In Bangladesh, some of the most exploited workers in the world are militantly fighting back and are beginning to come together as a class. Since June 13, tens of thousands of garment workers (85% of whom are women) have closed down 700 factories, shut down main roads to Dhaka (the capital), erected barricades and lobbed bricks at the police who have tried to tear gas and beat the workers. Large demonstrations of workers have divided up into smaller groups and visited factories and brought the workers there out into the streets.
Three million textile workers toil for less than $25 a month. They work in 4,500 factories turning out garments for Walmart, Levi Strauss, H&M, Zara and Carrefour, who sell them for many times what the workers are paid. Besides receiving pennies an hour in wages, the workers work long hours, and are often not paid on time.
The workers are demanding that their wages be tripled. The big retailers like Walmart have made a fortune off the low-paid labor of women workers in Asian countries. But workers in Bangladesh, Vietnam (where 10,000 shoe factory workers recently went on strike), China and other Asian countries are demonstrating once again that exploitation engenders class struggle and some day, revolution.