Class war in Bangladesh

According to the International Trade Union Confederation, Bangladesh’s 3.5 million garment workers, most of them women, are the “world’s most poorly paid workers”. Many work 12 to 14 hour shifts, six days a week, often in hazardous conditions. The American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations stated “Bangladesh’s garment workers are among the hardest working women in the world, and the most exploited.”
Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Bangladesh’s prime minister, recently told the parliament: “It is not possible for the workers to live on the wages they get now.” Compensation in the garment industry was “not only insufficient but also inhuman”.
Living wages in Bangladesh have not been raised since 2006, even though annual inflation rates have soared to between 6.5 and 10 per cent.

Garment exports from Bangladesh accounts for 80 per cent of the country’s total exports. In recent years, Bangladesh has emerged as an attractive manufacturing centre for top multinational clothing retailers such as Tesco, Gap, H&M, Walmart and Marks & Spencer because of its low-cost labour, believed to be the world’s cheapest, against more expensive manufacturing centres such as China and India.
“The problem Bangladesh faces is that giant multinational retailers will not pay for a wage increase,” said Khondker Mosharraf Hossain, the country’s minister of labour. “Every year the multinationals slash the prices they are willing to pay per unit, which drives down wages.”

The UK charity ActionAid accuses Asda, a British supermarket chain, of paying Bangladeshi workers only a quarter of the amount they need to afford a decent living. According to ActionAid’s calculations, if Asda pays workers only an additional 2 pence on every £4 (Dh22.90)T-shirt it buys from developing countries such as Bangladesh, it will in effect double workers’ wages and pull them out of poverty. Campaigners against sweat shops have called on Britain’s biggest High Street retailers to support higher wages for factory workers in Bangladesh, after violent clashes there. Charities say Bangladesh has become more attractive as labour costs in China have risen. Bangladeshi workers are seeking a ‘living wage’ of about £45 a month, about half the Chinese minimum imposed earlier this year.

Many observers contend that the extra wages can be borne by international buyers without significantly harming profitability.
“The extent of the impact [of a wage hike] on the owners would depend on how much more companies like Walmart and H&M are willing to pay to offset the rise in cost of production,” Zahid Hussain, a senior economist at the World Bank’s south Asia finance and poverty group, wrote in a World Bank blog. Labour costs typically make up between only 1 and 3 per cent of the total cost of producing garments in the developing world, Mr Hussain wrote. A large increase in wages, therefore, should not require correspondingly large increases in retail prices. “For example, for a typical sportswear garment, doubling wages would increase retail price by roughly 1 to 3 per cent; tripling wages would result in price increases of 2 to 6 per cent,” he wrote.

In the past two months, factories have been ransacked and clashes have erupted sporadically on the streets of Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, as tens of thousands of restive garment workers expressed anger over wages. Mosherafa Mishu, the head of the Garment Workers Unity Forum said if their demands were not met, “we will create a militant movement, we will be on the streets again”, he warned. Bangladeshi authorities have brought charges of breaking law and order against more than 4,000 workers. Authorities have paid special attention to 40 labor leaders they’ve named as “provocateurs,” who are now in hiding. One such organizer, Aminul Islam, was detained by security forces. Under torture and death threats against him and his wife, Islam signed a confession to “inciting worker unrest.” Police are harassing labor leaders’ families and colleagues, says the International Labor Rights Forum. The government recently stripped the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity of its legal status while threatening to tighten security around international labor activists who have gone to Bangladesh to investigate or “get involved with trade unions.”
Garment workers took to the streets to complain that a government proposal to increase the minimum wage from £15.50 a month to £28 was insufficient. Bangladesh’s factory owners staunchly oppose the demand to raise the wage to 5,000 taka per month. Art Carden, an assistant professor of economics and business at Tennessee’s Rhodes College wrote "Firms that sacrifice profits in order to pay higher wages will reduce their ability to earn profits, attract capital, and expand in the future. In the short run, we can improve standards of living for some people. In the long run, this illusory prosperity comes at the cost of increasing future poverty.”

If nothing else, capitalism is resiliant. Wages in China increased by 17 per cent in the first half of this year, according to a survey released last month by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. Credit Suisse says these higher wages will cost companies about $15 trillion by 2015. Some companies are expected to offset higher labour costs by using fewer workers. “We are trying to increase automation and ensure our processes will rely on fewer workers,” Shereen Tong, the chief financial officer of Hong Kong’s VTech Holdings, a maker of cordless phones, told Bloomberg.“For products that need to be manufactured in high volumes, automation will help improve efficiency.”

SOYMB wish our Bangladeshi brothers and sisters well in their struggle for improved wages and conditions but as always it is necessary to remind them that the class war will be won only when socialism is established.