Labour rights: legal obligation & moral test

Every year on Labour Day, Bangladesh witnesses rallies, speeches, and renewed promises. Yet one fundamental question remains unresolved: what does the nation owe to the workers who keep its economy alive?
They are the garment workers, tea workers, construction workers, transport workers, migrant workers, domestic workers, and millions in the informal sector whose labour sustains families, industries, exports, and national growth. Too often, they are visible only when production stops or tragedy strikes.
For Bangladesh, labour rights are not merely a legal or economic issue. They are also a moral issue. As a Muslim-majority society with a strong Islamic ethical tradition and as a post-colonial state shaped by workers' struggles, Bangladesh stands at a unique crossroads. Modern labour rights and Islamic moral duties are not in conflict. They converge on one basic principle: workers must be treated with fairness, justice, and dignity.
The history of labour struggle in Bengal predates the formation of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and modern India. It goes back to the jute mill era of the nineteenth century, when workers first confronted the harsh realities of colonial industrial capitalism. Before 1971, workers in jute mills, presses, plantations, and other sectors organized and protested for basic rights. The 1921 MullukCholo Tea Worker Movement, which ended in brutal violence against tea workers in Chandpur, remains one of the most painful reminders of colonial labor exploitation.
After Independence, workers continued to shape democratic life in Bangladesh. Adamjee Jute Mill became a major centre of labour mobilisation and state repression. The killing of trade union leader Tajul Islam in 1984 generated nationwide protests. By 1990, organised labour had become a major force in the movement that helped bring down the Ershad regime. Workers did not merely benefit from democracy; they helped make democracy possible.
The rise of the ready-made garment industry created employment for millions, especially women, and transformed Bangladesh's economy. But it also exposed deep failures. The Tazreen Fashions fire in 2012 and the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 were not isolated tragedies. They revealed systemic negligence in workplace safety, regulatory enforcement, and corporate responsibility. Employers failed to ensure safe working conditions, while global buyers often treated worker safety as a cost rather than a duty.
Bangladesh does have labour laws. The Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, its subsequent amendments, and related rules set standards for wages, working hours, occupational safety, trade union formation, and compensation for workplace injuries. The Constitution also commits the State to protecting labour, honouring workers, and prohibiting forced labour.
The problem is not the absence of legal language. The problem is weak enforcement. Many workers still face delayed wages, excessive hours, and unsafe workplaces. Trade union registration remains difficult. Employers who violate collective bargaining rights or dismiss workers for organising often face limited consequences. In export processing zones, labour protections remain weaker than in the rest of the country. Restrictions on the right to strike also undermine confidence in the fairness of the labour system.
A law that can be violated without serious consequence loses its moral and practical force. Rights that workers cannot collectively defend remain dependent on the goodwill of those who hold economic power over them.
Islamic ethics speaks clearly about this issue. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, instructed employers to pay workers their wages before their sweat dries. This is not merely a ceremonial saying. It is a powerful moral command for timely and fair payment. Another hadith warns against those who employ workers fully but fail to pay them properly.
In this light, wage theft is not only a violation of labour law. It is a moral offense. Delayed wages, withheld payments, unsafe buildings, locked exits during fires, forced overtime, and suppression of legitimate worker voices violate both legal obligations and duties before Allah.
The Qur'anic principles of justice, contract fulfilment, and protection from undue burden reinforce the same message. Employers must not withhold others' rights. Contracts must be honoured. No person should be burdened beyond capacity. These principles apply directly to forced overtime, hazardous conditions, unpaid wages, and inequitable treatment of women workers.
Long before modern labour legislation, Islamic jurisprudence recognised workers as persons with rights. Their contracts must be respected, their vulnerability must not be exploited, and their livelihoods must be protected.
Thus, secular labour rights and Islamic labour ethics reach the same conclusion through different routes. One emerges from industrial struggle, constitutional development, and democratic practice. The other emerges from revelation, prophetic teaching, and moral accountability. Both demand timely payment of wages, safe working conditions, protection from exploitation, fair treatment, and respect for human dignity.
This convergence is important. Some secular voices view religious language as a distraction from rights-based discourse. Some religious voices view trade unionism as foreign. Both positions are mistaken. The worker demanding fair wages and the imam reminding employers of their moral duties are set on the same ethical ground.
What then must Bangladesh do?
First, occupational health and safety must be strengthened across all sectors, not only in export-oriented garment factories. Domestic-market factories, shipbreaking yards, tanneries, construction sites, transport operations, and informal workplaces must be subject to effective regulatory oversight.
Second, compensation for workplace injury and death must be improved. Payments to injured workers or families of deceased workers should be fair, humane, and consistent with the real economic loss suffered. Outdated compensation caps do not reflect the dignity of human life.
Third, Bangladesh must remove legal and practical barriers to trade union formation. Workers need collective bargaining power to defend their rights. Those who organise should not face dismissal, blacklisting, harassment, or false criminal charges.
Fourth, wage theft must be treated as a serious violation. Withholding wages earned is not a minor administrative problem. It is a breach of law, contract, and moral duty.
Finally, protection for women workers must move from rhetoric to reality. Women form the backbone of the garment industry and are also highly vulnerable in migration, domestic work, and informal employment. Effective remedies are needed against sexual harassment, wage discrimination, denial of maternity rights, unsafe transport, and insecure living conditions.
None of these reforms is radical. They are already required by law, demanded by justice, and supported by Bangladesh's constitutional commitments and Islamic moral heritage.
Bangladesh cannot build a just and sustainable economy by treating workers as disposable inputs. Labour is not only a factor of production; it is human effort, sacrifice, and dignity. The true test of development is not only export growth, foreign exchange earnings, or GDP expansion. It is whether the people whose labour makes growth possible are protected, respected, and paid fairly.
On Labour Day and beyond, Bangladesh must move from speeches to enforcement, from sympathy to justice, and from legal promises to moral action. Workers' rights are not charity. They are obligations. And fulfilling those obligations is one of the clearest tests of the nation's conscience.

M. Kabir Hassan, Professor of Finance and Moffett Chair, University of New Orleans;
2016 IsDB Prize Laureate in Islamic Banking and Finance.
KabirHassan63@gmail.com