DHAKA, BANGLADESH, November 26 — Ten thousand garment workers barricaded roads, shut 50 factories and hurled stones at cops firing rubber bullets and tear gas as workers protested the November 24 fire that killed 124 workers at Tazreen Fashions here. Hundreds of workers were trapped inside, symptomatic of Bangladeshi garment factories that have become infamous for their lack of fire exits and stairwells. Over 100,000 outraged workers attended the burial ceremony of 53 workers whose bodies could not be identified” (New York Times, 12/7).

It’s common practice for the garment bosses to chain doors shut to prevent workers from taking breaks. Combined with poor maintenance practices and flammable materials and chemicals, these factories become firetraps. “More than 600 garment workers have died in such fires since 2005.” (NYT, 12/7)

Tazreen bosses told workers the fire alarm was a false one, to keep them working. Then they fled, but by the time workers realized what was occurring, the fire had snaked to the upper floors, blocking any exit routes. Some tried to escape by jumping out of windows.

Tazreen manufactures clothing for Walmart, Sears and the Gap, among other U.S. companies, all of whom make enormous profits from the poverty wages and hazards in these death traps. They are all aware of these conditions, making them complicit in the murders of these workers.

This latest factory fire is the worst in Bangladeshi history. As the families and friends of the trapped workers crowded around the inferno to offer whatever assistance they could, they knew who was to blame. Sabine Yasmine, one victim’s mother and a factory worker herself, moaned, “Where’s my soul? Where’s my son? I want the factory owner to be hanged! For him, many have died, many have gone.” (Associated Press, 11/25)

Yet factory owners are rarely punished for the deadly conditions they enforce in their workplaces. The garment industry is a massively profitable one in Bangladesh, exporting $20 billion annually, mainly to the U.S. and Europe. The Tazreen Fashions factory alone makes $37 million annually.

These massive profits flow from sweatshop conditions inside the 4,500 factories. Safety is ignored as workers are locked inside, working 60-hour weeks for around $37 a month. Workers opposing this murderous system are marked for death. Earlier this year a union organizer was found tortured and murdered outside the city. (AP, 11/25; New York Times, 11/25)

Such mass murder is common under capitalism, particularly in developing industrial economies. Just two months ago factory fires at a garment shop in Karachi and a shoe factory in Lahore, Pakistan killed a combined 314 people. Workers were trapped in the factories with no emergency exits and all doors locked to hold the workers imprisoned inside. Again, these sweatshops netted profits primarily for U.S. and European bosses. (CNN, 9/16; BBC, 9/11)

In 1993, a fire in the Kader Toy Factory in Thailand killed 188 workers and injured more than 500. It was the worst industrial disaster ever until the Karachi fire in 2012. The Kader factory, which made toys for Disney and Mattel, paid their workers slave wages and locked them into the building during the work-day. When the fire started, managers fled the scene, leaving the largely female workforce trapped inside to burn. (International Labor Organization, Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety)

Capitalists care only for profits. The fiery death of hundreds of workers is only part of the super-exploitation of the working class. Only a communist revolution to smash the capitalist class can end this mass murder of workers. Until that day it’s just a matter of time until the next big fire.