"Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets as Bangladesh Garment Workers Strike", 8 January 2019

Bangladeshi police Tuesday fired rubber bullets and tear gas as thousands of striking workers in the... country’s huge garment industry staged protests for a third day demanding wage hikes.

Police said more than 5,000 workers blocked a national highway at Hemayetpur outside the capital Dhaka and staged demonstrations for hours after they walked out of their factories.

“At least 12 policemen were injured after they threw rocks at our officers. We fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters. Twelve factories were shut down,” police official Sana Shaminur Rahman told AFP.

Bangladesh raised the minimum monthly wage for the garment sector’s four million workers by 51 percent to 8,000 taka ($95)  from December. But senior workers say their raise was less than this and unions, which warn the strikes may spread, say the hike fails to compensate for price rises in recent years...