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Workers in Bangladesh’s garment industry went on strike in December calling for increases to the minimum wage. Instead of agreeing to pay a living wage, or even to bring forward a wage review, factory owners brought unsubstantiated criminal charges against at dozens of labor leaders and garment workers.

At least 24 activists and workers have already been arrested and are being held in police custody where they have been denied bail. Some have received threats of torture or death. Over 1500 workers have been reportedly dismissed from their jobs and potentially blacklisted from future garment work.

Please sign the petition to call on brands whose clothes are made at the factories behind the complaints to take immediate action for the dismissal of the falsified charges and the release of the jailed activists and workers! This petition will be delivered to H&M, Gap Inc (owns Banana Republic and Old Navy), C&A, Inditex (owns Zara and Bershka), and VF (owns 30 brands including North Face, Jansport, and Lee), which source from the factories pressing the charges.

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An undercover investigation for Dispatches (Channel 4) has revealed garment workers in Leicester earning less than half the minimum wage.  The workers were working on clothing for high street brands including River Island and New Look, and internet retailers BooHoo and MissGuided. Serious fire safety risks were also identified in one of the factories.

The clothing brands response is that they were unaware their clothing was being made in these factories. If companies do not know what is happening in their supply chain here in the UK, then how can we have any confidence in their pledges to protect workers rights in their supply chains that stretch across the globe?

Moreover, the reason the workers in these factories are paid so little is that brands are demanding quick cheap clothing to meet the demands of ‘fast fashion.’ The big brands need to consider how their own practices and demands place pressure on workers, as well as getting to grips with how companies making clothes for them treat their workers.

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Twenty-two human and labour rights organisations from around the world are calling on international clothing brands to press for the release of unjustly imprisoned Bangladeshi union leaders and worker rights advocates and the reinstatement of 1,500 workers suspended or terminated for taking part in a wage strike.

In a joint-letter to more than 60 brands and retailers, the human and labour rights organisations call on the companies to intervene with the Bangladeshi government to gain the release of the imprisoned labour leaders, and to urge their suppliers to drop charges against them and reinstate any workers suspended or terminated for participating in the strike.

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A new report into leather production in Pakistan exposes deplorable conditions for workers. Labourers work for long hours for low wages, often handling harmful chemicals and heavy machinery without protective equipment.  The majority of this leather ends up being exported to the European Union and SOMO argue the EU could do much more to ensure the human rights and labour rights of Pakistan’s leather workers are protected.

SOMO is a critical, independent, not-for-profit knowledge centre on multinationals.

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At least 1,500 workers have been sacked from Bangladesh garment factories after protests forced a week-long shutdown at dozens of sites supplying top European and American brands.

Tens of thousands of workers walked out of factories in December in a manufacturing hub supplying clothes for brands such as Gap, Zara and H&M. The protests were sparked by the sacking of 121 workers, but soon evolved into demands for an increase in the minimum wage.

More than 50 factories were closed in late December to try to contain the protests, which escalated after police fired rubber bullets that injured 10 demonstrators, according to labour leader Taslima Akhter. Many workers are facing criminal charges, and a reporter was also arrested.

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