Bangladesh: garment sector shaken by the fight over the minimum wage
· BehindLines newsroom · Updated
In Bangladesh, hundreds of garment factories have been disrupted by worker protests demanding better pay in the face of a rising cost of living. According to Al Jazeera, the movement entered its third day on Monday 2 November 2026 in Savar, Ashulia and Gazipur, with a heavy police presence in the Mirpur industrial area of Dhaka. On 1 November the government set up a minimum wage board to review pay in the sector.
What happened
According to Al Jazeera, about 500 factories have been temporarily shut since the protests began on Saturday 31 October. Thousands of workers took to the streets and faced tear gas and sound grenades from police. The Daily Star, citing a situation report from the employers' association BGMEA, gives a slightly higher figure: at least 529 factories in several industrial areas declared a holiday on 1 November. According to BGMEA, as relayed by Reuters via Business Recorder, 529 factories closed and 987,190 workers left their workplaces that day; a BGMEA official even spoke of 700 to 800 factories on Monday to Arab News. These figures are not a single tally: their dates and coverage have not been aligned. The paper also says the clashes included arson and road blockades, and that police used tear gas and water cannons in Ashulia.
What the workers want
According to Al Jazeera, protesters are demanding a minimum monthly wage of 30,000 taka ($242), compared with 12,500 taka ($101) today, more than double. Al Jazeera's Dhaka correspondent, Tanvir Chowdhury, says current wages are "not enough because of the rising cost of living" and that workers want "a share" of the export industry's earnings.
The minimum wage board
Also according to Al Jazeera, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman held an emergency meeting with his ministers and advisers on 1 November. The Daily Star specifies that the board is chaired by a judge, Sheikh Ashfaqur Rahman, and has six members drawn from employers, workers and an independent category. According to the paper, Section 139 of the labour law requires it to submit recommendations within six months, a deadline the government can extend at its request. The amended labour law requires wages to be reviewed every three years to account for inflation, and another review of the garment sector's wage structure is due in December.
Decades of increases
The Daily Star traces the sector's monthly minimum: 627 taka in 1986, 930 in 1994, 1,662 in 2006 after worker unrest, 3,000 in 2010, 5,300 in 2013, 8,000 in 2018, then 12,500 in 2023, a revision in which wage grades were cut from five to four. The gaps between increases have therefore varied widely, from eight and twelve years at the start, to three or four years between 2006 and 2013, then five.
The representatives' positions
At a press conference in Dhaka, two worker representatives on the board urged protesters to return to work, according to the Daily Star. Babul Akhter, general secretary of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation, read a written statement saying the board would work so that wages rise from January. He called for the release of people detained for protesting, the withdrawal of cases, and no dismissal, harassment or blacklisting. In the Al Jazeera article, he says Bangladesh has "among the lowest garment wages in the world" and that owners who cannot pay properly should negotiate better prices with international buyers.
Mahmud Hasan Khan, president of the manufacturers' and exporters' association BGMEA, replied that the government had already acted by forming the board and that he expected workers to let it do its work. He warned that if protests continued on Monday, factories would invoke the "no work, no pay" provision.
The economic stakes
According to Al Jazeera, the garment industry is worth about $38bn and is a major source of export earnings and jobs. Bangladesh competes there with Vietnam, Cambodia and India. Owners cite higher costs, energy-market uncertainty linked to the US-Israel war on Iran, and slowing demand in some export markets. The board will therefore have to reconcile a high wage demand with the competitiveness of a heavily exposed sector.