UNION BUSTING AND 
 INTIMIDATION:
 How it happens 

The case of Polo Composite Industries – a stark example of how employers adopt union intimidation to block union formation

Across the board, union density is very low, with major garment producing nations like Pakistan reporting 15%, Indonesia 13%, and Bangladesh only 5%. But this failure for worker organising to take hold and ensure decent work and a living wage, isn’t due to worker failure. Union intimidation practices are widespread, and the law, the state, common employer practice, as well as the failure of brands to meaningfully engage to protect independent union formation, all conspire to stop unions from fully representing worker needs.

One case we started to fight this week really clearly lays out a path for how union formation at a factory level is thwarted at every turn, through violence, intimidation and the law. The case concerns a factory in Bangladesh called Polo Composite Industries. It’s a medium sized factory with around 1800 workers. Workers at the factory formed a union – a branch of the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) – in Autumn 2024, and factory management began harassment of members including verbally abusing and chiding them at work, providing just the union members with unnecessary workloads, and sometimes isolating members in the workplace.

Nonetheless the workers continued to call for better conditions. On 13 November 2024, they held a work stoppage in the factory to demand that the wages they were owed from October be paid immediately as management was withholding them. The management’s response was to escalate violence, not meet the workers’ reasonable demand for their pay to be received on time. The factory management hired thugs to beat the workers and accost them outside the factory gates and in their homes, and did not pay them their outstanding wages. Some workers were illegally terminated.

At the same time, unbeknownst to the union, the Management surreptitiously filed a police report (called a FIR) against 8 named workers including the branch union president and secretary, with spurious allegations listed including blocking highways and colluding with outsiders to damage the factory. They didn’t do anything to activate this report at the time, but held it in waiting.

Wage payment delays, harassment, and illegal terminations continued at the factory until March this year. Despite ongoing protests and demands for fair treatment, management refused to engage with workers in good faith, choosing instead to perpetuate a hostile and repressive environment.

On 8th March, frustration among workers reached a boiling point, prompting another protest over the continued wage delays and mistreatment. Rather than addressing these concerns, management once again hired thugs to attack the proposed union committee members. Several workers were physically assaulted, their lives were threatened, and they were forcibly expelled from the factory in a clear attempt to dismantle the union effort through fear and violence.

The repression escalated even further on 12th March when police, military personnel, and local enforcers conducted a violent raid on the NGWF office in Savar. Officials seized all union documents, vandalized the premises, and unlawfully detained NGWF Joint General Secretary Md. Kabir Hossain—who, while not employed at the factory, is a senior union representative. Alongside him, Polo Composite union president Khairuzzaman Sabuj and general secretary Nur Habib were also detained under the false charges outlined in the FIR that had been secretly filed months earlier. This premeditated legal attack is once again a textbook approach from factory management to suppress worker organizing efforts.

Despite the repression, NGWF moved quickly to secure bail for their members. On 16th March, the court granted their release. However, the factory owner immediately retaliated by filing another false case against them, this time also implicating 35 other workers who took part in protests and preventing the release of Md. Kabir Hossain, Khairuzzaman Sabuj and Nur Habib. The workers remain incarcerated, with photos emerging this week that show clear signs of physical abuse in jail.

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