News

The UNI Europa ICTS Conference, which met in Zagreb, Croatia on 6-9 June 2017, adopted the following motion with regard to Bangladesh. The Conference called upon the European companies Telenor, Veon, and Accenture to respect trade union rights in Bangladesh, and expressed its full support to the Grameenphone Employees Union, the Banglalink Employees Union, and the Accenture Employees Union, Bangladesh.

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Solidarity with Bangladesh

The trade union rights of Bangladeshi ICTS workers are consistently and systematically violated by European companies and the Bangladeshi authorities.

In Grameenphone, which is owned by the Norwegian multinational Telenor, workers have been involved in a lengthy legal battle for union recognition since 2012. The day after the union was formed in July 2012, Grameenphone dismissed 163 employees including the union leadership.

In 2014, when a Bangladeshi court ordered the government to register the union, the verdict was appealed. The company refuses to implement a 2016 bench decision to register the union, and is therefore violating the Global Agreement on trade union rights that Telenor signed with UNI in 2013.

In Banglalink, a subsidiary of Amsterdam-based Veon, workers were immediately met with reprisals when they formed their union in February 2016, and have been struggling for recognition since.

In Accenture Bangladesh, which is majority-owned by the Irish multinational Accenture, workers were able to register their union in 2014 and negotiate for improved working conditions, but are now facing deregistration by the authorities.

European companies that operate globally have a responsibility to respect workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. This obligation is codified in both the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

Yet in Bangladesh these companies align themselves with a government that does not want unions in the ICTS sector in the country. The ILO has commented on numerous occasions on the authorities’ failure to respect workers’ rights in Bangladesh, in particular with regard to union registration.

Instead of taking the necessary steps to ensure that the rights of their employees are respected, the companies instead lobby the Bangladeshi government to retain status quo, thus being content with their complicity in human rights violations in the country.

The UNI Europa ICTS Conference, which is gathering in Zagreb, Croatia on 6-9 June 2017, urgently calls on these European companies to respect trade union rights in Bangladesh. 

It also stands in full solidarity with the Grameenphone Employees Union (GPEU), the Banglalink Employees Union (BLEU), and the Accenture Employees Union, Bangladesh (AEUB) in their fight for union recognition and trade union rights in the ICTS sector in Bangladesh.