EDITORIALS

Blood Garments
The Bangladesh tragedy exposes the callousness of the garment business.

he collapse of the eight-storey Rana Plaza in Bangladesh on 24 April that crushed over 1,127 people, mostly women garment workers, and injured more than 2,500, is now being called the worst industrial accident since the gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. But neither Rana Plaza nor Bhopal should be thought of as accidents. In both instances, the reason for the disaster was deliberate and callous neglect for which the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of those who built the structure, as in Rana Plaza, or those who owned and ran the plant, as in Bhopal. These deaths were not just the result of bad luck or a freak occurrence but caused by deliberate unconcern for human life. Particularly callous in this instance is that just the day previous to the collapse, cracks were visible in the building and it had been temporarily evacuated, only for the builder to get a rigged safety assessment done and for the factory owners to force workers back inside on pain of losing their jobs. While the negligence of the factory owners, the builder and the authorities is inexcusable, the international garment trade cannot escape responsibility. The latters constant attempts to lower costs and expand margins virtually guarantee that tragedies such as those that have occurred in Bangladesh will continue to happen. Fires and so-called accidents in the Bangladesh garment industry are not new. After each disaster, there are renewed calls to increase wages and improve conditions for workers. Despite this, not much has happened although a strike by garment workers in 2010 did result in a small increase in wages. The Rana Plaza disaster seems to have nally pushed the Bangladesh government to take some concrete steps. It has amended its 2006 Labour Act giving workers the right to form unions without seeking prior permission from their employers. The fact that such a provision existed at all is shocking. But for garment workers, who are mostly women and much too afraid to challenge the wage structure or working conditions, this provision virtually ruled out any chance of them ever organising. The government has also set up a committee to arrive at a minimum wage for garment workers who currently are among the worst paid in the world. Tragically, it is these low wages that

make Bangladesh competitive in the international garment trade, bringing in $18 billion a year through garment exports and providing work to 3.4 million people. There is a fear that raising wages will simply mean that the international garment trade will shift its production to countries with cheaper labour, a course which brought it to Bangladesh in the rst place. Indeed, after this recent disaster, some big brand retailers are already talking about doing precisely this. International labour groups and fair trade campaigns have been calling on companies in Europe and the US to adopt labour, wage and safety standards that would ensure that such tragedies are not repeated. The Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement, endorsed by the International Labour Organisation, is attempting to bring on board these international retailers. It requires these companies to contribute $500,000 per year for ve years towards ensuring that safety standards are actually implemented in the Bangladesh garment factories. The agreement also makes it binding that arbitration in any dispute is enforceable in courts of the country where a company is domiciled. Predictably, the largest US-based companies, like WalMart, have opposed this particular provision and are instead trying to formulate their own agreements, which are big on words and weak on enforceability. Although a couple of the larger retailers have, reluctantly, come on board, without the American companies the agreement would not be effective. However, the very fact that such an agreement is being discussed in the countries where these sweatshop garments are retailed is a step towards afxing responsibility beyond the country of manufacture. A third aspect of the international garment trade is the question of whether consumer awareness in the West can make any difference. To some extent, consumer campaigns against child labour, for fair trade and for environmentally benign products have found a response in the West. But this has not been on a scale to force global brands to adopt ethical manufacturing. The only way forward is for the country of manufacture to ensure basic humane working standards for their citizens and for trade unions, citizens and consumer organisations globally to keep the pressure on international retailers to follow these standards.

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

may 25, 2013

vol xlviII no 21