Bangladesh: Report finds mass firings, violence & arrests following minimum wage protests 'unlawful'
"Banning Hope: Bangladesh Garment Workers Seeking a Dollar an Hour Face Mass Firings, Violence, and False Arrests", April 2019
The government and apparel factory owners in Bangladesh have carried out a brutal crackdown on garment workers in retaliation for... protests against the countryโs extremely low minimum wage... This report documents โ via interviews with more than a hundred workers and extensive documentary research โ that:
โข The wage protests in December of 2018 were largely peaceful;
โข The response by government security forces was characterized by indiscriminate use of physical force...
โข Arrests of, and criminal charges against, 65 workers were driven by demonstrably baseless complaints from managers of 30 factories, producing for a long list of well-known brands and retailers;
โข Some workers were charged based on alleged acts that took place miles away from their actual workplaces and in which the workers cannot possibly have taken part;
โข The mass firings, of as many as 11,600 workers, did not have valid grounds under the countryโs labor law...
โข Rather than terminating individual workers for documented violations... factory managers fired workers en masse, with no effort to credibly demonstrate cause, as a means of collective punishment of workers for their decision to participate in protests...