Garment workers in Bangladesh push for labor rights, wage increase

In Bangladesh’s capitol Dhaka, thousands of garment workers protested the government’s decision to double wages to $43 a month, saying the rise was inadequate. Events turned violent, and The Guardian reports several injured and scores more detained. The conflict coincides with a rising call for improved conditions in the garment industry, including sandblasting jeans, a practice banned in Turkey after 600 ex-textile workers fell seriously ill from breathing silica dust in the workplace. FSRN's Jacob Resneck visited both Turkey and Bangladesh and files this report:

TRANSCRIPT:

Jeans were once the uniform of blue-collar workers who appreciated the protection offered by the heavy, coarse cotton denim. As jeans became fashionable, consumers began to crave different styles, including the worn, faded look that comes naturally from repeated use.

Fashion brands now offer that faded look off-the-rack, using a variety of methods, including stone-washing, chemical treatment and sandblasting. And like much factory work, some of these methods can be dangerous. In fact, sandblasting jeans without the proper protection  can cause a deadly respiratory illness.

Anna McMullen is a U.K.-based labor activist allied with the Clean Clothes Campaign. She says studies of textile workers in Turkey proved that sandblasting could be deadly to workers who breathe the dust from the machines:

"Sandblasting came to the attention of CCC about six months to a year ago, when we came across some  unions in Turkey who had found that workers were dying where they were blasting sand at jeans. And then the sand breaks down into a fine dust, gets into the lungs and people get silicosis."

Silicosis is one of the oldest occupational diseases. Even the ancient Greeks understood its effects. It's caused by particles of silica – that's silicon dioxide, the most abundant mineral in the earth's crust – entering the lungs and doing irreparable damage to lung tissue.

Usually Silicosis is only seen among miners and stoneworkers.

It was here in Istanbul, Turkey where doctors first made the connection between silicosis and textile workers. Now there are about 600 confirmed cases and at least 44 deaths linked to sandblasting in the textile sector. That led the Turkish government to ban the practice last year.  Yet protests continue over the level of compensation owed to the afflicted.

Trade union leader Engin Kaya Sadat seethes as he describes how for years international fashion brands in North America and Europe ordered jeans treated using a technique that falls short of their own country's health and safety standards:

"As far as we identified, this technique is strongly banned in market countries. And they are demanding some item processed by a banned technique. Maybe this is legal, but this is not ethical."

It was public pressure that forced the government's hand.

Yesin Yesim researches public health at Istanbul University. She was one of the campaigners that lobbied the Turkish Health Ministry to ban sandblasting. She's pushing for an international ban because she says the problem hasn't gone away, it's moved east:

"Now it's in Bangladesh as far as we know, where the labor regulations are poor, where the labor force is huge and the life of human beings are relatively cheaper – quote, unquote."

Yesin's description of this country is apt. Bangladesh is the most densely populated country and also one of the poorest.

Sitting in a chaotic traffic jam outside the capitol city Dhaka, labor organizer Nazma Akhter complains of lax health and safety protections in Bangladesh. Akhter knows first hand. As an 11-year-old girl, she went to work in a t-shirt factory. Seven years later, she was fired after she tried to organize fellow workers. She says the dangers of sandblasting are largely unknown among garment workers who labor in the plants:

"Lots of diseases come out from the sandblasting. It's not good for the health. And even the factories are not providing enough protection equipment things. Some of the factories, I found they are not using their personal protective equipment, or even the factory is not providing. Sometimes they are showing something for the buyers. These are problems I'm facing."

In an industrial suburb, I visit a backstreet workshop where denim jeans are being sandblasted. This small operation works around-the-clock with three young men at a time blasting jeans. It turns out 150,000 pairs of jeans a month, using about 2,200 cubic feet of silica-rich river sand to do so. That's according to the friendly foreman, who seems oblivious to the health risks his workers are exposed to.

As the sandblasters toil in a corrugated metal shack, it's a cacophony of noise and dust. Only a cotton rag wound over their faces protects these workers, but health experts agree it will do little to prevent them from inhaling dangerous levels of silica dust.

The owner says his workshop finishes jeans that will later be branded for household names like Gap and H&M. But it's virtually impossible to verify his claims, and these brands deny they use subcontractors or buy jeans that have been sandblasted with silica-rich sand.