PRESS RELEASE: LABOUR RIGHTS GROUPS DEMAND END TO GOVERNMENT REPRESSION OF GARMENT WORKERS IN BANGLADESH

• Government Crackdown Aims at Resisting Workers’ Demand for Decent minimum wage
• Worker Leaders Forced into Hiding to Escape Arrest and Beatings 

In a breakthough for labour rights, Nike has agreed to pay £968,000 to garment workers after the closure of two of its subcontracors in Honduras. The clothing giant finally caved in after a year of mounting pressure from universities and grass roots campaigning by students across the US.

What are Primark trying to hide we ask? On Monday, Daily Mail Fashion Editor Liz Jones published an expose article on conditions for Primark workers in Bangladesh, but by Tuesday the article had been taken down. On investigation we discovered that Primark lawyers had made a legal challenge to the headline, despite Daily Mail legal teams taking 8 days to get the content legally checked. Scared off by the big guns, the Mail were forced to take the article down. Are Primark scared of another Tirupur incident such as the media smearing which it received in 2008? It seems so.

Asda has a lamentable record on paying poverty-level wages to workers in poor countries who make its clothes and is trailing behind its competitors such as M&S and Primark, a new report by ActionAid revealed today.