Bangladesh: 200,000 Garment Strikers Shock Rulers

DHAKA, BANGLADESH, September 28 — “We will not hesitate to do anything to realize our demands…The economy moves with our toil,” declared Nazma Akter, the woman who is among the leaders of 200,000 mostly women workers who struck hundreds of the country’s garment factories demanding the tripling of their monthly minimum wage from $38 to $104. (Reuters, 9/23) As if to give substance to her declaration, workers from ten factories in the city of Savar attacked a military base, seizing rifles and ammunition and injuring five para-military Guards (ACA News, 9/22).
 “One hundred dollars is the minimum we have asked for,” one striker told Agency France Press (9/23). “A worker needs much more than that to lead a decent life.”
The uprising, now in its sixth day, saw angry workers battling cops in the streets, 10,000 blocking major highways in and around this capital city, setting fire to warehouses, attacking plants that stayed open, pelting factories with bricks and smashing police vehicles. When club-wielding cops shot rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at the striking workers, the latter responded by hurling broken bricks at the cops. At the latest count, 70 workers and eight cops had been injured in the clashes.
The bosses got to the heart of the problem: capitalism’s drive for maximum profits. The Press Trust of India (9/26) reported they said, “Major [wage] increases would erode Bangladesh’s advantage as a cheap labor source compared to other garment exporting countries like India, China and Vietnam.” The Associated Press (9/25) described “global brands [as] unwilling to pay higher prices amid stiff competition.” Thus, competing bosses engage in a “drive to the bottom.” Bangladesh’s exploiting garment bosses reap $20 billion from exports to the U.S. and Europe, supplying billion-dollar companies like Walmart, GAP, Sears and Target.
Bosses’ ‘Industrial Peace’ vs.Workers’ Class War
The workers’ militancy, which has exposed the profit system’s racist exploitation in this former colonial country, has unnerved the rulers. No wonder The New York Times, leading mouthpiece of the ruling class, devoted an editorial (9/26) to a call for higher wages and better conditions. It stated that the Bangladesh government and bosses, and the Western companies profiting from these low wages and hazardous working conditions, “all have a stake in industrial peace.” They fear that its absence could provide fertile ground for class war under communist leadership. Eventually, this could lead to a revolution for the complete overthrow of capitalism that pays these indecent wages and reaps billions in profits stolen from the workers’ labor.
In a communist society run by and for our class, there will be neither bosses and profits, nor their racism and sexism which rake in super-profits. Nor will there be the kind of death traps which killed 1,132 workers in the Rana Plaza factory last April. The working class will act from each according to their commitment and collectively decide what should be produced by our labor and distribute it according to need.
Now the garment bosses have offered a 20 percent increase — to $45 a month! — which the workers declare is “inhumane and humiliating.” So after “assurances” of a negotiated pay hike by November, they say the strike was ending after five days. But on the sixth day workers were in the streets of Savar and Navayangan, cities where they have closed 300 factories while the government continues to deploy troops in the Gazipier industrial district.
The workers in Bangladesh, especially the women garment workers, are setting a shining example for the entire international working class. Their actions are telling us that class war against the bosses is the road to travel. Our signpost must read, “Forward to communism!”