Maine
Why the garment workers of Bangladesh are feeling poorer than ever
Ayesha Begum is working hard on her sewing machine. Her slender fingers glide the needle along the jeans she is piecing together, sewing on pockets before passing the pants to the next garment worker. It’s for the international clothing chain, Zara. The jeans will sell for around $50 each. She handles around 90 pairs an hour and earns $134 a month.
“I can’t get by on what I earn,” she says, “I have to pay for my son’s schooling, I have to pay rent, I have to look after my mother and my parents-in-law. It’s just not enough.”
Begum, 26, lives in the town of Gazipur, a few hours north of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. She and her husband work at Beximco, one of the largest garment factories in the country, employing 23,000 workers. But even with their combined income, they find it hard to make ends meet.
Begum one of four million garment workers in Bangladesh making clothes for American and European markets – brands such as Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Zara and others. Zara did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment on this story.
Bangladesh is the second largest export of readymade garments in the world after China, with 4,000 or so garment factories that generated $47 billion in revenue last year.
The country’s garment workers have always been paid low wages, but now they’re facing a triple-barreled threat. Western buyers are paying less for the clothes, while food prices in the country have gone up by around 10% since last year.
Khaled Shahrior, a manager at Beximco, says retailers aren’t concerned with paying more for garments to address the increased costs most local factories are bearing.
“They don’t bother about everyday inflation and food prices and everything,” he says, “they should have that accountability.”
Politics has an impact
Added to this, the industry has also suffered after a wave of political unrest. In August, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country following a student uprising. At least four factories were set on fire, including Beximco, after the factory owners were accused of having close ties with Hasina and her government.
The instability has resulted in a loss of business for the industry as some brands have taken their business to other countries.
Mushfiq Mobarak, professor of economics at Yale University, says those brands are, in fact, now paying higher prices.
“In those other countries they’re actually paying around 20% more,” he says, “so that suggests that they can afford to pay, it’s just that when they’re sourcing from Bangladesh, they’re not willing to.”
Union leaders and workers hope the recent political changes will lead to improvements in their conditions.
T-shirts sell for less
But at the moment, it’s harder than ever for garment workers like Begum to get by.
According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, the average price American retailers paid two years ago for a cotton t-shirt made in Bangladesh was $1.83. This year, it’s $1.65 – nearly a 10% drop.
One reason is increased competition among factories in Bangladesh to sell their wares, so prices are dropping.
At the same time, the country is experiencing a wave of inflation that has meant greater expenses for the workers in their daily lives — and for factories as well.
Economist and nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus is serving as the chief adviser for Bangladesh’s caretaker government.
Mobarak says that Yunus has an opportunity to use his influence to protect workers’ rights.
“He could use his voice effectively to bring international buyers to the table and help them recognize their ethical obligations toward poor Bangladeshi workers,” he says.
So far, Yunus has not publicly addressed this issue.
They’re protesting
Meanwhile, since the uprising, some garment workers have been protesting for higher pay.
Union leader Kalpana Akter says a raise in the minimum wage to 12,500 taka ($104) last year – up from 8,000 taka ($69) – didn’t go far enough. And that there isn’t universal compliance.
“It is not enforced in many factories.” she says.
Even those who make slightly more than minimum wage are struggling.
Iti khatun, 44, who has been a garment worker for 22 years, earns $126 a month, sometimes more if overtime is available.
She pays $25 a month for rent and household bills such as gas and electricity.
She lives in a dimly lit windowless room in a large, crumbling building and shares a bathroom and kitchen with a dozen other residents.
Another $30 goes toward her 18-year-old son’s schooling. She spends the rest on food, but with one kilo of rice — 2.2 pounds — costing as much as a dollar, she has to stick to a basic diet.
“Meat costs 6 dollars a kilo,” says Khatun. “If I eat meat, it will be too difficult for me to budget for the rest of the month.”
And she’s aware of the irony that she could never afford the clothes she makes.
Mobarak says Western consumers need to be more aware of the impact of their shopping habits.
“They need to understand the decisions they make,” he says, “such as going to another retailer to chase lower prices, ultimately will have an effect on the wages paid to the workers who produce those garments.”
NPR contacted the Ministry of Labour and the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association, which represents the factories, for comment but got no response.
Begum, the 26-year-old who sews pockets on jeans, has a simple wish: “If I could earn a bit more money I could plan for my son’s future. I’d be able to save, to live better, eat better. Even 3,000 taka [$25] more a month would make a big difference.”
Shamim Chowdhury is a London-based freelance journalist and writer. She spent six weeks in Bangladesh following the recent student uprising.
Copyright 2024 NPR
To be sure, singing about climate change can be a tough sell.
“It was scary at first,” Zak said. “When you write love songs or other popular music, there are set maps to follow. Trying to incorporate climate change into music isn’t something a lot of people do.”
But it seems to be working. The band, GoldenOak, has around 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and counting, and their top song has more than 300,000 listens. A previous project from the band won EP of the year by the Portland Music Awards.
GoldenOak, made up of siblings Zak and Lena Kendall, bassist Mike Knowles, and drummer Jackson Cromwell, formed around 2016. As the band’s main lyricist, Zak draws on his background in ecology and his close attention to how climate change is reshaping daily life in Maine.
At the College of the Atlantic, he studied human ecology, immersing himself in climate science and environmental issues while sneaking in song writing between classes. After graduating, he dove into climate activism as executive director of Maine Youth for Climate Justice.
Then he began to notice something: tropes of displacement, violent storms, and dying forests were bleeding into his lyrics. He saw a way to combine his passions of climate activism and folk music, and that convergence has defined his songwriting ever since.
Bands like AJR and Grammy-winning artist Jon Batiste have also sung about climate change. “As an artist, you have to make a statement,” Batiste said in an interview with Covering Climate Now. “You got to bring people together. People’s power is the way that you can change things in the world.”
Batiste called “Petrichor,” his recent song, “a warning set to a dance beat.” GoldenOak’s discography has taken it a step further, featuring multiple conceptual albums bringing climate urgency into the folk tradition.
The band’s first climate-focused album, Room to Grow, is a ten-song invitation to climate action, laying out what’s at stake and why the natural world is worth protecting.
In “Ash,” for instance, Kendall frames the loss of ash trees as a kind of breakup song — a farewell to a species that once filled the forests where he grew up. This was the wood he carved into canoe paddles, and that Wabanaki basket makers relied on for generations, a tree species now disappearing under the spread of the emerald ash borer.
Most of the album leans somber, with nine tracks moving between poetic depictions of ecological loss, frontline activist anthems, and moments of climate hopelessness. But its most popular song, “little light,” reaches in the opposite direction: a hopeful ode to renewable energy and indigenous knowledge.
“Music can be a powerful form of activism,” Zak said. “Over time I found a way to incorporate my lived experience, academic research and frontline stories to tell these stories.”
It’s a hard balance, Zak explains. Push the climate narrative too far and suddenly you’re just singing statistics; lean too much on personal experience and it becomes just another introspective track.
With All the Light in Autumn, released December 5, Zak keeps testing that balance. Ten birds on the album cover represent its ten songs. Some, like “The Flood” and “All the Birds,” return to themes of ecological loss, while others pull back to connect climate change to the political forces shaping it.
Written in the weeks after the presidential election, the song “Always Coming, Always Going” confronts the environmental protections dismantled under the Trump administration. Other tracks take aim at resource extraction under capitalism, environmental inequity, and the hollow myth of the American dream.
“Before this album came out people kept asking me if this one would be about climate change too,” Zak said. “And I think the answer is always going to be yes because climate change touches every aspect of our lives.”
Folk music grappled with environmental themes long before the genre’s famed artists recognized them — ballads about coal country, songs about scarred landscapes. Now, the relentless cycle of climate impacts may push more artists to write about it, extending even into mainstream pop.
“Music can help people process their emotions about climate change,” said Fabian Holt, a former music sociologist at Roskilde University in Denmark who now studies climate and culture. “But it can also serve as a medium for mobilization.”
“Just writing these songs about climate change doesn’t always feel like enough,” Zak said. “We try to lean into our role as activists, creating spaces for people to gather and share their own stories.” GoldenOak uses its platform to promote voting initiatives, amplify protests, and sometimes even perform at them.
Back onstage, Zak and Lena lean into the microphone to dedicate their most beloved song to climate activists and people living on the frontlines. Its lyrics insist on hope, even when climate progress falters. As the crowd joins in, humming, singing or whispering the words to themselves, it becomes clear how music can turn shared climate grief into collective resolve.
This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment.
All four of Maine’s Division III men’s hockey teams will play for a championship in the first Lobster Pot Tournament after their holiday break.
“Anytime there’s a trophy at play, it makes things a lot more interesting,” Bowdoin coach Ben Guite said.
The tournament will take place Jan. 2-3 at Falmouth Ice Center in Falmouth. The first day, Colby and the University of New England will match up in the first game at 3:30 p.m., followed by a game between the University of Southern Maine and Bowdoin at 7 p.m. The winners will face off in the title game at 5:30 p.m. the following day.
UNE (8-2) is ranked seventh in the latest USCHO.com top-15 poll, while Bowdoin (6-2-1) is 13th, and Colby (5-2-1) received 12 votes. Southern Maine, meanwhile, is 5-4-1.
“I think all four teams are going to have a crack at it,” Guite said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.
We’ve played Colby already this year (a 3-2 Bowdoin win on Nov. 22). They’re obviously a handful and a very hard team to play. UNE has been a perennial power here for a while now, since (coach) Kevin (Swallow) has been there. (USM coach) Matt (Pinchevsky) has been doing a tremendous job. His team just plays with a lot of energy. They’re very hard to beat.”
There also will be a youth clinic at the neighboring Casco Bay Arena from 2-3 p.m. on Jan. 2. Ice skating will be available on the pond near Family Ice Center.
Guite said the tournament is an opportunity to showcase Division III hockey in the state. He also noted a trickle down of talent in Division III with former Canadian Hockey players now allowed to play in Division I.
The Mules, for example, have three former Division-I players, including leading scorer Colby Browne (Northern Michigan), defenseman Riley Rosenthal (Stonehill), and Auburn’s Reese Farrell (Army). Nor’easters goalie Harrison Chesney played at Northeastern.
Tickets are $8 per game and can be purchased starting Monday by visiting UNE’s website.
Contributing at the D-I level
Former Maine high school girls basketball standouts are off to strong starts to the season for their NCAA Division I programs.
Oxford Hills graduate Ella Pelletier Pelletier is averaging 9.3 points and 4.1 rebounds per game over 10 games in her first season at Stonehill College.
In her second season at Boston University after transferring from Providence College, Hampden Academy alum Bella McLaughlin is averaging 7.0 points and 3.0 rebounds per game. She also has a team-high 34 assists in 10 games.
Another Mainer contributing at the D-I level is Pelletier’s former Oxford Hills teammate Sierra Carson, who is averaging 3.0 points per game for Dartmouth.
NFHCA All-Americans
Two Mainers were named Division II All-American by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association recently.
Gracie Moore, a senior forward at Bentley who is from Pittsfield, was named first-team All-American. She finished the season with 15 goals and 12 assists in 22 games.
Meanwhile, Biddeford’s Jillian McSoreley, a senior defender at Assumption College, is a second-team All-American. McSoreley earned the honor by helping the Greyhounds hold opponents to 0.72 goals per game.
Bates College defender Haley Dwight was named to the Division III first team, while forward Brooke Moloney-Kolenberg earned third-team honors, along with Bowdoin’s Emily Ferguson.
Dressed in a fuzzy chicken costume, a then-2-year-old girl — accompanied by her parents dressed as farmers — walked around their new neighborhood ringing doorbells and asking for candy. It was July.
That is how the Westbrook community first met and fell in love with Lucy Hanson five years ago.
Everyone in Lucy’s neighborhood is close, Sue Salisbury, her neighbor, said, but it’s particularly hard not to love Lucy. She trick-or-treats year round. She jumps into her neighbors’ piles of leaves as they’re raking. She rides around the neighborhood on a seat on her dad’s bike with a speaker playing music attached in the back.
“She’s got the whole neighborhood wrapped around her finger,” Joe Salisbury, Sue’s husband, said.
So when Lucy was diagnosed with cancer at the end of October, the neighborhood decided to flood her with love as she spends the next nine months, holidays included, in the hospital for chemotherapy treatment.
Friends, neighbors, strangers and even people from other countries have sent Lucy a deluge of holiday cards, donations, gifts and meals.
Lucy’s aunt, Juna Ferguson, shared Lucy’s story on social media and asked for donations and meals to help. She also submitted Lucy’s name to The Angel Card Project, an online charity that requests greeting cards for people in need, so Lucy would feel as much love as possible during the holiday season.
In just a few weeks, Lucy has received hundreds and hundreds of cards, letters and packages, including some from as far as Germany and Australia. On Meal Train — a website that facilitates meal giving to families in hard times — people have donated almost $22,000 for the Hanson family and sent dozens of meals. Lucy’s wish list sold out within five minutes — three separate times.
The Hanson family
In many ways, Lucy is just like any other 7-year-old girl from Westbrook.
She loves Harry Potter (she’s in Gryffindor, of course). She’s reading “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix,” but it’s a little scary for her. She just became a Brownie in the Girl Scouts. She wants to be a music teacher when she grows up. She loves to draw and sing and dance and do gymnastics and musical theatre. She has a best friend named Mallory who she has known since she was 6 months old. She’ll cry if there’s a snow day and she can’t go to school and see Mallory.
She’s witty and kind and bubbly and fun.
But in other ways, Lucy’s life doesn’t resemble that of other kids.
Last month, she spent more time in the hospital than at home. If she’s in the hospital, she has a robot she can drive around school to participate in her classes. (She dressed up the robot with a jacket, a hat and a sparkly backpack to make it look more like her).
Lucy is much smaller than most girls her age, as a genetic condition slows her growth. And she knows a lot more about cancer than most children.
She’s used to doctors and nurses and hospitals.
A few months after she was born in July 2018, she developed a rash on her face, which eventually spread to other parts of her body. After visiting three dermatologists and ruling out eczema, Lucy ultimately was diagnosed with Rothmund-Thomson syndrome type 2, a rare genetic condition that primarily affects her skin and bones and increases her chances of developing several types of cancer. Lucy is one of about 500 documented cases of RTS in the world.
For six years, Lucy was healthy. But in October, while she was attending a conference for families affected by RTS in Salt Lake City, she started to limp. She seemed to get better after a while, but a week and a half later, she couldn’t put any weight on her foot.
That’s when she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in her right tibia. The doctors said Lucy will need nine months of chemotherapy and a below-the-knee amputation in February of 2026.
“How will we navigate the rest of Lucy’s life?” Staci Hanson, Lucy’s mom, thought.
Even though their lives had flipped upside down, Staci and her husband Jason decided to live as normally as possible.
They make sure Lucy does school work and takes walks. A school teacher checks in with her at the hospital and a child life specialist comes to play with her. Last week, they made slime together.
The nurses and doctors at MaineHealth Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, where Lucy is receiving her chemotherapy treatments, have made magic in a very nonmagical situation, Staci said. In the hospital, Lucy got to pick out her own Christmas tree and ornaments for her room and even made a gingerbread house.
In the past month, the Hansons have spent just five days at home. Staci and Jason take shifts at the hospital. One night, mom stays with Lucy, the next it’s dad. They only live 15 minutes from the hospital, so it’s not a long drive to come home to get new things or do laundry, Jason said.
“It feels like a long time,” Lucy protested.
Her parents are honest with her about RTS, osteosarcoma and her approaching amputation in February.
“We try to lift her up and tell her, ‘Yeah, your world is going to look a little bit different, but you can still live a super normal life even with a prosthetic,’” Staci said. “So we’ve shown her lots of videos of people doing gymnastics and dance and just living fulfilling lives even though they have a prosthetic.”
Rallying around
Since Lucy met Joe and Sue Salisbury while trick-or-treating in the summer years ago, she has become part of their family.
“It’s like having a grandchild,” Joe said.
Lucy will often randomly call the Salisburys to invite them over for a movie night. No matter what they’re doing, even if they’re in the middle of dinner, they always accept.
“You don’t say no to her,” Sue said.
So they will stop what they’re doing, walk across the road in their slippers, and cuddle up with Lucy on the couch to watch whatever movie she wants.
Now, Sue and Joe hold on to those memories of her until they can resume that tradition.
In the meantime, the community is doing everything it can to help the family. The less the Hansons have to worry about, the more they can focus on Lucy and themselves.
Joe and Sue volunteered to receive the letters for Lucy, since the Hansons are rarely home to check their mail.
“This is Lucy’s fan following,” Joe said, pointing to two packages and a bag stuffed with letters.
The Salisburys collected at least 400 cards for her in three weeks. They go to the hospital about once a week to visit Lucy and give her the letters. They would like to see her more, but the visits are limited due to Lucy’s compromised immune system.
The Salisburys own the Daily Grind, a coffee shop in Westbrook. Customers come through all the time to drop off packages and cards for Lucy and ask about her.
Neighbors pick up the Hansons’ mail and plow their driveway.
Joe isn’t surprised by the response from the community. In Westbrook, people have always helped each other out.
“I think it’s just another example of how great the Westbrook community is that everybody is pulling together for Lucy,” Sue said.
The Hanson family has received so many letters and donations, it’s impossible to write enough thank you cards, Staci said. They are saving most of the cards to give to Lucy later, because she still has many more months in the hospital.
“I don’t know how we’ll ever repay our community for the love that we’ve received,” Staci said.
Lucy’s favorite card so far has a drawing of two ducks sitting in a yellow bowl of tomato soup with some crackers on the side.
“Thought some soup and quackers might make you feel better,” Lucy read from the card.
In another package, Lucy received fake snowballs. So Lucy did what any other kid would do —started a snowball fight in her hospital room with her doctors and nurses.
Those interested in sending gifts and cards or signing up to give a meal can visit mealtrain.com/trains/w4lwd0. The RTS Foundation accepts donations at rtsplace.org/. People can also join “The Lucy League” by buying merchandise at bonfire.com/store/bravelikelucy/. All profits go to the Hanson family.
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