Grameenphone’s 15-year legal battle with thousands of former employees has intensified into a volatile phase of protests and arrests, involving a financial exposure that staff claim exceeds the company’s separate $1 billion government audit dispute.
The row centres on statutory interest on delayed Workers’ Profit Participation Fund (WPPF) payments for 2010-2012. Former employees argue GP delayed principal payments for over a decade through litigation, allowing statutory interest under the Bangladesh Labour Act to accumulate into one of the nation’s largest corporate employment claims.
GP disputes this, saying it paid the principal per court directions and the remaining issues are sub judice.
The dispute spilled into public view on Tuesday when nearly 500 former employees and families gathered near GP House under the Grameenphone 5 Per Cent Delay Arrear Recovery Unity Council banner, demanding a negotiated settlement.
Police detained six organisers beforehand, who later secured bail.
Vatara Police Station Officer-in-Charge Mazharul Islam told TIMES of Bangladesh that GP had filed a case days earlier accusing nine named and several unidentified people of assault and vandalism.
“After questioning those detained during Tuesday’s programme, police showed Khalid Mamun, Bulbul, Nazrul, Kalam, Mujibur and Quraishi arrested in that case. They will be produced before a court,” he said.
Organisers described the protest as peaceful, accused GP of using police force over dialogue, and announced a nationwide movement from 1 July.
GP maintained claims should be resolved through courts, adding it sought legal protection following alleged threats and vandalism against staff and assets, requiring police deployment to ensure uninterrupted telecoms services.
At a press conference, former employees claimed each of nearly 4,000 affected individuals could be entitled to over Tk33,000 crore if a Labour Act provision applying 75 per cent of GP’s annual dividend to outstanding claims is enforced.
“The amount would be at least Tk22 crore per person even if the tougher provision is not applied,” Unity Council communications secretary Adeeba Zerin Chowdhury told TIMES. GP rejected these calculations, stating over 4,300 eligible employees voluntarily accepted principal WPPF payments after signing undertakings per High Court directions.
Adeeba disputed this, arguing GP paid only the principal while leaving interest subject to court ruling. “When we were approaching a victory at court, the company in a tricky way withdrew its writ against the government in 2023, and the legal course got distracted,” she said.
Since then, periodic protests have become a major talking point. The row began in October 2010 when a government statutory regulatory order brought mobile operators under Chapter XV of the Bangladesh Labour Act, requiring them to establish WPPF and Workers Welfare Funds.
Grameenphone challenged the notification in the High Court in 2011 and obtained a stay. Parliament subsequently amended the Labour Act in 2013 to expressly include mobile operators within the WPPF regime, after which Grameenphone established the required Board of Trustees and states it has made regular WPPF contributions. The disagreement persisted, however, over liabilities for 2010-2012.
Former employees say the High Court permitted Grameenphone in 2014 to distribute only the principal, while leaving the legal consequences of delayed payment, including statutory interest, to be decided after disposal of the writ petition.
They argue the order preserved their right to pursue interest and that the undertakings signed before receiving the principal did not waive statutory rights, as the issue remained unresolved. Grameenphone maintains it complied fully with the court’s directions.
The case took another turn in March 2023 when Grameenphone withdrew its writ petition, which was later discharged for non-prosecution.
Former employees argue the withdrawal removed the company’s challenge to the 2010 notification and strengthened their claim that statutory interest became recoverable under Sections 234 and 240 of the Bangladesh Labour Act.
More than 1,000 former employees subsequently filed individual Labour Court cases seeking delayed-payment interest.
Protesters say those proceedings have stalled because the Grameenphone Employees Union – formed years earlier by employees, including several now leading the movement after subsequently losing their jobs – filed a leave-to-appeal petition seeking to revive the withdrawn writ, leaving the underlying constitutional issue unresolved.
Grameenphone does not accept that characterisation and maintains the dispute should be settled through the legal process.
The former employees’ Labour Court petitions argue delayed WPPF payments attract statutory interest calculated under the Labour Act using 75 per cent of the company’s declared dividend rate.
They contend the accumulated liability now significantly exceeds the financial exposure in Grameenphone’s separate, approximately $1 billion dispute with the government over a Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission audit.
Those calculations form part of the court filings and have not been determined by the courts. Grameenphone disputes both the legal interpretation and the claimed liability.
The latest demonstrations follow earlier confrontations between former employees and police, including a February 2025 protest that ended with water cannons, baton charges and arrests.
Adeeba Zerin, also a founder of the Grameenphone Employees Union, raised her dismissal dispute with the International Labour Organization (ILO), claiming that Grameenphone had fired her for organising the employees.
The ILO earlier this year described the case as “serious and urgent.”
Grameenphone did not immediately reply to the TIMES of Bangladesh’s question regarding why the company withdrew its writ petition midway through after so many years, instead seeking more time.
