PHOTO: AFP

• Bangladesh garment makers may quit wage talks and shut factories if protests keep damaging plants, as unions warn they need protection before continuing negotiations.
• Workers are demanding 30,000 taka a month, up 140% from 12,500, as inflation near 8% has raised living costs for food, housing, transport and healthcare.
• The unrest has closed 147 factories in major hubs and threatens an industry worth US$38 billion a year, with disruption growing before the Christmas export season.

DHAKA — Unions representing Bangladeshi garment manufacturers threatened on Nov 14 to walk away from wage negotiations and to shut factories indefinitely if protesters kept vandalising them during demonstrations for higher pay.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest garment exporter after China, producing clothes for major international brands like Fruit of the Loom, Levi Strauss and VF Corp, whose labels include Vans, Timberland and The North Face.

Worker unrest over wages began in October and has occasionally turned violent, with demonstrators torching police vehicles and damaging property during clashes in November.

The two main manufacturing unions – the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) – sharpened their rhetoric on Nov 14.

“BGMEA and BKMEA have questioned the justification of continuing to participate in wage board negotiations without any assurance that the factories...

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