IndustriAll Bangladesh Council on Saturday announced protest programme rejecting wage proposals of owners’ and workers’ representatives to the wage board formed to fix wages for readymade garment workers.IndustiAll also demanded Tk 16,000 as minimum wage for the workers.IndustriAll is a platform of global trade unions founded in Copenhagen on June 19, 2012 and 19 trade union federations in Bangladesh are affiliated with it.At a press conference at the National Press Club in Dhaka, the IBC leaders announced that a human chain would be formed on August 4 in front of National Press Club demanding immediate announcement of Tk 16,000 as the minimum wage of the workers.Letter on the IBC would observe protest programmes in phases, including submission of petitions to the wage board, observing sit-ins and holding rally in front of minimum wage board office.‘We reject both the wage proposals placed by the workers and owners representatives to the board as the proposals are not consistent with the workers’ demand and expectations,’ Salauddin Shapon, secretary general of IBC said in his written speech in the press conference.He said in the name of wage review, factory owners were plotting to reduce the workers’ wages.‘If we count yearly 5 per cent increment on existing minimum wage Tk 5,300, which was set five years ago, the actual amount would be Tk 6,400 but factory owners proposed Tk 6,360 as minimum wage. It is nothing but farce with hundreds of thousands of workers,’ Shapon said. Terming the wage proposal placed by the workers’representative to the board as a fun with workers the IBC and demanded to withdraw the proposal from the board. Criticising the appointment process of workers’ representative to the board, Shapon said if the board tried to adopt unilateral decision bypassing the demand of workers, the IBC would announce agitation programme in Savar, Asulia, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Chittagong.It is very much unfortunate that RMG factory owners considered workers as machines not human being.IBC chairman Md Giasuddin Ahmed, National Garment Workers’ Federation president Amirul Haque Amin, Bangladesh Textile and Garment workers’ League president ZM Kamrul Anam, Combined Garment Workers Federation president Nazma Akter and immediate past secretary general of IBC Towhidur Rahman, among others, attended the press conference.
