"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 country’s extremely low minimum wage... This report documents – via interviews with more than a hundred workers and extensive documentary research – that:

• The wage protests in December of 2018 were largely peaceful;

• The response by government security forces was characterized by indiscriminate use of physical force...

• 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;

• 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;

• The mass firings, of as many as 11,600 workers, did not have valid grounds under the country’s labor law...

• 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...