BANGLADESH DISASTER - WHO PAYS THE REAL PRICE OF YOUR SHIRT OR BLOUSE?
By David Bacon, The Progressive 4/26/13
http://www.progressive.org/bangladesh-disaster
Seven hundred workers have died in
factory fires in Bangladesh since 2005, the most
recent being the 112 who burned or jumped to
their deaths at the Tazreen factory on November
24th. Now hundreds more bodies are being pulled
from the rubble of the Rana Plaza building, in an
industrial district 18 miles from Dhaka.
At Tazreen the owners didn't build fire
escapes. They'd locked the doors on the upper
floors "to prevent theft," trapping workers in
the flames. At Rana Plaza, factory owners
refused to evacuate the building after huge
cracks appeared in the walls, even after safety
engineers told them not to let workers inside.
Workers told IndustriALL union federation
representatives they'd be docked three days pay
for each day of an absence, and so went inside
despite their worries. As a result, the death
toll is already over 250 and more are still
trapped under debris.
Perhaps the building codes at Rana Plaza
were not enforced, and permits never even
obtained, because Sohel Rana, the building's
owner, is reportedly active in Bangladesh's
ruling party, the Awami League. At Tazreen the
company was cited by fire inspectors, but never
forced to install safety equipment.
But Bangladesh's development policy is
based on attracting garment production by keeping
costs among the world's lowest. Safe buildings
that don't collapse or trap workers in fires
raise those costs. So do wages that might rise
above Bangladesh's 21ยข/hour -- not a livable wage
there or anywhere else.
The beneficiaries of those costs are the
big brands whose clothes are sewn by the women in
those factories. They give production contracts
to the factories that make the lowest bids.
Factories then compete to cut costs any way they
can.
Tazreen made clothes for Wal-Mart, among
other big brands. The Rana Plaza building held
several factories where 2500 women churned out
garments. According to the International Labor
Rights Forum, "one of the factories in the Rana
complex, Ether-Tex, had listed Walmart-Canada as
a buyer on their website." Labor activists found
other documents in the rubble listing cutting
orders from Benetton and other labels.
Workers have been trying for years to
organize militant unions to raise wages and
enforce safety codes. If they'd been successful,
they would have had the power to make the
factories safe. The morning after the Rana
collapse, 20,000 poured out of neighboring
factories in protest - other factory owners had
ordered them to keep working as though nothing
had happened.
Meanwhile, the giant companies
controlling the industry insulate themselves from
responsibility for the conditions they create.
And their most important accomplice is the
corporate social responsibility industry.
According to a report just released by
the AFL-CIO, Responsibility Outsourced, just
before a fire at the Ali Enterprises factory in
Pakistan killed 262 workers in 2012, clothing
manufacturers hired an auditing firm, Social
Accountability International, to certify it was
safe. SAI then subcontracted inspection to an
Italian firm, RINA, which subcontracted it yet
again to a local firm RI&CA. Ali Enterprises was
certified that August. "Nearly 300 workers died
in a fire two weeks after," the report charges.
Certifying factories that kill workers
has become an $80 billion industry that "helped
keep wages low and working conditions poor,
[while] it provided public relations cover for
producers," Responsibility Outsourced says.
"Manufacturing work has left countries in which
there were laws, collective bargaining and other
systems in place to reduce workplace dangers," it
says, while "jobs instead have gone to countries
with inadequate laws, weak enforcement and
precarious employment relationships."
This transfer was enabled by
corporate-friendly trade agreements guaranteeing
the products of these factories unfettered access
to U.S. and European markets. They
simultaneously put pressure on developing
countries to guarantee the rights of foreign
corporate investors and an environment of low
wages, lax enforcement of worker protections, and
attacks on unions.
In Bangladesh, after the Tazreen fire, a
binding agreement was developed by IndustriALL,
the ILRC and other labor NGOs, that seeks to
prevent fires and increase safety by guaranteeing
workers' right to organize and enforce better
conditions. Some companies, including PVH and
Tchibo have signed on. Wal-Mart and Sears,
however, not only refused, but would not even pay
compensation to the Tazreen fire victims.
As Bangladesh workers pull the bodies of
their friends from ruin of Rana Plaza, people
half a world away wearing the clothes they sew
should not turn their faces away. They need real
knowledge about how their shirts and blouses are
produced, and who produces them. Rather than the
image manipulation of Social Accountability
International and its competitor, the Fair Labor
Association, they should demand the truth, and
then use their power as consumers.
They should drive companies guilty of
industrial homicide out of the world's markets.
Coming in 2013 from Beacon Press:
THE RIGHT TO STAY HOME: Ending Forced Migration
and the Criminalization of Immigrants
DISPLACED, UNEQUAL AND CRIMINALIZED - A Report
for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on the
political economy of immigration
http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/displaced-unequal-and-criminalized/
Radio interview with Leticia Nava, fired Hilton
worker, and Sara Garcia, Casa de Vecinos
Organizados, about the impact of E-Verify firings
and immigration reform
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/90718
With Solange Echevarria of KWMR about growers
push for guest worker programs. Advance to 88
minutes for the interview.
http://kwmr.org/blog/show/4156
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization
Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
(Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the
U.S./Mexico Border (University of California,
2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
Entrevista con activistas de #yosoy132 en UNAM
Interview by activists of #yosoy132 at UNAM (in Spanish)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyF6AJQa9po&feature=relmfu
Two lectures on the political economy of migration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefE&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvg&feature=related
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
--
__________________________________
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
__________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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