4. Labour struggles in the RMG industry past and present

The picture of the docile ‘garment girl’ is seriously at odds with the measures of control they are exerted to in RMG factories. It is also at odds with the often militant collective action in which women RMG workers engage. Although Bangladesh’s then ruling military regime repressed any popular protest with heavy hand, women garment workers had organized themselves already in the late 1980s. After large-scale popular protest forced the military government to give way to parliamentary democracy in the 1990s, garment workers increasingly engaged in large-scale collective action, and launched major industry-wide strikes in 2006 and 2010. These strikes were not without success and e.g. led to increasing minimum wages and to the formation of recognized plant-level unions, but they – as any attempt to organize – continued to meet severe repression. This together with a series of large-scale factory disasters such as the Rana Plaza Factory Collapse in 2013 – the most devastating accident in the global history of garment production that killed at least 1,134 workers and injured more than 2,500 – also taunted the image of the industry.