Due to COVID-19 pandemic the government of Bangladesh declared public holidays from March 25, 2020. This decision was taken to stop outside movement of the people so that transmission of deadly virus can be contained. During this period all the garment factories in the country stopped working claiming that they have been following the government directives of general holidays. But later on, it was revealed that, notices were hanged at the factory gate mentioning the rules 12, 16 and 20 of the labor laws that says, the employers can terminate employment of any employees without giving prior notice. Using this provision, the factory owners terminated employment of the workers working for less than a year. Although the government asked the factory owners do not terminate any workers in this pandemic situation but the employers of RMG sector did not listen to that advice. In this situation the government approved BDT 500 million stimulus package for the sector to pay at least 3 months wages to the workers even though the factory owners did not stop termination. From 25th of March 2020, around 10% of the workers lost their jobs within one month, they got due wages but did not get other benefits.
Due to closer of the factories, the workers went back to their native villages. From 25th of April 2020, RMG factory owners decided to start working again and communicated with the workers to come back to work, if failed to join on time they will lose their jobs. There was no transport available to travel so that women and men workers walked miles after miles to reach their destinations to secure their jobs. At the same time, the employers informed selected number of workers that they can join the works later on. Believing the message, these workers did not come back to the factories on 25th of April 2020. The factory owners took this as an opportunity to show the workers were absent from works therefore the management terminated them.
In April, the workers of some of the factories those did not pay monthly wages and used rules 12,16 and 20 to terminate workers started protesting the decision and the factory owners filed cases against them alleging of agitation, organizing illegal protest and threatening security of the factories. Using the cases, the factory owners again terminated the workers those were senior and had a bit higher salary and replaced the positions with new recruitment with less salaries. Around 15% of the senior workers have already lost their jobs. Applying these techniques factory owners accumulated more profit out of workers’pocket.
In some cases, factory managements those terminated a smaller number of workers in the last few months but wanted to terminate more, stimulated the workers to organize protest and the workers without knowing any reason got involve with protesting termination decision of the past. Using this opportunity, the factory owners filed cases against the workers and then terminated huge number of them showing that those workers were disturbance for the factories. Some trade union leaders are associated with Bangladesh Garment Manufacturer and Exporter Association (BGMEA) leaders and using this connection, the factory owners paying lump sum amount to the terminated workers. If they protest the decision, factory owners threaten them saying, there will be more cases against them.
In Ashulia, one of the factories generally pays wages to the workers within 7-10th days of each month. But they did not pay the salary for the month of May within 14th of May, therefore the workers stopped working and demanded monthly wages and leave salaries. The workers organized this protest because some of the officials of the factory motivated them to do so.
In the afternoon of the same day, the management paid off wages of the workers and leave salary was paid after few days. But on the 16th of May 2020, a list of 250 workers with their photos were hanged at the factory gate mentioning that all of them have been terminated from the jobs and filed a case against 34 workers so that the workers get afraid of the police case and do not come to the factory gate.
This is not the case of Ashulia only, this has been happening in Savar, Narayanganj, Gazipur, Uttara, Mirpur, Chattogram and in other industrial areas in Bangladesh. The factory owners saying, the buyers cancelled their work orders so that they need to reduce the number of workers but in fact, all the factories are running well even in some cases the workers have been working overtime to meet up the export deadlines.
