Labour Rights | The Daily Star

  • Innocent until found protesting

    In December 2018 and January 2019, workers from Bangladesh's ready-made garment (RMG) industry went on spontaneous mass protests and strikes around major industrial belts in Dhaka.

  • Pulling the weight of the world

    Fifty-year-old rickshaw puller Rafique Miah was struggling hard to peddle his rickshaw on the uneven roads of Mirpur. Looking exhausted, bearing testimony of his daylong hard labour, sweat trickled down his face on a winter evening in January. Still, he was doing his best to move forward, all the while wiping his brow with his torn gamcha (towel).

  • Unheard, Unseen, Unrecognised: The Plight of Dhaka's Waste Collectors

    Every day at 7am, Limon (not his real name), a boy of around 15, gathers a group of eight teenagers at a tea stall in Rayerbazar slum. In the tea stall, where they have a quick breakfast of a banana and a bun each, they are not particularly welcome.

  • Why Are Workers On The Streets?

    Since January 6, garments workers in Mirpur, Uttara, Ashulia and Savar have been protesting on the streets (as of this issue going to print on January 9). Earlier, prior to the elections, garment workers had also protested in different industrial areas, in limited capacities. Why are workers protesting now—three months after the new minimum wage was declared?

  • Why Are Workers On The Streets?

    Since January 6, garments workers in Mirpur, Uttara, Ashulia and Savar have been protesting on the streets (as of this issue going to print on January 9). Earlier, prior to the elections, garment workers had also protested in different industrial areas, in limited capacities. Why are workers protesting now—three months after the new minimum wage was declared?

  • Sexual harassment of RMG workers

    Women's participation in the ready-made garments sector, and the importance of this sector to national exports and economic growth has contributed to changed perceptions of women's economic and public role and has provided women themselves with more options.

  • Crushing spirit

    Crushing the spirit

    The minimum wage of garments workers has been declared at Tk 8,000 per month—and it seems, at this point, it is a signed and sealed deal. City life is going as is.

  • Betrayed Again?

    “When I went to the market yesterday, grocers told me that the price of commodities would be increased after Eid-Ul-Adha so I must clear all my dues within August 15,” says Khorsheda Begum, an assistant machine operator of a readymade garment (RMG) factory located in Tongi, Gazipur.

  • THE SECOND TIME AS FARCE

    What security has the working man that it may not be his turn [to starve] tomorrow? Who assures him employment, who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his lord and master discharges him tomorrow, he can struggle along with those dependent upon him, until he may find someone else 'to give him bread'?

  • All Talk And No Walk

    One morning I read an article, published in one of the most widely read newspapers of Dhaka, suggesting that all the negative news on Bangladesh's garments sector damages not only the owners but workers too. That afternoon, I decided to visit a garments factory in Mirpur—a small factory with 400 workers. My intention was to inquire about the status of maternity benefits and what exists in practice.

  • Are machines taking over the jobs of female garment workers?

    Last year Dolly Rani was working as a helper at a ready-made garments factory in Jiranibazaar of Savar when the advent of a machine made her useless. “I used to cut thread,” says Rani. She worked in the finishing section, and was one of the women who stood at the assembly line snipping away the loose ends of threads from finished products for hours on

  • Silencing the labour movement

    The attempt of suppressing workers and union leaders with prolonged unlawful detention is nothing new in Bangladesh. There are too many instances in which owners use false cases as tools to crack down on labour movements.

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