The Bangladesh government is satisfied with the BDT 8,000 minimum pay for the country’s apparel industry, State Minister for Labour and Employment Mujibul Haque has said.
“The general workers have accepted the minimum wage. We have their support… I think, there will not be any problem in implementation. We followed the commitment made by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to formulate the pay structure,” he told journalists at his office on September 16, 2018.
Bangladesh has fixed BDT 8,000 as minimum wage for its apparel industry workers, up from BDT 5,300. The new amount is half of the sum pro-labour organisations and several unions had been demanding for months; thus triggering protests from pro-labour groups. A gazette will soon be out to formalise the declaration that will be implemented from December 2018.
Regarding the protests, junior Minister Haque said: “The intent of some organisations are not good. We are very careful. They will not be able to jeopardise the situation. If we hike the wages further, the factories will close down. The workers themselves will lose their jobs. Do these organisations want that?”
Batting for the factory owners further, the state minister said: “Our manufacturers have spent a lot for factory remediation under pressure from the buyers. But when our apparel producers have spent hundreds of crores just to be more compliant, our buyers have brought down the prices. They (buyers) pressurise us to be more compliant on one end, and reduce prices on the other. This is not right.”
Responding to queries on whether there is scope of unrest over the minimum pay, the state minister said: “I personally discussed the matter with several garment workers, labour federations, and trade unions unofficially before declaring the wage board. They all agreed that BDT 8,000 is an acceptable minimum pay.”
Back in February, Bangladesh Government formed the wage board to fix the new minimum pay structure for apparel industry workers. During the meeting, the factory owners proposed BDT 6,360 as the minimum wage, a 20 per cent hike. The workers’ representative in the board had proposed BDT 12,020.