Thriving industry and starving workers: The case of Bangladesh’s garment sector

The garment and apparel industry has come to reflect with clarity the effects of free trade policies on the third world economies and its workers. While the broad logic of free trade argues that maximising competitive advantages will help increase employment and thus improve living standards, it seldom plays out in such a linear fashion. As the economies of the third world profit from the increase in trade, the benefits are often distributed unequally. The business owners, using the new wealth, increase their stranglehold on the political process. When the workers organise to stake a claim to the fruits of toil, they face the wrath of the state. In a descriptive narrative, this article in Groundxerotraces this process in the garment sector in Bangladesh where the workers fighting for a nominal minimum wage and working conditions that don’t kill them face the brute force of the state even when the parliament is occupied by many legislators who are also garment factory owners. It also details the steady gains that organised labour has made, in spite of a well-developed nexus between the political elite and crony capitalists, while highlighting the challenges ahead.

Tunisian dock workers enforce a ban on Israeli maritime trade

Dock workers in the Tunisian port of Rades forced a cargo ship from docking in the port as it was chartered by an Israeli company. It came about as a result of a coordinated effort between Palestinian unions and unions in Tunisia. The dock workers, who are part of the major labour federation in Tunisia, UGTT, warned the dock officials of a strike if the ship was given berth at the port. This forced the ship to move out of Tunisia without unloading its cargo.

The ship, Cornelius A, is a Turkish registered ship. However, Zim, the company that chartered the ship, is an Israeli company known to employ ships of other countries to bypass trade boycotts. With vigilance and coordination, the dock workers were able to prevent the ship from unloading Israeli merchandise.

Tunisia is part of African and Arab countries that maintain a formal but unenforced boycott of Israel for its continued ‘occupation’ of Palestine and for the human rights violations. While the Arab boycott was forcefully enforced in the 1970s, it has been tacitly withdrawn by these governments over the decades due to pressure from western democracies as well as the need to profit from the economic opportunities. There are also calls from political elites in these countries to normalise relations with Israel, at a time when segregation by Israel is allegedly intensifying. Thus, the enforcing of the boycott falls upon the citizens rather than the state. This incident is a clear illustration that not only does the organised working class have the ability to enforce the boycott, they also have the moral value to penalise a powerful nation for its violations of international law.

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