The violence against workers seeking to improve their conditions and the murder of a union activist have made workers fear forming unions. Although workers are willing to walk out of a factory demanding improvements, they are afraid to join a union because that could make them a target for firing or worse, says Akter, whose organization is a close partner of the Solidarity Center.

“They see the face [of Islam] when he was alive and see the face when he is dead, and they are afraid,” she says.

Representatives of the Bangladesh garment sector are among the 23-member delegation accompanying Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who attended the 67th United Nations General Assembly in New York. They are urging the United States to allow duty-free access of their products. Global labor rights activists say the Bangladeshi garment industry should not have such benefits until factory working conditions improve and violence against workers ends.

The violence against Bangladeshi workers has captured the attention of human rights activists and policymakers in the United States. It was the subject of a human rights hearing in Congress and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on a recent trip to Bangladesh, specifically addressed the unsolved murder of Islam.

Bangladesh is now the world's second-largest clothes exporterwith overseas garment sales topping $19 billion last year, or 80 percent of total national exports. Yet the base pay for a garment worker in Bangladesh is the equivalent of $37 a month—the same monthly amount it costs to buy food for one person.

Garment workers also are subject to verbal and physical abuse, unrealistic production targets and working conditions that may provide 25 toilets for a factory with 5,000 employees, says Akter, who was joined by Babul Akhter, president of the Bangladesh Garments & Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF). In 2010, two factory fires that year killed dozens of workers.

Akter, Akhter and Islam were imprisoned in 2010 on false charges for trying to improve the working conditions of garment workers. While imprisoned, Akter says she was interrogated for long periods and Akhter was beaten.

Akter, who started working in garment factories years ago as a young girl, says that stopping the violence against workers will begin after the government finds and prosecutes those who murdered Islam.

Take action now: Urge Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina to investigate Islam’s murder, ensure the safety of workers and drop charges against labor rights activists.

This is a crosspost from the Solidarity Center.