Global demonstration against arrests, firing of garments workers

Saleem Samad of DOT : 
Global workers rights and fair trade groups in Washington DC, The Hague, Berlin and London were held in front of Bangladesh missions. While Brussels and Geneva were held on Thursday in protest of a death, at least 45 arrests, and over 5,000 dismissals of garments workers during a industrial riot recently in Bangladesh.
Latest protest in the weeklong campaign will be held at New York and Madrid on Friday.
The movement spearheaded by Amsterdam based Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), a global alliance dedicated to improving working conditions and empowering workers in the global garment and sportswear industries. The network calls for living wages, safe factories, and a halt to repression against garment workers in Bangladesh.
Furthermore, protest letters will be sent or delivered by local labour rights activists and trade unions to Bangladeshi diplomatic missions in Edinburgh, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Oslo, Oulo, Stockholm, Rome and Tampere.
Campaign network hastag #WeStandWithGarmentWorkers launched a weeklong campaign of solidarity with garment workers from 28 January to 3 February for being fired by garments factories and the workers face violence when voicing legitimate demands for wage hike.
The network expressed deep concern about the repressive measures used by Bangladesh’s police and other security forces in response to recent wage protests, which resulted in dozens of demonstrators injured, one death, at least 45 arrests, and over 5,000 dismissals.
The events of the last few months in Bangladesh have made the networks to express concern about labour rights in the Bangladeshi garment industry. Wage-related protests were met with violent responses and intense repression and long-winding court proceedings around the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh threaten essential progress in the field of factory safety.
The workers protested the recently announced minimum wage revision, which falls far short from the demands of the unions leaders and is nowhere near a living wage, as well as the unequal treatment of workers in different pay grades. Under the revised wage, most pay grades continued to receive an almost unchanged low base wage on which their overtime payments and other bonuses will be calculated, which is only very minimally improved by the increases agreed since the start of the protests, the statement said.