Exclusive stores in Manhattan, London and Milan are busily stocking shelves with the one-shouldered dresses and Miley Cyrus-esque crop tops that were on display earlier in September at New York City’s Fashion Week.
But half a world away, in the city where the western world’s clothes are actually made, the sewing machines have stopped.
More than 300 garment factories are currently shut down in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as hundreds of thousands people — mostly women — take the the streets in the third day of sweeping protests for wage increases in the notoriously exploitative industry.
The latest round of protests began on Saturday, when approximately 50,000 women rallied in Dhaka to demand a wage increase to just over $100 a month. The rally appeared to have been aimed at actually stopping production rather than making appeals to public officials or the international community. About 10,000 women blocked the highway about 18 miles north of the capital city, halting traffic. Many of the remaining 40,000 women rallied outside various factories, forcing them to close operations for the day.
The demonstrations continued to grow on Sunday. By Monday, the police chief of the region’s industrial district reported that about 200,000 people employed in the garment industry were demonstrating in the streets, prompting the closure of some 300 factories that supply clothing to Walmart and other western companies. The desired wage increase, up to $103 a month, would represent a more than doubling of the women’s current salaries, which averages about $38 a month.
Since last April’s collapse of a factory building killed more than 1,000 people, Bangladesh’s government and the country’s garment industry have been under scrutiny. The European Union threatened to cut trade benefits to Bangladesh over the summer, prompting the nation’s government to pass legislation aimed at increasing factory safety and strengthening workers’ rights. There was also talk of increasing the minimum wage, but the move was bitterly opposed by Bangladeshi factory owners, who are under pressure by western retail brands to keep the price of clothing low.
Meanwhile, some European companies agreed to sign a pact to commit to improving and monitoring building and fire safety in the factories where their clothes are made. However, the pact was undercut by the refusal of U.S.-based retailers, including Walmart, the Gap, Macy’s, Target, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom, Foot Locker and The Children’s Place, to sign — a move that sparked outrage among some of their consumers.
Many of these companies, particularly Walmart, have also recently become the targets of a growing low-wage worker campaign in the United States. Thousands of employees have walked off the job at Walmart and other retail outlets over the last year in protest of the corporation’s low-wage pay. People employed by Walmart in the United States make, on average, a little less than $9 a hour, which is about the same as a woman working in a Bangladeshi factory producing Walmart clothes currently makes each week. Neither provides a living wage.
As Waging Nonviolence writer Matthew Cunningham-Cook explained last October, the U.S. strikes against Walmart have increasingly leveraged the realities of globalization against the corporation by orchestrating targeted strikes at various points across the domestic supply chain. Late last year, the strikes against Walmart went global, with protests in Argentina, Uruguay, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, U.S. protesters rallied at a port in New Jersey in efforts to block shipments of Walmart’s inventory arriving in a container ship from factories in Bangladesh.
As the Bangladesh garment factory protests continue to grow, the key question is whether these uprisings at the point of production will become the final link in the increasingly globalized and connected opposition to these low-wage retail corporations.
I got to say that this is the kind of militant labor that we need in the U.S. — and, haven’t seen since the 1930s. A story in Common Dreams on Monday (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/09/23-3) reported that at least two factories were burned and that rifles of corporate security goons were “confiscated” and destroyed. Maybe the fact that some 80% of the workers are women helps explain why these “protests” resulted in some real action. Call me old fashioned, but destroying sweatshops and guns is the kind of nonviolence that we need more of.
Obviously, I was very inspired by the resistance of these courageous workers. Upon further reflection, the events in Bangladesh raised several questions. Is the lack of a militant labor movement in the U.S., because workers will not become militant until they are desperate and literally have nothing left to lose? There is also the more philosophical question of to what extent militant self defense, such as burning sweatshops and destroying guns can be construed as waging non-violence?
it is not waging non-violence. but it is despicable to ask whether people who have seen 1500 of their brothers and sisters burned and crushed to death in recent disaster in factories KNOWINGLY made unsafe by the owners in order to make more money have the right to use violence to demand a raise to put more food on their tables.
such a question is not morality. it is anti-morality, a mockery of morality
hmmm wait, actually the actions you refer to aren’t even violence (against people–which would be justified. the cops attacked them for demanding safety and a raise. If they could successfully smash the cops they would be justified.) your actually question is a mockery of itself.
“A slaveholder who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains and a slave who through cunning and violence breaks the chains–let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!”
–Trotsky
I wouldn’t be so quick to say that destruction of property in NOT violence. What about when the KKK burn the homes of blacks? Is this not violence? You seem to see things in absolutes, but I find the destruction of property, i.e. things, to be much more of a gray area. The question I was trying to raise is about self defense and non-violence. Is it violence to destroy weapons and other things used to inflict violence on others. And what about violence toward people who are actively engaged in inflicting violence on others. Are we not complicit in that violence when we do nothing to help or even to defend ourselves? Is there always a nonviolent alternative? P.S. I think your “right to violence” is one of the main pillars of the patriarchy.
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