Recent spate of “violence” in the textile industry merits special analysis to flag what really went wrong that sent those thousands of workers rioting in the streets. I emailed Anu Muhammad – Economist, Editor – for his comments. This is his response.

Garment industry is the largest foreign exchange earning sector in Bangladesh. The six billion dollar industry functions with 2.2 million workers, 80% of whom are female. Yet workers in this sector get the lowest wage rate in the world. In 1994, the minimum wage (monthly pay) was fixed at 930 taka. There are many factories those pay workers below this line. Since 1994, cost of living for workers increased more than 100%. No revision of the minimum wage took place since then and garment owners or their umbrella organization BGMEA had no agenda on this in twelve years.

As export oriented industry, garments sector receives many incentives from the government and also gets support to ensure a regimented environment in the factory. Workers do not get appointment letters when they are appointed for work, therefore there is no security of job, and any worker can lose her /his job anytime for any reason management feel suitable for them. Moreover, management has the authority to behave with the worker like anything; there is no scope on the part of worker to have any safeguard. Bad words, harassment and also physical assault are common in many factories. Sexual harassment is also noticed in many studies on female workers in the industry.

Owners feel free to put load on workers to work for 12/13/14 hours or for continuous shifts to ensure shipment. They prefer not to appoint necessary number of workers but to overload fewer ones. Therefore, many workers have to work for seven days a week. No weekly holiday, even public holidays find garment industry working. Even after this Herculean job load, regular payment of wages and overtime has been rare in the industry. Arrear of wages and overtime reaches to more than 20 billion taka in the industry. We know many instances where workers were fired without payment after working for months.

Things do not end there. There are many owners who do not feel necessary to ensure workers safety. In the last few years, many hundred workers were killed because they were not allowed to go out when fire broke out; about a hundred were killed by collapsing faulty designed factory building. Few days ago, a teen-age worker was mercilessly beaten and killed by the management in a factory. No action was taken in any of these incidents. On the contrary, on 21st May an agitating worker was killed by police in Gazipur, another was killed on 22nd May.

This context should be brought in when we try to understand the violent incidences that took place in and around Dhaka in 22-23 May, where garment workers showed an unprecedented uprising and violent expression. They were not allowed to form trade unions or have links to any organization. Therefore, the uprising could not find any organized effort, there was no leadership and not clearly spelled out objective, only anger. This was an explosion of long suppressed deprivation, insult, harassment and super exploitation. One may find parallels in 19th century Europe.

This may happen that competitor countries or vested interests of home and abroad take advantages of this unrest and uncertainty. Nevertheless, that should not be made excuses to hide the real field of frustration and anger of millions of workers.