More Than 200 Bangladesh Garment Factories Halt as Workers Demand Higher Minimum Wage

More than 200 garment factories in Bangladesh’s industrial belt suspended production on Thursday, 12 November, as workers refused shifts and pressed for a sharp increase in the legal minimum wage. The Business Standard counted 204 halted factories—137 across Ashulia and Savar and 67 in Gazipur—while local reports described road blockades and renewed demonstrations. The stoppages turned the government’s scheduled wage review into an immediate test of whether an export industry built on low labor costs will let workers recover purchasing power lost to inflation.

Workers are demanding a Tk 30,000 monthly minimum, more than double the current Tk 12,500 floor set in 2023. Worker representatives on the new wage board have proposed Tk 32,000, while factory owners were given four working days to submit a counteroffer. The government says the revised rate should be announced in December and take effect in January. That timetable has not calmed the factory floor: workers say another month at the old rate deepens debts already driven by food, rent and transport costs.

The wage demand is rooted in a measurable cost-of-living squeeze. Reuters reported this week that inflation has averaged about 9 percent since 2022 and interviewed garment workers who had cut food, healthcare and education spending because wages no longer covered basic needs. The dispute is therefore not simply over a headline number. It is about whether the people who produce the country’s leading export can maintain a minimally secure life.

In Gazipur, workers blocked the Dhaka–Tangail Highway before police dispersed them with sound grenades and tear gas. In Ashulia, UNB reported at least 50 injuries during clashes, a figure that officials had not independently consolidated by Friday. Nine factories were closed indefinitely under Section 13(1) of the labor law, a measure affecting roughly 20,000 workers and allowing employers to withhold pay during a shutdown.

FILE — Bangladesh’s home and labour ministers meet garment-worker representatives in Dhaka on 2 November 2026 amid the wage dispute. Photograph: Bangladesh Press Information Department / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Factory owners have answered the stoppages with a threat to widen closures. The garment manufacturers’ association said units could be shut and a “no work, no pay” rule imposed if unrest continues. The Daily Star reported that owners framed the action as protection against disruption, while workers’ demands include an end to blacklisting and retaliation. Those positions are not equivalent in power: one side controls access to wages and jobs; the other is withholding labor to influence a process that determines whether those wages meet basic needs.

Bangladesh’s garment sector employs more than four million people, earns roughly $38 billion a year and supplies global fashion brands. Its scale gives the wage fight international consequences. Buyers set prices, delivery schedules and sourcing decisions that shape what suppliers say they can afford. A credible living-wage settlement therefore requires brands to pay enough to support it, rather than praising ethical sourcing while driving contracts toward the lowest labor cost.

The dispute also follows other labor conflicts in which multinational supply chains leave Bangladeshi workers carrying the risk. Pamphlets previously reported on workers confronting Ansell over factory debt and job losses. The same test applies here: wage-board minutes should be public, worker representatives must be free from retaliation, blacklisting allegations must be investigated, and any new floor should be enforced across subcontractors rather than only at the largest factories.

The December decision will be judged less by its percentage increase than by what remains after rent, food, transport and healthcare. The stoppage has already made one point clear: export growth does not decide how value is distributed. Workers are forcing that question onto the factory floor, the wage board and the purchasing offices of the brands that profit from Bangladesh’s production.