Regressive laws, obstacles to unions, police violence leave Bangladesh one of the worst countries for workers

Bangladesh continues to be one of the worst countries in the world for workers owing to regressive laws, obstacles to union formation, and police violence, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

The ICUT has placed the country in the list of the worst 10 nations for the seventh year in a row in terms of workers rights in the latest Global Rights Index 2023 published on 30 June.

In the latest index, Bangladesh scored five in terms of labour rights situation, which means there is "no guarantee of rights". 

According to the report, workers' rights in Bangladesh continued to be severely curtailed. 

The country's eight Export Processing Zones (EPZs) prohibit workers from forming a trade union or freely expressing their rights. 

Besides, in the garment sector, the country's largest industry employing over 4.5 million workers, attempts at forming unions were ruthlessly obstructed, while strikes were met with brutality by the country's Industrial Police force, added the report.

It also said the authorities frustrated the establishment of unions by imposing a draconian registration process.

Luc Triangle, the ITUC acting general secretary said, "The 2023 ITUC Global Rights Index provides shocking evidence that the foundations of democracy are under attack. There is a clear link between workers' rights being upheld and the strength of any democracy. The erosion of one amounts to the degradation of the other.

"This is the 10th edition of the index and the 2023 results demonstrate how necessary it is. Across both high-income and low-income countries, as working people have faced a historic cost of living crisis and spiralling inflation driven by corporate greed; governments have cracked down on the right to collectively negotiate wage rises and take strike action.

"From Eswatini to Myanmar, Peru to France, Iran to Korea, workers' demands to have their labour rights upheld have been met with opposition from employers and government indifference, and their dissent has been met with increasingly brutal responses from state forces."

The top 10 worst countries for workers also include Belarus, Ecuador, Egypt, Eswatini, Guatemala, Myanmar, Tunisia, the Philippines and Turkey.

The index scores countries from a scale of 1 to 5+, marking "sporadic violations of rights" at 1 to "no guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law" at 5+.

The country's that has scored 1 are: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden 

Rights violations

The report included incidents of violence against workers, union busting and other rights violations in Bangladesh.

It said on 4 June 2022, Dhaka police in Bangladesh opened fire with gunshots and tear gas, as well as using batons, against protesting garment workers at Mirpur and Azampur, leaving many workers injured.

Citing various workers' associations, the report said more than 50% of the unions registered since the Rana Plaza incident were yellow unions and have remained inactive over the years. Independent trade unions were not being registered by the labour department, while unions backed by factory owners have proliferated in the sector.

In Bangladesh, factory owners were still largely against trade unions and they forced workers not to join any union. In many cases, factory owners hired external forces to threaten workers who joined a union and used the police to harass union members. When an active federation in a factory filed an application for registration, labour department officials often imposed conditions in addition to those specified by the labour laws and rejected the application.

Addressing the situation in the garment sector, the IUTC report said over 500,000 workers employed in export processing zones (EPZs) were not allowed to form or join unions, which left them without any real power to bargain for better working conditions. The situation worsened with the implementation of the 2019 Export Processing Zones Labour Act (ELA), which states that the workers can only join a workers' welfare association (WWA), where they may not be given the full scope of collective bargaining. Workers were prohibited from organising any protest within the EPZ, and protests were often met with violent retaliation from the EPZ authorities.