Incidentally, many of the complaints against Chinese/Bangladesh/etc. factories could also be leveled against US factories per my experience. Other than the child labor bit, I've seen just about everything here, too, though I expect some of the problems are simply more widespread and occur more frequently.
Factory managers know that their employees don't have a lot of options and tend to squeeze them hard. (Then collect bonuses for cost savings...) It was always amusing to hear them tell the crew how great it was that labor expenses were down. And yes, I did point out afterwards to the people that "labor expenses" === "your paychecks." For whatever reason, this was not obvious to some.
When a US factory burns down and kills all the employees inside because they'd been locked in during their 15 hour shift - which has happened more than once in Bangladesh - you can say that US factories are similar to Bangladeshi factories.
I agree that conditions for many workers suck, but let's not pretend there's much similarity.
I give you the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, killing 146 garment workers. Same general gist, even: doors were locked by management from the outside "to prevent pilferage and unauthorized breaks".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
Lots of things have happened in the US since 1911.
Factory fires killing employees still happen in Bangladesh.
You're right that there are better protections in the USA. But day-to-day conditions are not so great--there's nothing particularly abnormal about 15-hour shifts, or people who would lose their jobs for refusing them.
1. Quitting means you are no longer making money, and if that was an acceptable endgame then you likely wouldn't be employed in such conditions in the first place;
2. I find it extremely unlikely that such factory owners would have a dearth of prospective (eager, even) employees.
#2 Having a large labor supply suggests the job is competitive. However, even if that's the case having people constantly quit increases training costs.
The point of all of this is industrialization tends to follow a path where people move from terrible low wage jobs to more well paid work. Even China has moved past the first rung of the ladder with market forces forcing factory's to increase pay and or improve conditions. Presumably where going to run out of 3rd world countries at some point, though there is some concern robots / AI is going to end up filling that nitch possibly stranding a few countries.
China has absolutely not moved past the first rung of this ladder. The majority of the Chinese population lives in abject rural poverty.
[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/china-urban-populat...
Most Chinese in the city (some which you may judge as living in abject poverty), are actually pretty happy with their situation. Even the homeless people seem more content than over here in Germany (I've talked to quite some of them over some baijiu at the corner of the street).
Please stop painting China a some kind of post-communist hellhole where people are starving on the streets whilst toiling away in backstreet sweatshops. You're not doing the country any justice, and you should really visit it someday.s
In the US, you can push back at things like unsafe conditions with threats of OSHA. I doubt there's any such thing in Bangladesh, but it would be a good start.
Having a job is great, but they should be required to provide reasonable working conditions. And even in the USA, they will do the absolute minimum unless pushed.
Source: I have worked 16-hour shifts in a US factory that was over 100F, sometimes unable to get lunch or bathroom breaks. I now work a normal office job and laugh at the very notion of comparing even a 100-hour week doing this to a 70-hour week doing that.