Bangladesh: the workers begin to move

The revolutionary overthrow of the Hasina regime, sparked by the students and their courageous protests, have opened the floodgates for a fresh wave of class struggle in Bangladesh. The revolution surges forward!

Workers have borrowed and adapted the militant methods and slogans of the students in the fight against the bosses. While Hasina has gone, her system remains. Every boss and factory owner is like a ‘Little Hasina’, brutally oppressing and exploiting millions of workers. Now, workers are increasingly using the hard-won democratic victory of 5 August to fight these despots too.

Just a week after Hasina fell, we made a prediction. We said:

“For the working class, ‘democracy’ is not some abstract thing. Rather, it is a means to an end – a means to win better wages and conditions, shorter working hours, and a dignified life. Millions of workers will seek to use their newfound democratic freedoms, won on the streets, to press their demands, and to lift the unbearable yoke that capitalism places around their neck.”

Already we are being proven correct. The fall of Hasina, far from being the end of the revolution, marked the start of a new chapter. Ordinary people have begun documenting and sharing their struggles on social media and small press outlets. There is a wall of silence in the mainstream press about the militant action of the workers’ movement.

Economic conditions in the country remain dire. They have worsened enormously in the past few years, feeding into the anger that eventually brought down the old regime. Debt spiralled above the $100 billion figure for the first time last year as the economy has slowed. And towards the end of the regime, the looting of state assets and capital flight reached epidemic proportions. Hasina is not the only one who has fled the country. Many other capitalists linked to her regime have simply stuffed suitcases full of cash and left the country, leaving factories idle.

Meanwhile, workers have seen spiralling prices of basic foodstuffs and fuel in a country where more than 37.7 million people experience ‘food insecurity’, and wages for largely female garment sector workers is as low as $80. Even these wages are now going unpaid in many parts of Bangladesh as a result of the chaos caused by the capitalists’ mismanagement.

Mass struggle erupts

Scenes of workers queuing for eight to nine hours outside banks to access their wages have become commonplace. Garments workers claim that the internet connection is active before their salary enters the bank accounts, but after the money enters the bank accounts, the internet cuts out and they are unable to withdraw their cash. But the workers are fighting back now.

Garment workers at Searock Apparels Ltd in Gazipur have not been paid their wages for three months. The owner locked out the workers and, in response, the workers have occupied the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway for several days. The students have shown: collective, direct action pays. In fact, it is the only thing that pays, and the workers have learned this lesson well.

380 workers at Synovia Pharma PLC have not been paid wages for 31 months. They organised a sit-in outside the company headquarters on 13 August. The workers have been living in inhumane conditions as a result of this and they have also been struggling for trade union rights.

On 14 August, unemployed garment workers in Tongi began protests by blockading the roads – an increasingly common method of struggle – demanding jobs and equal employment rights between men and women.

Garment workers at Anowara Dress Makers Ltd. in Chittagong also occupied the road outside their workplace on 15 August, demanding unpaid wages. Meanwhile, about 3,000 cotton mill workers at Naheed Cotton Mills Ltd. in Tangail occupied the Dhaka-Tangail highway on 16 August, demanding an increase in wages.

Significantly, in a number of places we’ve seen workers directly occupying the factories. Just as the mass mobilisations of students and the oppressed masses posed the question, ‘who runs society, the masses or Hasina?’ when they mobilised in their millions in recent weeks, so these workers are posing the question, ‘who runs the factories, the workers or the Little Hasinas that own them?’

Workers at Opso Saline Ltd in Barishal, for instance, held a work stoppage and occupation inside their factory on 15 August. These workers demanded better pay and conditions, but also trade union rights. The recent revolution is rightly being hailed as a democratic victory. But for the working class, democratic rights mean firstly the right to organise and fight for their class interests.

Workers are organising themselves and taking the fight against their bosses into their own hands. Even where they have no trade unions, workers are organising factory and highway occupations.

These battles are being fought on the factory floors and highways, not in the press conference rooms and through appeals to the interim government, which is what the trade union leaders are limiting themselves to.

Undoubtedly the trade union leaders are feeling enormous pressure, forcing them to raise their heads – which must be an unusual feeling for some of them, with many leading bureaucrats having direct links to the Awami League state. But in most of the reports of these workers’ actions, we are seeing little mention of trade union branches. They appear to be spontaneous, throwing up new leaderships.

Whilst bureaucratic obstacles within the unions must be fought, and bureaucrats forced to either take up the struggle or step aside, what is really needed in this new stage of the revolution is new, more flexible forms of organisation. Bodies are needed that can adequately express the volcanic mood in the working class, and direct it towards attainment of all their economic and political demands.

The students have shown the way there. The grassroots student committees that sprang up prior to and after 5 August took on basic functions of the state in many places. It was a small demonstration of the fact that we do not need capitalists, landlords or their bureaucratic state to run society.

Taking on board this lesson, workers’ committees in every factory and workplace, linking up and drawing in broader layers of the oppressed masses, would give invincible force to the spontaneously erupting movement of the workers. Through them, the workers in various factories could come to one another’s assistance, clearing out the ‘Little Hasinas’ and the system they are part of.

Workers are already taking inspiration from the students’ example, that much is clear. The ‘9-point’,  ‘13-point’ and ‘1-point’ demands being raised in the factories have direct echoes of the students’ struggle. The most revolutionary left-wing students must link up with the workers, bringing the example of revolutionary committees, and connecting these apparently disconnected struggles with the need to complete the revolution – that is, with the need to smash the rule of the capitalists and landlords entirely, and for the workers to take power into their own hands.

Who do you serve?

In our last article, we predicted that the entry of the workers onto the scene would quickly expose the hollow ‘democratic’ language of the new government. They would be forced to prove who they really serve: the bosses. With the sudden eruption of workers’ struggles, it looks like this prediction may be confirmed sooner rather than later.

On 14 August, the chief of the interim government, Mohammed Yunus, held a meeting with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA). Yunus appealed to these savage capitalists to “keep their business away from politics”. Yunus is no idiot. He knows that most of the bosses in Bangladesh were linked by myriad links of patronage and corruption to the old regime and the deposed Awami League.

He feels the hot breath of the revolution on his neck, and he has no intention of going after these criminals – he wants to protect the capitalists. But he needs their cooperation for that. And, indeed, the BGMEA expressed its full confidence in Yunus at this meeting in return. But he is living in a fantasy land if he thinks he can keep politics and economics separate.

Even in this meeting, the BGMEA extended the begging bowl, demanding that their loan repayments and utility bills be relaxed! The turmoil in Bangladesh has already led big international fashion giants to switch many of their orders to other South Asian countries. The Bangladeshi capitalists will be looking to Dr. Yunus’ government to protect their profits amid a worsening climate. But who will pay for this? The workers and poor.

But Dr. Yunus is also feeling pressure already coming from this direction. On Sunday 18 August, women workers in the IT sector held an occupation outside Yunus’ residence, demanding nationalisation of their jobs. They are part of the Tottho Apa project which is a programme that gives women from rural areas pathways into work in the IT sector.

Elsewhere, workers are demanding from this government immediate justice for the crimes committed against their brothers and sisters. In Narsingdi, a young worker called Rubel, only 18 years of age, was electrocuted at work at a factory recently. On 17 August, the workers marched in battle array through the street demanding direct action and that the owner of the mill where Rubel worked be hanged!

Other demands are being placed on the government by workers in the Export Processing Zones (EPZs), in particular demanding that they abolish the special exemptions from labour laws that the bosses operating there enjoy. Workers even occupied the entrance to Dhaka EPZ on 19 August, demanding equal employment rights for men and women. These workers are fighting for equality on the streets and they are rightly relying on their own strength to fight for their demands. In these economically vital zones, the capitalists are sooner or later going to demand order, that the state clear the workers off the streets. When that moment comes, the government will be forced to show its true colours.

Meanwhile, local government workers are also on the move. Barishal City Corporation workers went on strike and occupied a floor of the City Corporation building on 19 August, again, over pay and conditions. This is a workforce of about 1,000 workers. They clearly see that even in local government, they must rely on class struggle methods in order to get the change they deserve.

In other places, workers are demanding nationalisation from the government. Hundreds of railway security workers surrounded the Rail Bhaban (building) in Dhaka on Sunday 18 August. They locked the other staff inside and put forward  a ‘1-point demand’: nationalisation of their jobs, which were outsourced and casualised.

These workers claimed that they will resume the occupation on 21 August if their demands are not met. The railway workers clearly understand that the bosses cannot be trusted with the vital railways which are crucial to the economy.

No trust in Dr. Yunus’ government!

From all these angles and many others, the workers are beginning to press their demands. It is impossible for Dr. Yunus’ government to satisfy these demands, whilst also serving their real masters: the ruling capitalist class.

All the bankers and big business owners care about are their profits. The workers will come to see, with every new struggle, that whilst they, together with the students, overthrew the Hasina dictatorship, the dictatorship of the bankers and the bosses remains. This government is precisely intent on protecting and representing that class that has blood on its hands. The interim government, stuffed with more rogues as time goes by, will be subject to the same fury of the working class.
The workers have begun to show, in deeds, not empty words, that a new society is possible / Image: fair use

This underlines what a mistake it was for the student coordinators to throw their prestige behind Yunus’ government and to actively participate in it as ministers.

Recently, Asif Mahmood, one of the two leading coordinators of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement (ADSM) that took up ministries in this government, was made Minister of Labour and Employment.

This is a clear move by the capitalist interim government to shield themselves from the anger of the public using the revolutionary credentials of the student leaders. They want to put the blame for anti-worker and other anti-people draconian measures on the student leaders themselves.

We underline, again, a point we have made in previous articles: every step forward in this revolution was won by the masses – the students, factory workers, informal workers and others – on the streets. We declare no confidence in Dr. Yunus’ government! The workers and students must rely on their own strength alone! The ADSM coordinators must break with this government and reject the poisoned chalice of ministries within it.

In the past week, the workers have begun to show, in deeds, not empty words, that a new society is possible. A society without the bosses, bankers, and all the other assorted rubbish and filth of capitalist society. Workers are the main source of wealth in society. The garment workers, for example, produce items for H&M, Zara, and other multinationals that extort billions of dollars of profit from these workers, and syphon them abroad.

We say, expropriate all those linked to the old regime! Nationalise the commanding heights of the economy, i.e. the banks, factories, transport, industrial agriculture and telecommunications, under democratic workers’ control, without compensating the rapacious capitalists!

Establish free healthcare for all! Nationalise all privatised hospitals and clinics, under democratic workers' control, without compensation!

Equal recognition of all languages of ethnic minorities. Specialists workers to be trained and hired to facilitate the use of all minority languages in education and other public services.

For a 100 percent increase in wages for all workers!

Full trade union rights for workers across all industries!

Casualised workers to be given permanent contracts!

Full equality of employment rights and opportunities for women and men workers! Guarantee the right to well-paid work for all!

Spread and unite efforts of students and workers to form their own committees of action all across the country!

Elect delegates from workers’ and students’ committees from across the country, for a national congress of delegates to form a government of workers’ and students’, without the capitalists!

Complete the revolution! Forward to socialism!

We reject all the old parties – the Awami League, but also the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami! We need a new, revolutionary party to take this programme into action, to strive to give this movement a leadership that can draw all the sources of discontent now erupting, and direct it towards the completion of the revolution.

This can only be achieved by smashing capitalism, smashing the old Awami League state, and putting the workers in power. The completion of the Bangladeshi revolution can only take the form of a socialist revolution.

We call upon all those who agree with us to join the Revolutionary Communist International!