Garment workers demand Tk 3,000 minimum wage
Threaten to call strike for June 12
Star Business Report/The Daily Star, Bangladesh
Garment workers yesterday demanded a minimum wage of Tk 3,000 a month for workers in apparel factories.
Leaders of Garment Sramik and Shilpa Rakhya Jatiya Mancha, a platform comprising sixteen organisations of apparel workers, also threatened to call 24-hour strike for June 12 in the garment factories across the country unless their demand is met.
Although the government and factory owners agree to re-fix the wage structure for the garment workers following the recent labour unrest, no proposal has yet been made in this regard, Sardar Khorshed, general secretary of Jatiya Garment Sramik Jote, told a press briefing in Dhaka.
Khorshed, also a coordinator of the alliance, said, “Actually garment factory owners are not sincere enough in settling the wage structure in the private industries.”
“The minimum wage for the garment workers should be re-fixed at Tk 3000 considering the spiralling prices of essentials,” he maintained.
If the government and the owners do not address the workers’ logical demand sincerely, the alliance will go for even tougher programmes, he added.
Terming the recent incidents in the country’s garment sector as ‘labour unrest’, the leaders said it was a fight against the owners’ injustice to the workers.
The leaders also urged the government and the owners to meet their five-point demands immediately. The demands include higher minimum wage through a wage board, maternity leave, issuance of identity cards, weekly holiday and arrangements for emergency exits. They also demanded that main gates of the factories be kept open.
Among others, leaders of the alliance Abul Hossain, Kamrul Ahsan, Mahbubur Rahman Ismail, Joynal Abedin, Alamgir Rony, Shafiuddin Mollah and Rafiqul Islam Sujan were present at the press conference.
