Bangladesh: on strike for several days, textile workers obtain an increase in their minimum wage

The minimum wage of workers in Bangladesh's textile industry, stirred by a vast social movement, will be increased from January, the ad hoc committee set up by the government announced on Wednesday. Since Saturday, thousands of employees in this sector, vital to the country's economy, have been demonstrating every day in the capital Dhaka to demand an increase in their salaries, against a backdrop of high inflation and a global rise in energy prices.

At the end of a meeting on Wednesday, the committee made up of representatives of employees and industry announced that it had agreed on the principle of an increase in the minimum wage, the amount of which will be fixed in December and which will come into force the following month. “We will complete our work in December so that the workers can receive their revised salaries in January,” ABM Shamsuddin of the Bangladesh Textile Producers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) told reporters. “We agree on this point,” confirmed an employee representative, Babul Akter.

Second largest clothing exporter in the world

Employees are demanding a 140% increase in their monthly minimum salary, from 12,500 takas on average today (90 euros) to 33,000 takas (220 euros) to compensate for the increase in the cost of living. “I don't have any money saved (...) so I can't afford fish or meat regularly,” a worker from the Gazipur district of Amena, whose factory produces clothes for foreign brands, complained to AFP on Tuesday. “It’s no longer possible to live like this, but I have no choice,” she added, “the textile factories are our only available solution.”

The world's second largest exporter of clothing, Bangladesh employs 4 million workers in some 4,000 textile factories and earns more than 80% of its income in foreign currencies. For the fifth consecutive day, incidents opposed strikers and the police in the morning in the streets of several districts of the capital Dhaka, sites of major factories in the sector.