These include formation of minimum wage board, refixation of salaries and benefits in line with market price, ensuring trade union rights, reopening of closed mills and factories, ending of privatisation and initiatives to make ailing industries profitable, they added.

The leaders said workers have fallen in the whirlpool of political chaos and thus have been deprived of their just rights.

They also called for intensifying the agitation against the government to protect the industries of the country.

The convention was organised by Shilpa-Sramik-Karmochari Rakkha Samonnay Parishad at the National Press Club in the city.

The speakers said the BNP-led four-party alliance government is closing down local industries one after another at the recommendation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund making thousands of workers jobless.

They said the government still remains indifferent when the religious extremists are carrying out bomb and grenade attacks creating an unstable situation in the country.

"Lack of unity among us is the main obstacle to meet out our demands and time has come to be united irrespective our internal difference," said Nurul Islam, president of Bangladesh Trade Union Kendra.

"The living cost and price of essentials are increasing day by day but the salaries of the workers are not increasing," said Abdul Motin Master, president of Jatiya Sramik League.

Employers are compelling workers to work upto 14 hours a day without paying them overtime in violation of the country's labour law, said Abul Bashar, president of Jatiya Sramik Federation while presiding over the convention.

Ray Ramesh of Jatiya Sramik Jote, Shafiqur Rahman of Jatiya Sramik Federaion, Abdul Kader of Bangladesh Sramik Jote, Shafi-uddin Ahmed of Sramik Federation of Bangladesh, Lutfor Rahman of Pat Suta Bastra Kal Sramik Karmochari Sammonnay Parishad also spoke.

The convention was attended by thousands of workers from different parts of the country.