Crushed by the Government: Bangladesh's Garment Workers Fight for a BDT 30,000 Minimum Wage
Shedding blood on the streets, workers refuse to retreat - across Dhaka and its industrial outskirts, workers rise up demanding a fair wage
At the end of each month, half of a garment worker's wage disappears into rent. What remains must stretch across rice, lentils, cooking oil, children's schooling and an ailing mother's medicine, and it never does. These are the people whose sweat powers Bangladesh's export economy, the world's second-largest apparel exporter after China, employing more than four million workers. Yet today, they go hungry.
Under the shelter of the illegitimate government led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), market cartels have driven the prices of essential goods ever higher, while workers' wages remain frozen. The pockets of those in power grow heavier as workers' plates grow emptier. One protesting worker, Sharifa Begum, put it simply: either bring down the prices of daily necessities, or raise our wages. The demand for a minimum monthly wage of BDT 30,000 (about US$243) is therefore no exaggeration. Under the regime's oppression, it is the bare minimum needed to survive.
Those same hungry workers are now on the streets. On Saturday, 31 October, for the second consecutive day, hundreds of garment workers blocked major intersections in Mirpur, a densely populated neighbourhood of the capital, Dhaka. Instead of listening to them, the illegitimate BNP government deployed additional riot police and armed police units. In Gazipur, an industrial city near Dhaka, workers blocked the Dhaka-Tangail highway, a key entry route into the capital, forcing every factory along a 13-kilometre stretch to shut for the day. Protests also erupted in Ashulia, another garment hub near Dhaka.
For months, workers in Dhaka and its surrounding industrial zones have pressed three clear demands: a minimum wage of BDT 30,000, an end to blacklisting (barring workers who protest from future employment), and payment of overdue wages. But the regime has sided with factory owners and unleashed its henchmen against them. In Dhaka's Uttara area, police used batons, stun grenades, tear gas and water cannons, leaving at least 50 people injured. For the "crime" of raising their demands, many workers have been blacklisted across the industry.
Meanwhile, factories keep closing. According to a report by the rights group JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF), 457 garment factories shut down between August 2024 and June 2026, leaving more than 240,000 workers unemployed. The BNP-led administration has remained indifferent, while factory owners have even sought to postpone the next wage review until 2028.
By contrast, under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, wages were reviewed regularly through the government's Minimum Wage Board, and measures were taken to improve workers' lives, including housing support and maternity leave. Today, under the illegitimate BNP government, workers are met only with batons and guns.
The days of silent endurance are over. A minimum wage of BDT 30,000, an end to blacklisting, justice for the attacks on workers, and rehabilitation for those who lost their jobs: the struggle will continue until these demands are met. Global brands profiting from Bangladeshi garments must not look away. Just as the wheels of industry never stop turning, the call for a fair wage against the oppression of the illegitimate BNP government can no longer be silenced.
By Roudro Rudro, Political & Security Analyst
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