Buses Burned Due to Demands for a Minimum Wage; Bangladeshi Government to Issue New Pay Regulations

Ahead of a new minimum wage announcement for millions of garment laborers, police used tear gas on hundreds of workers who set a bus on fire outside Bangladesh’s capital on Tuesday. Tensions rose throughout this incident.

Approximately 85% of Bangladesh’s $55 billion in yearly exports are derived from its 3,500 garment factories, which provide many of the world’s most recognizable fashion brands, such as Levi’s, Zara, and H&M.

However, many of the four million workers in this sector—the great majority of them are women whose starting monthly pay are 8,300 taka ($75)—face appalling circumstances.

Employers have given 25% of workers’ earnings, while workers have gone on strike in recent days, demanding a nearly threefold increase.

On Tuesday, a new pay scale was expected to be announced by the panel of the state-appointed minimum wage board, which also includes members from labor unions, manufacturers, and wage specialists.

According to police, there was violence in the industrial city of Gazipur when some 6,000 workers staged demonstrations and walked out of their facilities over rumors that the government would only boost their pay to about half what they were demanding.

They set a bus on fire. Sarwar Alam, the head of the Gazipur Industrial Police Unit, told AFP that “we used tear gas to disperse them.”

Workers responded violently, according to a police officer who spoke with AFP, to “fake news” that was spread on social media about the arrest of union officials and the panel’s decision to lower the minimum salary from 23,000 ($208) to 12,000 taka ($108).

The chairman of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, Kalpona Akter, told AFP that “the manufacturers’ proposal should start from above 15,000 taka.”

The commission, which meets every five years on average, increased the minimum wage in 2018 from 5,000 to 8,000 Taka. Additionally, garment workers get an attendance fee of at least 300 taka per month.

Unions claim that members have been severely impacted by ongoing inflation, which in October approached 10 percent, as well as a crisis in living expenses partially brought on by the taka’s roughly 30 percent decline in value relative to the US dollar since the beginning of the year.

The largest pay protest in ten years rocked key industrial towns and a capital suburb this week, according to police, closing over 600 firms that produce apparel for several major Western brands and leaving dozens of workers devastated.

At least two workers lost their lives in the violence that resulted in four factories being set on fire. Tens of thousands of workers, including women, blocked roads and attacked companies.

Prior to the January elections, opposition groups have staged separate, violent rallies calling for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign. These have coincided with the protests.