| The garment factory’s closed-circuit camera captured some unusual activity: Out front a female union leader was swarmed by people, pushed to the ground and assaulted while a male union activist was chased away and punched. Another female union leader entered the factory door and seconds later was pushed outside, then shoved out of camera range. Two investigations of the episodes depicted in the video, one led by a Washington-based workers’ rights group and another by a prominent American apparel company, determined that the camera footage showed that factory managers directed those attacks at the Global Garments factory in Bangladesh on Nov. 10. The attacks occurred three months after a female union president was beaten in the head with an iron rod just outside another factory owned by the same company, the Azim Group, requiring her to get more than 20 stitches, workers’ rights groups say. They maintain that company-directed thugs carried out that assault, while the Azim Group said the assault resulted from a feud involving a former husband that, the company’s law firm said, “occurred outside working hours, outside the factory grounds, outside any industrial dispute.”  The Azim Group, which says it has 24 factories and employs 27,000 workers, said it was not involved in either altercation. Mishcon de Reya, a law firm representing Azim, said the November dispute “arose between the workers and union leaders.” These attacks occurred... |
