Bangladesh: 2 Years After Rana Plaza, Workers Denied Rights Enforce Labor Law and End Mistreatment of Unions

Garment workers in Bangladesh face poor working conditions and anti-union tactics by employers including assaults on union organizers, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. In the two years since more than 1,100 workers died in the catastrophic collapse of the Rana Plaza factory on April 24, 2013, efforts are underway to make Bangladesh factories safer, but the government and Western retailers can and should do more to enforce international labor standards to protect workers’ rights, including their right to form unions and advocate for better conditions. “If Bangladesh wants to avoid another Rana Plaza disaster, it needs to effectively enforce its labor law and ensure that garment workers enjoy the right to voice their concerns about safety and working conditions without fear of retaliation or dismissal,” said Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director. “If Bangladesh does not hold factory managers accountable who attack workers and deny the right to form unions, the government will perpetuate practices that have cost the lives of thousands of workers.”

Workers report violations including physical assault, verbal abuse – sometimes of a sexual nature – forced overtime, denial of paid maternity leave, and failure to pay wages and bonuses on time or in full. Despite recent labor law reforms, many workers who try to form unions to address such abuses face threats, intimidation, dismissal, and sometimes physical assault at the hands of factory management or hired third parties.

At Rana Plaza, factory managers compelled reluctant workers to enter the building despite major cracks in the complex’s walls. At the Tazreen factory, where a fire killed at least 112 workers on November 24, 2012, managers refused to let workers escape even after the fire alarms went off. None of the factories involved had a union to represent workers to help them to push back against the managers’ deadly demands.

While changes to some labor laws since Rana Plaza, including provisions easing the union registration process, have facilitated registration of new unions, still fewer than 10 percent of garment factories in Bangladesh have unions. Union leaders told Human Rights Watch that they continue to be targeted by factory management, risking abuse by both managers and supervisors, or thugs acting at their behest. In some factories, workers leading efforts to form unions have been dismissed for their organizing activities. Factory owners and management reject these allegations. A Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) official told Human Rights Watch: “We have a bitter experience about unions. They believe they don’t need to work and they will get paid.”

A union leader at a factory in Gazipur said that when she and others tried to set up a union in January 2014, they were brutally assaulted and scores of workers were fired. She said she was beaten while pregnant, forced to work at night, and eventually fired, without receiving all the back wages she was owed, all because she refused to stop unionizing. “I was beaten with metal curtain rods in February when I was pregnant. I was called to the chairman’s room and taken to the third floor management room which is used by the management and directors and there I was beaten by the local goons.”

Companies sourcing from Bangladesh factories should immediately take action to ensure that factory inspections conducted on their behalf or with their support are effective in ensuring that their supplier factories comply with the companies’ codes of conduct and the Bangladesh labor law. Audits and inspections undertaken by or on behalf of international apparel companies should be reviewed to ensure that they are capable of effectively detecting and investigating factory management actions and practices that deny workers’ rights to freedom of association and protection against anti-union discrimination. International apparel companies and clothing retailers should also agree to supply chain transparency and regularly and publicly disclose all Bangladesh-based factories from which they source.

The Human Rights Watch report also examines the aftermath of the Rana Plaza and Tazreen disasters. Three separate initiatives to inspect the factories for safety are underway. However, more remains to be done to adequately support the victims of the collapse of Rana Plaza and the deadly fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory. Survivors told Human Rights Watch that the compensation they have received until now is not sufficient to pay their medical bills and cover their loss of livelihood. An independent commission has estimated that US$30millionneedstobepaidtothesurvivorsofRanaPlazaandthedependentsofthosethatdied,butonlyabout<span>$21 million had been paid or pledged as of March 2015. For victims of the Tazreen fire, the situation is much worse in the absence of a sustained campaign for compensation, such as in the case of the Rana Plaza collapse. In November 2014, the European retailer CeA pledged a “significant amount towards full and fair compensation” for the victims of Tazreen, and the Hong-Kong-based company Li & Fung made a donation to support victims soon after the disaster. However, several other companies have paid nothing, claiming the factory was making or storing their products without their knowledge or authorization.

The readymade garment industry accounts for almost 80 percent of the country’s export earnings and contributes to more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), employing more than four million workers, a majority of them women. The industry, which includes more than 4,500 factories of various sizes, has a crucial role in alleviating poverty in Bangladesh. “Continuing the economic success of the Bangladesh garment sector offers benefits for everyone – the retail companies and their consumers, factory owners, and the government,” Robertson said. “But those gains should not come at the cost of lives and the suffering of garment workers struggling for a better future.”

Published on Human Rights Watch – April 22, 2015 Adapted from http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/22/ bangladesh-2-years-after-rana-plaza-workers-denied-rights

Based on the fragment “…the government and Western retailers can and should do more to enforce international labor standards to protect workers’ rights.” one can infer that Bangladesh government and Western retailers