Workers in Bangladesh face violence when voicing legitimate complaints about how little they take home after a day’s work. And soon they might be facing unsafe factories again, if the Bangladesh Accord would have to stop operations in the country. Show your solidarity with garment workers by joining us for a demonstration at the Bangladesh Embassy!

We urge the government of Bangladesh to allow the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh to fully and independently continue operations in Bangladesh until 2021, or until the government’s Remediation and Coordination Cell (RCC) is demonstrably ready. The Accord has been instrumental in radically improving the safety of garment factories in Bangladesh since it was established in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013 that claimed over a thousand lives, and it is critical that the Accord be allowed to continue its important and life-saving work.

Furthermore, we want to express our 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 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.