The World Federation of Trade Unions, representing more than 95 million workers in 130 countries of the world, expresses its solid support to the strike of the garment sector workers in tens of factories all over the country.
The workers in the sector of the garment – textile – leather work in miserable working conditions, producing billion worth of exported products per year, while the workers themselves are paid hunger wages. Simultaneously, thousands of workers lost their lives due to murderous lack of even the most fundamental health and safety measures.
Those who produce, with their sweat and blood, countless tons of clothes every month, earn less than the price of one of those clothes at the showcases of the big multinational brands.
The WFTU expresses its solidarity with the strikers and their fair demands for dignified salaries, decent and safe working conditions. The International class-oriented trade union movement denounces the fierce repression of the riot police, using even rubber bullets, resulting in the death of a striker.
The garment workers should not be fooled by the hypocritical scant increase that the government announced yesterday, aiming at the dissolution of the strike movement.
The WFTU stands with all its forces on the strikers’ side and calls the garment workers of Bangladesh to strengthen their strike and struggles and spread them to the whole sector until the full satisfaction of their demands. The struggle against barbaric exploitation of the foreign monopolies, local bourgeoisie and government of Bangladesh should be a matter of the working class of Bangladesh as a whole.
The Secretariat