How Bangladesh’s recent labour protests jeopardise garment exports

The recent labour protests in Bangladesh pose a direct threat to global fashion supply chains and export delivery deadlines.

On Saturday, 31st October, tens of thousands of garment workers took to the streets across garment producing hubs like Dhaka, Ashulia, Gazipur, Savar and others, demanding fairer wages.

While Bangladesh is the world's second-largest exporter of readymade garments (RMG) behind China, accounting for around 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and generating the equivalent of around 40 billion US dollars annually, its workers are the bottom globally when it comes to pay. The workers are therefore demanding a minimum monthly wage of 30,000 Bangladeshi taka (around 242 US dollars), more than double the current minimum wage of 13,000 taka (around 105 US dollars), which was last raised in 2023.

Hundreds of garment factories paused production

Protests in Dhaka turned violent on Sunday and hundreds of garment factories in production hubs have been forced to close as a preventive measure and due to lack of workers. For the fashion industry, this means delays that has the already tight deadlines bursting at the seams. Half-finished garments lie dormant at assembly lines. With so many workers off the floor at the same time, factories lose critical daily output volume that cannot easily be made up.

In addition, protesters often block key arterial routes—such as the Dhaka-Tangail and Dhaka-Mymensingh highways—to leverage visibility, leading to further delays of garments that have already been finished. Thus, trucks carrying these finished goods cannot travel from industrial suburbs to major gateways like Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka or Chittagong Port, thus missing scheduled departure windows.

Even finished garments are not going anywhere

The timing could not be worse with the critical production window of November to February being affected. This is when manufacturers secure around 40 percent of their annual orders for upcoming seasonal lines.

On the other end of the supply chain, fashion retailers are hard pressed to keep their schedule for store launches and e-commerce drops, which revolve around strict seasonal deadlines. Even a three- to five-day delay in factory dispatch can cause goods to arrive after seasonal promotions have ended. Sometimes, brands can avoid this by converting ocean shipments into expensive express air freight. However, in case of the recent protests, both sea and air freight is affected.

Bangladesh will have to tackle its chronically low wages rather sooner than later as this is one protest in a long line of protests - 2023 and 2024 being years with strong disruptions. Repeated industrial instability erodes buyer confidence in the chosen production country, signalling supply chain fragility. In response, they may shift quick-turnaround orders away from Bangladesh to alternative nearshoring or regional hubs such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia or Turkey to minimise risk.