Bangladesh, one of the world’s biggest clothing producers, produces millions of tonnes of clothes annually to satisfy the rising demands of the biggest apparel brands. This little South Asian nation attracts these brands due of its inexpensive manpower.
In protest of Inditex’s disregard for Bangladeshi garment workers’ rights, activists from the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and XR Fashion Action disrupted the company’s European distribution hub in Lelystad, Netherlands. Inditex, one of the biggest fashion companies, is Zara’s primary business.
Inditex is one of the top violators on CCC’s tracker, which links businesses to factories that bring wrongful criminal charges against workers. According to CCC’s estimate, factory owners’ false claims made after the 2023 nationwide minimum wage adjustment demonstrations could result in jail time for more than 5,500 workers in Inditex’s supply chain. At least eight factories that participated in labour repression were part of the supply chain.
As of December 2023, the minimum wage for Bangladeshi workers in the garment industry is Taka 12,500 per month, or about US $ 113. This is the first increase since 2019.
According to Kalpona Akter, president of the Bangladesh Garment & Industrial Workers Federation, “The vicious cycle of repression enabled by major fashion brands like Zara, whose commitments to living wages and freedom of association are clearly nothing but empty promises, has paralysed the Bangladeshi labour movement.”
Additionally, she stated in a previous interview with Apparel Resources regarding the minimum earnings of the workers that although the payment of garment workers may have improved little (by 5 per cent of the basic pay yearly), commodity prices have skyrocketed.
Bogu Gojdz, a CCC advocate, underlined that the largest fashion polluters are also the top labour rights violators and urged Inditex to stop worker abuse across its supply chain.
In order to ensure that all legally motivated accusations pertaining to the workers’ participation in the 2023 wage protests are immediately dropped, activists are urging Zara to put pressure on its suppliers to drop all charges against workers and to back the unions’ request that the interim government of Bangladesh issue an order.
