Bangladesh Garment Workers Defy Wage-Board Delay as 100 Factories Shut
Bangladesh’s garment workers kept more than 100 factories closed in the industrial belt outside Dhaka on Thursday, refusing to surrender their wage demand to a board that has promised a new pay scale but has not named a number.
Workers walked out in Ashulia, blocked roads and demanded a minimum monthly wage of 30,000 taka, or about $242. The legal floor now stands at 12,500 taka. That gap—between the price of survival and the price factory owners want to pay—has driven six days of strikes, road blockades and clashes across Ashulia, Savar, Gazipur, Mirpur and Narayanganj.
“The prices of everything have gone up, but wages have not. It is becoming harder and harder to make ends meet,” garment worker Shilpi Khatun told Reuters.
The government formed a wage board after the protests began on Saturday. On Wednesday, the panel agreed to implement a revised structure in December, with workers receiving the first salaries under it in January. Yet it left the central question unanswered: how much will the new minimum wage be?
That omission explains why the demonstrations continued. Workers told The Daily Star they feared officials could settle on an increase of only 1,000 or 2,000 taka—far below what households need after years of rising food, rent, transport, gas and electricity costs. “We don’t want wages that are just enough to survive. We have survived long enough. Now we want to live like regular people,” worker Taslim told the newspaper.
The protests have repeatedly stopped production in one of the world’s most important manufacturing centers. Local authorities reported 264 factories closed in Savar and Ashulia on Monday. By Tuesday, at least 200 remained shut there, while another 15 declared holidays in Gazipur. The Associated Press reported about 100 still closed in Ashulia on Wednesday; Reuters counted more than 100 suspended on Thursday.
Workers have also demanded an end to blacklisting and layoffs. Those demands matter because a wage gain means little if organizers can be quietly denied work or factories can remove employees who join a stoppage.
Police fired tear gas, sound grenades and water cannon in several industrial areas. Officers said some demonstrators threw bricks, damaged vehicles and set fires. Local reports documented injuries among workers, police, journalists and bystanders, while authorities announced arrests in Dhaka, Gazipur, Savar and Ashulia. The state also deployed Border Guard Bangladesh personnel and more than 10,000 police in parts of Dhaka.
Officials have repeatedly blamed “outsiders” or political actors for violence. Workers have countered that police action obstructed peaceful protest and that unidentified people committed sabotage. Those competing claims require investigation. They do not erase the wage demand, which workers themselves have stated consistently from the first walkout.
Bangladesh’s garment industry employs about four million people, most of them women, and accounts for more than 80 percent of the country’s export earnings. Its factories supply some of the world’s largest retailers, including H&M, Inditex’s Zara and Walmart. The industry’s global success rests on workers who remain among the lowest paid in major apparel-exporting countries.
That places responsibility far beyond Dhaka. International brands negotiate prices and delivery schedules that shape what factories claim they can afford. A serious wage settlement therefore requires not only government action and factory-owner compliance, but purchasing terms that stop treating labor costs as the easiest line to squeeze.
The wage board can end this confrontation only by naming a credible figure and protecting the workers who forced the issue onto the national agenda. Announcing a process without a wage buys time for employers. It does not buy food, rent or dignity for the people who make Bangladesh’s largest export.
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