Bangladesh
Bangladesh, garment workers, May Day protest, Solidarity Center, worker rights, human rights

The Solidarity Center advances worker rights in Bangladesh in partnership with independent unions in the garment, seafood processing, and tannery sectors. Credit: Solidarity Center/Musfiq Tajwar

In Bangladesh, the Solidarity Center advances worker rights in partnership with independent unions in the garment, seafood processing, and tannery sectors, and promotes the rights of Bangladeshi migrant and domestic workers. The Solidarity Center also partners with Bangladesh unions to conduct gender equality training, to help counter gender-based violence and harassment at work that is sometimes used as a tool to intimidate workers. (See a summary of our recent projects. আমাদের সাম্প্রতিক প্রকল্পগুলির একটি সারসংক্ষেপ দেখুনঃ)

Through training on safe migration and anti-human trafficking, Solidarity Center joins with grassroots partners to call for decent work for Bangladeshi migrants, many of whom are targets of unscrupulous brokers (dalals) that send them to work in dangerous, often inhumane conditions.

The Solidarity Center supports several Worker Community Centers (WCCs), where workers and community members come together to learn about their rights and build collective power to claim them, train to become effective advocates for critical health and education services, and positively engage in the civic and economic life of their communities.

The Solidarity Center also provides legal assistance to workers in Bangladesh’s Export-Processing Zones (EPZ) to assist them in defending their rights. EPZ workers are subject to a different, much weaker set of labor laws than workers in the rest of the country, and these laws do not meet international standards for freedom of association or collective bargaining.

Although collective bargaining remains extremely difficult in Bangladesh, and often provokes employer retribution, with support from the Solidarity Center unions are negotiating groundbreaking, gender-responsive collective bargaining agreements to improve wages and working conditions. The Solidarity Center also has trained thousands of workers on fire and building safety since the Tazreen Fashions and Rana Plaza tragedies in 2012 and 2013 where more than 1,200 garment workers lost their lives.

Media Contact

Kate Conradt
Communications Director
(+1) 202-974 -8369

 

BANGLADESH: Wage Strike Sparks Government Crackdown

In mid-December, a strike in Ashulia, an industrial suburb of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, and a ready-made garment sector hub, quickly snowballed into widespread unrest. Garment workers abandoned their factories to call for a living wage in response to ever-rising...

Expand Dispute Resolution to Bangladesh Garment Sector

In August 2015, management of a shrimp- and fish-processing factory in Khulna, Bangladesh, suspended Phillip Ballav, a worker, on dubious charges at the facility. Ballav believed that as a long time worker he was targeted by management and that the suspension to be...

Shawna Bader-Blau: ‘Work Should Be about Dignity’

On the eve of the tragic Tazreen Factory Ltd. fire that in 2012 killed 112 garment workers in Bangladesh, Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau discussed on the Working Life podcast published today how global inequities led to Tazreen and to the 2013...
Dying for a Job: The 4th Anniversary of the Tazreen Fire

Dying for a Job: The 4th Anniversary of the Tazreen Fire

On November 24, 2012, a massive fire tore through the Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing more than 110 garment workers and gravely injuring thousands more. To mark the fourth anniversary of Tazreen, a new Solidarity Center photo essay depicts...

John Kerry Backs Bangladesh Workers in Forming Unions

John Kerry Backs Bangladesh Workers in Forming Unions

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with leaders of Bangladesh garment unions recently in Dhaka, where he emphasized workers’ ability to freely form unions as key to workplace safety. “Enhancing worker safety has to be paired with strengthening workers’ rights,” he...

Building Alliances to End Gender-Based Violence at Work

Building Alliances to End Gender-Based Violence at Work

Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world—and yet not enough is done to prevent it, especially at the workplace. “Without gender equality, we cannot have worker rights, and without worker rights, we cannot have...

Pin It on Pinterest