Countering the Crackdown on Workers Protesting Poverty Wages in Bangladesh

We write to make you aware of the WRC’s response to the recent crackdown on workers’ rights in Bangladesh by the government and factory owners—including a producer of collegiate apparel—in retaliation for worker protests over poverty wages. We have been working to address a crisis in which tens of thousands of garments workers face the threat of arrest and prosecution for crimes alleged by their employers, regardless of whether they have done anything wrong.
 
In many legal systems, criminal complaints can be brought against unnamed individuals, with the complainant then able to add names to the complaint, later, as more information becomes available. In Bangladesh, however, there is a long history of such complaints, when they are filed by factory owners in the aftermath of labor protests, later being used to harass and intimidate workers and worker representatives, without a shred of evidence against them.
 
In the wake of protests by garment workers late last year for higher wages—many of which were violently suppressed by police—factory owners brought criminal accusations against more than 40,000 garment workers, 99% of them unnamed. In many cases, the factory owners alleged crimes that carry long prison sentences.
 
The effect of factories filing these massive indiscriminate complaints is that every one of their employees now faces the threat that, if they speak up about labor rights violations in their workplace, they could be named by their employer as a criminal suspect. In a country where the rights of criminal defendants are frequently ignored and where the judicial system bends to the will of the powerful, workers understand that innocence will not protect them from prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment—under carceral conditions so harsh that the US government deems them “life-threatening”.
 
Because of the clearly retaliatory and indiscriminate use of these criminal complaints against tens of thousands of workers, the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the leading body of US apparel brands and importers, has joined the WRC in calling upon factory owners to have these charges withdrawn.
 
Below we detail the origins of this crackdown and its implications for worker rights and review the WRC’s extensive engagement with brands sourcing from Bangladesh, including university licensees, to achieve the withdrawal of these indiscriminate criminal complaints.
 
Refusal to Provide Adequate Minimum Wage Increase Sparks Worker Protests
 
Last November, Bangladesh considered an increase in its minimum wage, for the first time since 2018. As the WRC reported at the time, the previous minimum wage was one of the lowest in the world: 35 cents per hour, not nearly enough to meet workers’ basic needs. Workers hoped for an increase to at least $1 an hour, the figure labor researchers in the country had calculated would be required to enable workers to afford adequate nutrition and other necessities for their families. However fierce resistance by factory owners resulted in the new minimum wage being set at 54 cents, leaving workers in poverty. One reason for this outcome is that virtually none of the apparel brands sourcing from Bangladesh was willing to commit to accept the modest price increases that would be needed to cover a wage of $1 an hour.
 
Security Forces, Factory Owners Retaliate with Violence, Mass Criminal Charges
 
As workers took to the streets to protest their factories’ refusal to support an adequate wage, the government security forces violently put down the protests. These attacks by security forces killed three garment workers and injured dozens of others.
 
As explained above, protesting factory workers were also targeted, en masse, for criminal prosecution, based on sweeping criminal complaints filed by factory owners, many of which did not name the persons being accused. To date, the WRC has identified 25 criminal complaints brought by factory owners against garment workers in relation to the wage protests. These complaints include allegations of attempted murder, theft, and arson—among other felonies—offenses which carry decades-long prison terms.
 
These sweeping criminal charges against tens of thousands of unnamed workers have, as their clear purpose, a severe chilling effect on all workers’ associational rights. As long as they are pending, the complaints give factory owners virtual carte blanche to have nearly any worker arrested for a serious criminal offense. Indeed, police have imprisoned, under the guise of these mass complaints, garment worker union leaders who were not even in the vicinity at the time the crimes in question are alleged to have occurred.
 
While international pressure has resulted in these worker leaders’ release on bail, the government is continuing to prosecute them, and the threat of reimprisonment remains. Moreover, their example serves as a warning to other worker leaders that they could also be swept up in the charges, if factory managers decide to name them as one of the thousands of alleged perpetrators referenced in the complaints.
 
WRC Prevails on Brands to Secure Factories’ Withdrawal of Retaliatory Charges
 
Recognizing the retaliatory nature of these criminal charges and their ongoing chilling effect on workers’ associational rights, the WRC, since November 2023, has called on brands sourcing from Bangladesh to demand withdrawal of criminal complaints against workers in relation to the 2023 minimum wage protests.
 
In March 2024, the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), the US’s largest apparel industry trade group, seconded this demand in letters to Bangladesh’s garment manufacturers’ association and to the country’s prime minister, insisting on “the removal of all criminal charges against those arrested, [and] the end to any threat of arrest for thousands more workers by canceling [criminal complaints] … [against] workers engaged in the minimum wage protests.”
 
Over the past several months, the WRC has followed up extensively with brands that do business with the factory owners that have filed retaliatory criminal complaints against their workers. We have urged these brands, which include several university licensees, to ensure that their suppliers heed the call to withdraw these charges.
 
We are encouraged to report significant progress on this front. In the case of more than two-thirds of the criminal complaints involving factory owners whose buyers we have identified, these buyers have informed us that their suppliers are saying that the complaints have been or are being withdrawn. As always, our approach is to independently confirm that progress claimed by employers and brands has actually occurred. We have asked brands, including licensees, to obtain and share documentation from factory owners demonstrating that the latter have petitioned to have their complaints withdrawn—and that they have indeed been withdrawn. The WRC has received such documentation in some cases and is awaiting it in others.
 
Producer of Collegiate Apparel to Withdraw Retaliatory Criminal Complaint
 
Among the brands with which the WRC has been engaging are the licensees Hanes (Champion, Gear for Sports, Knights Apparel) and Fanatics, both of which have had collegiate apparel produced by a factory owned by Fortis Group—one of the factory owners that brought a retaliatory criminal complaint. It is important to note that the factory where the criminal charges have been filed is not the Fortis Group facility that makes collegiate apparel but one operated by the same owners.
 
After a violent incident in which a fire was set at a factory called Fortis Garments—a crime which the company acknowledges was the work of outsiders, not factory employees—the Fortis Group filed a sweeping criminal complaint accusing 4,000 unnamed persons, including factory employees, of a host of crimes.
 
More than eight months later, of the thousands of persons Fortis accused of criminal conduct in its complaint, only 14 individuals have actually been named and charged with specific offenses related to the violence. Yet the threat of arrest and prosecution still hangs over the heads of the entire workforce. Keeping thousands of workers under threat of criminal prosecution, when there is no reason to believe they were involved in any violence or committed any crime, is fundamentally unjust—a point the AAFA and the WRC have both made.
 
Since the Fortis Garments factory, itself, is not a producer of collegiate apparel, it is not covered by university labor standards. The factory is, however, a sister facility to another factory, Habitus Garments, where both Fanatics and Hanes have produced collegiate apparel. As in a number of previous cases involving sister facilities of collegiate apparel factories, we reached out to the licensees because we believe all responsible brands should be concerned about unethical behavior by a business partner toward its employees, even if they are not sourcing from the specific factory where the abuse is occurring. We appreciate that Hanes and Fanatics, though not contractually obligated to do so under their university licenses, agreed to engage with Fortis Group and to seek its withdrawal of the criminal charges.
 
In response to the requests from Hanes and Fanatics that it withdraw the mass criminal charges, Fortis Group has repeatedly provided contradictory information. First, it denied, falsely, that it had filed the complaint. Then, after admitting the existence of the complaint, Fortis Group claimed it had no power to withdraw it. Finally, Fortis Group reversed its position and told Fanatics and Hanes that it is having the complaint withdrawn.
 
As with the complaints brought by other factory owners, the WRC has requested that Fanatics and Hanes seek documentation from Fortis Group verifying that its complaint actually has been withdrawn. Both Fanatics and Hanes agreed to do so. Hanes, for its part, indicated that, for unrelated reasons, it has suspended Fortis Group as a supplier but continues to seek verification of the complaint’s withdrawal. We hope to have confirmation soon that the workers at Fortis Group’s factories are no longer under threat of arbitrary criminal charges.
 
The WRC will continue its efforts to secure and confirm withdrawal of retaliatory mass criminal complaints against garment workers in retaliation for the 2023 minimum wage protests. We will share with universities in the coming months a report on the country’s recent minimum wage-setting process, the repression of workers’ associational rights that has ensued in its wake, and the implications for labor rights compliance at collegiate supplier factories and in the broader industry in Bangladesh.
 
As always, please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.