Press release: Fashion brands condemned over mass arrest warrants issued against workers in Bangladesh

For immediate release: Monday 21st October, 2024

• • Fast Fashion brands H&M, Zara and NEXT face denigration over failure to protect workers

  • 40,000 workers in Bangladesh remain at risk of arrest due to baseless criminal cases filed by factory owners during the 2023 wage demonstration

  • Labour Behind the Label have launched a new brand tracker, showing which brands have taken action to protect their workers from this repression

Fashion brands including H&M, Zara and NEXT are facing critique over their lack of action to protect workers’ basic rights in Bangladesh. One year on from a violent crackdown by state actors and employers against Bangladeshi garment workers protesting for higher wages, 40,000 workers remain at risk of arrest due to repressive legal charges brought against them in the form of blank arrest warrants.  

Campaigners, labour rights advocates and trade union representatives are, today, launching an international campaign [1] condemning the inaction of fashion brands and calling for 36 legal cases against worker groups and protesters to be dropped. 

Anna Bryher, Policy Lead for Labour Behind the Label, is calling on the brands to take swift action: “Brands such as H&M, Zara and NEXT have a responsibility to ensure that complaints against unnamed protesters cannot be used to intimidate workers and their representatives. The refusal of brands to support union-backed wage demands despite extreme poverty, and their lack of willingness to get these cases dropped, is illustrative of who profits from the status quo and who doesn’t. Brands clearly do.”

The Clean Clothes Campaign has linked 45 fashion brands to suppliers who filed charges in 36 cases against garment workers in Bangladesh, and have been pushing these brands to ensure the cases are dropped for the past year. While some brands have taken initial steps to ensure suppliers drop false allegations, a year on, all brands and suppliers have failed to follow through and not a single case has been cleared. 

The Clean Clothes Campaign is launching a new action tracker [2], exposing which brands are linked to the outstanding warrants, including H&M, Zara, Next, Matalan, Levi’s, Bestseller and more. Campaigners hope this tool will shed light on the complicity of the industry and ensure brands follow through with suppliers to ensure charges are fully dropped. 

The launch of this new coordinated effort to apply pressure on brands comes on the anniversary of last year’s widespread wage protests in Bangladesh [3]. Police and the military cracked down on protesting workers who showed their dissatisfaction over the disappointing outcome of the long-awaited minimum wage negotiations. As a result of the violent police response against protesters, 4 workers lost their lives, hundreds were severely injured, and 131 were arrested. 

The 36 largely baseless criminal cases are held against 40,000 ‘unnamed individuals’. Labour representatives are warning these blank arrest warrants could be used against any workers who raise concerns with factory bosses, or as a tool for settling personal or political grievances. 

Kalpona Akter, president of Bangladesh Garment & Industrial Workers Federation, said: “In an industry where union repression is rife, getting the cases dropped is just a first but very necessary step on the way to an industry in which workers can live a decent life off their wages and in which barriers to freedom of association are taken down. We won’t live in fear. We are calling for living wages that support our families.”

Workers and trade unions in Bangladesh have put forward a list of priorities to the interim government led by Dr. Yunus, which prominently includes the request to issue an executive order to have all the politically motivated legal charges being brought against workers for participation in the wage protests in 2023 dropped at once [4]. Unions are encouraging the brands to support this ask. 

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

For media enquiries please contact:

• Anna Bryher – anna@labourbehindthelabel.org // +447786832035
• Ellen Kettell – ellen@labourbehindthelabel.org // +447936406640

[1] https://cleanclothes.org/campaigns/crackdown-2024

[2] www.labourbehindthelabel.org/bangladesh-repression-tracker

[3] Coverage included: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/nov/15/bangladesh-garment-workers-fighting-for-pay-face-brutal-violence-and-threats and https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/crime-justice/news/rmg-workers-life-after-protests-plagued-uncertainty-3490356

[4] https://www.tbsnews.net/economy/industry/18-demands-workers-be-met-all-factories-be-open-tomorrow-secretary-949451

Background on the 2023 wage protests:

The 2023 response from government security forces and factory owners to protesting workers, followed two decades of pro-industry policies under Sheikh Hasina’s governments in which economic interests of brands and manufacturers were at any time prioritised over labour rights and workers’ wages. Earlier minimum wage setting processes – which happen only once every five years in Bangladesh – were also followed by protests, which were then met with ruthless and violent push back by Bangladeshi police. Brands sourcing from Bangladesh saw an almost exact repetition of the 2018 minimum wage negotiations happen last year and did nothing to prevent it. Despite promising commitments regarding living wages and freedom of association, brands continue to profit from repression and poverty wages in Bangladesh and choose to remain silent again and again. 

Background on the criminal cases:

Some of the criminal complaints against unnamed individuals allege crimes that carry long prison-sentences, such as attempted murder and arson. Little to no evidence has been provided by factory owners who have filed these serious complaints. Some of them also filed cases in the aftermath of the 2018 wage protests, and almost all of the same brands as five years ago are complicit.

Further details and examples of the First Information Reports (FIRs) filed by suppliers and their links to brands are available on request.