding payment of three months back wages, overtime, and a festival bonus. The market entrance looked deserted, not exactly the hotbed of industrial action I'd expected. “Is this where the strike is?” I asked no one in particular. A couple of young women immediately escorted me up several flights of stairs – past the inevitable collapsible gates and oversized padlocks adorning each floor. On the seventh floor landing, young student volunteers were buzzing around a media and communications desk they had set up. Inside, I found half a dozen workers sprawled across cutting tables and makeshift beds, being administered saline by a medical team provided by a well-known health rights NGO. Hundreds of others, mostly women but also some men, milled across the room. Before I could speak to the workers, Shahidul Islam Shabuj, a labor organizer and sometime acquaintance, spied me from a distance and whisked me away to the top floor for an audience with Moshrefa Mishu, president of the Garment Workers Unity Forum and the prime mover behind the “fast unto death.” For Shabuj, my presence was fortuitous—an opportunity to get the workers’ formal message out.

Exploring Suppliers’ Approaches toward Workplace Safety Compliance in the Global Garment Sector: From Bangladesh Perspective

“…Additionally, numerous studies shed light on workplace disasters and their further consequences concerning regulatory reforms in the global supply chain (Labowitz and Baumann-Pauly 2014;Taplin 2014;Jacobs and Singhal 2017), enforceable governance programs (Salminen 2018), labor codes, and OHS rights reforms (Prentice et al 2018; Greet De and Prentice 2017), human rights violations (Siddiqui and Uddin 2016;Aruna 2019) and workers' compensations and justices (Siddiqi 2015) after Rana Plaza disaster. Several studies have depicted the safety compliance issue of the garment sector from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social sustainability context (Sinkovics et al 2016;Haque and Azmat 2015;Huq et al 2014;Akbar and Ahsan 2019).…”

The SDGs and the Empowerment of Bangladeshi Women

“…The disastrous Rana Plaza factory collapse of 2013-the worst industrial disaster in the history of the global garments trade-graphically illustrated the effects of the lack of power of garment workers to resist pressures to turn up for work in unsafe factories in order to perform tough, but underpaid, labour. Since the calamity of 2013, which threatened the very existence of this overwhelmingly important industry in Bangladesh, garment workers have taken increasingly effective, if dangerous, collective action to demand safety at work and higher wages (Ashraf and Prentice 2019;Siddiqi 2015).…”

The Rana Plaza disaster and the complicit behavior of elite NGOs

“…The Accord, itself a kind of elite NGO, is also heavily influenced by dominant actors, particularly MNCs. Therefore, it is difficult to convince low-paid workers that it is protecting their interests (Muhammad 2015c;Rahman, 2014;Siddiqi, 2015). Workers are still paid at the lowest rate-US$68 per month (Kazmin and Mallet, 2015)-and conditions are inhumane (Hunter, 2015).…”