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Conditions for Garment Workers in Bangladesh

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When people buy from brands like Nike and shop at stores like H&M and Gap, they do not pay much attention to how the products arrived at the stores. In many cases, these clothing products are produced in sweatshops in developing countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Almost half of the population in Bangladesh lives off of less than a dollar a day.

Garment workers in Bangladesh toil day after day under extremely harsh conditions for low wages, sometimes handling dangerous chemicals with their bare hands and inhaling toxic fumes due to poor ventilation in many factories.

In April of 2013, an eight story building in Bangladesh called Rana Plaza collapsed leaving over 100 dead and over 2,000 injured.

The poor conditions of the factory itself and the lack of safety precautions taken to ensure its workers’ well-being were neglected and therefore led to the collapse. In addition to this incident, there has been a history of factory mishaps over the past couple of years in Bangladesh. In November of 2012, the Tazreen garment factory in Bangladesh caught fire and killed 112 of its workers.

At this time, the factory was producing goods for Walmart.

Besides the incidents themselves, it is also important to focus on the working conditions and the violations of human rights that happen daily in factories like these. According to the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights, workers in the Tazreen factory work 72-81 hours per week. Their salary depends on their sewing skill; senior sewing operators earn at minimum 23 cents per hour and junior sewing operators earn 21 to 22 cents an hour.

As a majority of the workers are women, abuse is common and some are even denied maternity leave — blatant violations of human rights that have been occurring for years. Even after one tragedy, further precautions are not taken to ensure the safety of the workers.

An article from the Daily Mail accounts a Canadian journalist who worked undercover in Bangladesh and witnessed the atrocities of one of the smaller garment factories. She reported that when she first arrived at the sweatshop, a nine-year-old girl named Meem was in charge of training her.

The article also noted that there were “no fire extinguishers, only one exit – the front door – and little more than a hole in the ground, down a rat-infested hall, for the toilet.” These accounts present the harsh reality for many garment workers in Bangladesh.

Violations of human rights are happening elsewhere too—most recently in Cambodia. Workers there have started protesting in the city Phnom Penh for higher wages.

Sometimes people take things for granted because they are easily accessible. Organizations like the Clean Clothes Campaign have been established to spread awareness of this issue and to help those who have been detained for protesting for higher wages and better conditions. By not purchasing products from companies who outsource their work unfairly to other countries, a better future can be created for garment workers whose human rights have been violated.

– Kenneth W. Kliesner

Sources: BBC News, The New York Times 1, The New York Times 2, The Epoch Times
Photo: Demotix

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Retailers Agree to Renovate Bangladeshi Factories

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In the wake of the recent garment factory tragedy in Bangladesh, some high-profile retailers have signed an agreement to fund safety renovations on their factories there. Bangladeshi factories have a history of hazardous conditions. Workers are often willing or forced to work in obviously dangerous circumstances. The factory buildings can be unstable, usually resulting from illegal additions, and workers are often overcrowded and underpaid. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is roughly $38 dollars per month. However, most workers’ gratitude for the work is more powerful than their fear of the working conditions.

In November 2012, a fire in a Bangladeshi clothing factory killed 112 people. Although the multi-story factory employed 1,700 people, it was not equipped with any fire escapes. The factory had received a “high risk” safety rating in May 2011 and a “medium risk” rating in August 2011. The large conglomerate that owned the factory had a wide-reaching market. It sold to Walmart and IKEA, and exported to the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Although this fire was tragic, recent events in Bangladesh have understandably garnered much more attention and outrage. The garment factory building collapse on April 24th, 2013 claimed 1,127 lives. Authorities claim that the building owner added on to the factory illegally, so the structure was not as stable as it should have been. The owner also housed heavy equipment on upper levels, compounding the problem. Workers had seen a crack in the building and many had refused to come to work the day before the collapse. However, they had been forced to resume work as usual the next day. In what is considered a direct reaction to the tragedy, the Bangladeshi government recently decided to allow trade unions for garment works and appointed a committee to discuss raising the minimum wage. While these changes are a step in the right direction, their effectiveness is still in question. Companies can still fire workers for unionizing, and unsafe factory additions are clearly happening, even though there are safety regulations in place.

The recent tragedy in Bangladesh has resurrected ethical questions surrounding first-world clothing companies’ use of Bangladeshi workers as cheap labor. Labor rights activists have attempted to persuade some of these first-world companies to take action by covering the costs of improving safety conditions in the factories they do business with. Recently, two of these companies, H&M and Inditex, have done so by signing the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. This agreement states that retailers must pay for all necessary safety renovations to factories, which will be subject to independent inspections made available to the public. These companies have agreed not to work with any factory that resists essential building changes. Under the contract, workers are also granted the right to refuse to enter a building they deem unsafe.

This agreement is seen as a major step forward for the movement, as H&M is the chief manufacturer of clothing in Bangladesh and Inditex is the leading fashion apparel company in the world. PVH, the owner of Tommy Hilfiger, already agreed to these terms last year, and other agreements are in the works with Gap, Wal-Mart, and Benetton.

– Katie Fullerton

Sources: ABC, NBC, Huffington Post