Under the motto “We do not clean dirty rags at home!”, the Feminist Movement of Euskal Herria has called for mobilisation on 1 February. The concentration will take place in front of the Zara store on Gran Vía Street in Bilbao, to denounce the oppression of women who hide the fashion industry.

Clothing made from cheap labour from Bangladesh

Behind China, Bangladesh is the largest tissue manufacturer: About 3.5 million workers, mostly women, work in the textile industry. The country obtains 80% of its export earnings through the sale of international clothing. Bangladesh’s cheap labour force enables several businessmen to sell cheap clothes in our country. The low prices offered by companies such as Inditex, H&M, Primark or Aldi have a high cost on the other side of the world.

Millions of women in Bangladesh have just shown the unsustainability of the textile industry model based on their cheap labour. Demanding higher wages, they took to the streets of the city of Dhaka in early January, and they held a strike that lasted almost two weeks. Police interventions in disturbances have left one dead.

The strike, which lasted more than a week, ended on 16 January, after the government announced a wage hike. The next day, when the workers returned to their workplaces, more than 700 people learned that they had been expelled.