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ITGLWF Intervention with UK Firm Coats Delivers in Bangladesh

4 April, 2012

A Charter of Demands by the Coats Employees’ Union, part of the Bangladesh Garment, Textile & Leather Workers’ Federation (BGTLW), in turn affiliated to the ITGLWF, was agreed to last month after intense pressure was placed on British-based threads maker Coats by the global textile federation and its Asian regional body, the Textile Workers’ Asia Regional Organisation (TWARO).

The agreement comes after a 13 to 29 February strike against Coats Bangladesh Ltd. in the Tejgaon Industrial Area of Dhaka, and following several earlier months of fruitless bargaining. That bargaining reached a low on 12 February when union leaders, attempting to once again negotiate with factory mangers, had their mobile telephones confiscated by bosses and were forcibly detained overnight in company offices. (Read the ITGLWF release here.)

The Charter of Demands reached includes pay upgrades in job grades that will at least lift workers’ salaries to what is considered by the BGTLWF to be the bare living wage in Bangladesh, BTK 7,000 (US$85.60) per month from a previous pitiful quarter of that.

The wage increase is retroactive to October 2011. In addition, BGTLW’s perseverance in this dispute won increases in a host of other areas including housing rents, lunch allowances, medical and hospitalisation betterments, and education allowances.

The agreement also ensures that striking workers will not be retaliating against, and that salaries during the strike will be paid. The Charter also addresses contract workers, stating that they will not be retaliated against for joining the strike, and grants them first priority for permanent jobs when such positions open up.

In a message to the ITGLWF, BGTLF General Secretary Mohammad Abu Taher expressed gratitude to both the Brussels-based federation and TWARO for its “accelerating interventions” to solve the dispute.

“We believe that peace and tranquillity are the only elements to make an industry more productive, profitable and vibrant and management eventually understood this and signed the agreement,” stated Abu Taher.