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Kalpona Akter is one of the Vogue Business 100 Innovators Class of 2025. View the full list here.
When Bangladeshi trade unionist Kalpona Akter got her first job in a garment factory, she was 12 years old. Her father had been the primary earner, but he got sick, and her mother had to stay home to look after the five children. Akter and her 10-year-old brother became the breadwinners.
For the first two years, Akter says she was just grateful to be earning — a paltry $6 per month for over 400 hours work — but she soon realised that something wasn’t right. “I had done a lot of overtime before Eid, and I had planned to use the money for at least one good meal each day, and some new clothes for my siblings,” she recalls. “The factory manager said they were going to pay us less for the overtime. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know how to fight it.”
Of the 1,800 workers, 92 men decided to strike, and Akter became the only woman to join them. After a few days of refusing overtime, the managers agreed to pay the wages owed, but they reduced the overtime fee moving forward. “We didn’t know how much money we were supposed to get, so we were OK with that,” says Akter.
The following week, 26 of those who went on strike were fired. Unable to work, they sought advice at a nearby factory, which led them to the Solidarity Centre, a US non-profit supporting workers in their fight for labour rights, safe workplaces, fair wages and democratic union representation (formerly known as the Asian American Free Labour Institute). The fired workers came back and told Akter about a labour law designed to protect workers, which could help them secure the pay and protections they were entitled to. A week later, Akter faked a hospital appointment to get time off work, and went to the Solidarity Centre to see for herself. “I think of that moment now as my second birth,” she says. “It was the first time I heard that you should only work eight hours [per day], that overtime pay should be double, that maternity leave and daycare centres existed, that I shouldn’t be slapped or beaten on the production floor, and that there should be clean water in the bathrooms. It blew my mind.”
Akter has been a vocal advocate for garment workers’ rights ever since. At the tender age of 15, she founded her first factory union, rallying coworkers to join. When the union was rejected by management, Akter was fired and blacklisted, but she persisted. “Once I became a union organiser, I never stopped,” she says.
In 2001, Akter founded the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity in 2001 alongside two other former garment workers. This has become her primary vehicle for change both in and outside of Bangladesh. She was critical to the Bangladesh Safety Accord after the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, urging brands in the Global North to sign up, and made sure that worker groups were involved in the European Union’s Sustainability Compact.
But the process has been far from straightforward, she says. “Throughout the journey, I faced imprisonment with my coworkers. Once, I was in prison for a month, facing 14 different cases in four years. I have faced government crackdowns on my organisation, during which they revoked our union registration and froze our bank accounts. We have faced media bashing, been followed home, seen our families threatened. Two of my coworkers have been brutally tortured and killed — one in 2012, the other in 2023. We never got justice.”
Akter’s determination in the face of such adversity, and her constant drive to empower other workers to use their voices, has brought her mission to the global stage. Now, in the wake of her Vogue Business 100 Innovators nomination, Akter shares her blueprint for industry-wide change, starting with guaranteeing a living wage for garment workers.
Vogue: How has the industry changed since you started working as a child labourer?
The industry is completely different now to when I started, at least in terms of infrastructure. A lot of factories have moved outside cities, and export-oriented factories don’t have child labourers anymore, largely because of the pressure from international groups. Workers are more vocal than in my time. In those days, we didn’t know where to go or who to ask. We didn’t think it was possible to become an activist or a union organiser. We didn’t know the law or how we should be treated.
The other big change is safety. In my time, almost every factory was in a residential or shared building. They were not purpose-made for any industry or manufacturing, so the safety level was not a priority when they were built. One time, my factory caught fire on the fifth floor and we were locked on the production floor on the third floor — they said the fire wouldn’t spread to where we were. We screamed for hours and eventually they let us out, but there was only one staircase and half of it was blocked. Luckily no one died, but some were hospitalised with life-threatening injuries.
After Rana Plaza, there was a phenomenal change. Now, out of 4.4 million workers in the ready-made garment industry, at least two million are in safer workplaces. But the other part of safety, which is rarely spoken about, is gender-based violence and harassment. There are some laws that deal with this but they are not enforced fully, and it’s not just in the factories — it’s in communities as well. Verbal sexual harassment is still an issue.
Vogue: Which challenges have persisted?
There is still an ugly side to the industry. Wages are still poor. It’s just about enough for workers to manage, but they can only afford the bare minimum. Many are still in a difficult position, struggling to buy daily necessities or to save any money. If workers organise or join a union, they still face retaliation — getting blacklisted or facing criminal charges. Any time we raise our voices, we are penalised by the manufacturers.
Social protection is also a huge challenge. There is no social protection for workers apart from EIS [employee insurance scheme], which insures workers against injuries. It launched as a five-year pilot in 2022, but we still don’t know whether it will be applied to the whole country or written into law. In the meantime, the lack of social protection is becoming a bigger issue because of climate change — workers face more and more [climate-related] challenges [that require social protection] every day and it is not being addressed.
Vogue: The fashion industry in Bangladesh has had a lot of high-profile protests, including the minimum wage protests in 2023 and 2024. At the time, at least four garment workers were killed and hundreds more were hospitalised, injured or arrested. Why are living wages such an important foundation for systemic change in fashion?
We were demanding a minimum wage of BDT 23,000 [$208] per month, which is far less than a living wage. The government eventually increased the minimum wage to BDT 12,500 [$133], but with the cost of living, workers need at least four or five times the wages they are getting now.
First of all, they have to spend around 35 per cent of their income on housing, and it is not a dream house or even one with two rooms and a private toilet. It is just a 10 foot by 10 foot concrete room that often won’t even have windows. They get waterlogged all the time during the rainy season and there are power cuts pretty much everyday.
With these wages, workers cannot afford to educate their children. Eight out of every 10 workers send their children to madrasas [organisations offering free Islamic education]; not because they want an Islamic education for their children, but because these schools charge very little.
The third issue is healthcare. If these workers get sick, they cannot go to the doctor because they cannot afford the fees and there are no subsidies. The government hospital is overcrowded and workers cannot go there because there are no doctors to see, especially in an emergency. They just go to pharmacies and buy whatever medicine is available.
The fourth thing is nutrition. They cannot afford good food like dairy, fish or meat, which provides the nutrition they need. Many workers buy food late at night when vegetables are cheaper. They might be able to afford fish once a week and meat once a month.
Without a living wage, these jobs are not dignified. If they lose their job today, they worry about how they will eat tomorrow. If they had a living wage, they could build up some savings and live healthier. They could be more productive and live in better houses. Rana Plaza was a big, preventable accident that killed lots of people, and people around the world saw it because there was a physical building that collapsed. The lack of living wages is slowly poisoning workers, but people don’t see it.
Vogue: There has been a lot of discussion recently about how heat stress is affecting garment workers, and experts say something similar there — that this is a silent killer we don’t know the full extent of yet. What have you witnessed in terms of extreme heat in garment factories?
Last week in Dhaka, the temperature outside was 35°C, but the temperature inside the factories was 44°C. And when it says 44 in the factory, it’s likely a few degrees warmer in the workers’ houses. Extreme heat is putting them in a situation where they are facing new diseases, they are less productive because of over-swelling [which affects their whole bodies], and they have to spend the little money they have on medical support. Most garment workers don’t get sick leave, so if they get ill from heat stress, it’s a double-edged sword, because they don’t get their wages either.
Vogue: With all of these issues — whether it’s heat stress or wages — it’s vital that workers have an infrastructure that empowers them to organise and use their voices. In an ideal world, what would that infrastructure look like?
Firstly, pay living wages. Not an empty promise, but a legally binding agreement. Secondly, workers should be free to organise — not a factory-led or brand-led union, but a union they choose and can join freely. Third, the factory should be safe. No workers should die in factories. And I don’t just mean building, fire and electrical safety, I mean all safety, which brings me to the fourth pillar: workplaces should be free of gender-based violence. Fifth would be social protection, including some kind of transitional funding or adaptation funding for workers facing climate change. If there is mass dismissal, there should be money for workers to survive and retrain if needed. That would be my list of requests.
Vogue: You mentioned mass dismissals — this is something many factory owners and workers have been afraid of in light of President Trump’s tariffs, which have thrown supply chains around the world into disarray. What is the situation in Bangladesh now?
About two months ago, there was extreme fear that workers would face mass termination because the tariffs stood at 35 per cent. There was outcry among manufacturers, saying they would need to shut down the factories. Then, Trump imposed a 50 per cent tariff on India and this actually increased the work coming to Bangladesh.
However, the past year was really tough for Bangladeshi workers, especially with the political shift. [In August 2024, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country during student-led protests, after 16 years in power.] That was a positive change, but it has negatively impacted workers, because factory owners closely associated with the old regime also fled and some brands reduced their orders. Thousands of workers lost their jobs and had to return to their villages or switch businesses. The situation is still floating, and it depends on what happens in India.
Vogue: The tariffs are just one example of policies created in the Global North that have a direct impact on the Global South. In recent months, you’ve been particularly vocal about the impact of the EU’s CSDDD (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive) and the Omnibus Simplification Package on garment workers. Why is it so important that workers have a voice in these policy decisions, and how do we make that happen?
Someone in Europe making policies doesn’t make sense for us. They are two different worlds: how can you understand the reality for garment workers in Bangladesh when you’re sitting in Copenhagen or Brussels?
A coworker asked me the other day why so many brands externalise their production. I said, ‘Do you ever make a barbeque inside your own house? No, you go to the park or a field, because it makes your house dirty.’ That is exactly what brands are doing. They make themselves feel good about it by saying they are creating jobs, but I do not see things that way. We need to change the narrative, to change the way people are thinking so workers are at the centre. Any policy made anywhere around the world, should be including and surrounding workers, not made without them. I would rather have no agreement than a bad agreement.
Vogue: With so much stacked against garment workers, what makes you feel hopeful?
The workers. They still hope that their fight will make a difference, and I believe them. We will keep organising and our voices will be heard.
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