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Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Months After Deadly Fire, Owners of Bangladesh Factory Surrender to Court

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com



DHAKA, Bangladesh — A husband and wife whose factory in Bangladesh was consumed by fire in 2012, a disaster that killed 112 employees, surrendered to a court on Sunday in Dhaka, the capital.
In December, more than a year after the fire, the police filed charges of culpable homicide against the owners of the Tazreen factory — Delowar Hossain, and his wife, Mahmuda Akther, along with 11 associates, including the factory’s manager and an engineer.
On the night of the fire, more than 1,150 people were in the eight-story building, working on a tight deadline to fill orders for international buyers. When the fire broke out and an alarm sounded, some managers told their employees to ignore the alarm and continue to work.
As the fire spread, many workers found themselves trapped in smoke-filled staircases or behind windows that were covered with iron grilles.
Mr. Hossain’s lawyer, A. T. M. Golam Gous, whose motion for bail was rejected on Sunday, argued that Mr. Hossain and Ms. Akther were not present at the time of the fire and had “neither direct involvement nor indirect involvement” in it. Mr. Gous said he would appeal the denial of bail.
A state prosecutor, Anwarul Kabir, meanwhile, argued that the owners had failed to make the necessary arrangements to ensure the safety and security of the workers.
Because the owners are “the...
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Thursday, January 16, 2014

Fire Kills 16 at Factory Making Shoes for Export

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com

A fire tore through a shoe factory in eastern China, killing at least 16 people, and the state media said that the police on Wednesday took into custody the owners of the plant, which makes shoes for export around the world.

The blaze at the plant in Wenling was the latest in a series of deadly industrial accidents in China, casting attention on the poor occupational safety situation in the country. Last summer, 120 people were killed in a fire at a poultry slaughterhouse in northeastern China, in which blocked exits were cited as a cause of the high number of deaths.

Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said that the police took into custody Lin Jianfeng, the legal representative of the plant, and Lin Zhenjian, a shareholder of Taizhou Dadong Shoes Company. Taizhou Dadong exports shoes to five continents and employs 4,580 workers, who produce 50,000 pairs of shoes a day, according to a profile of the company.

Leading Western clothing retailers have come under increased scrutiny for workplace conditions at Asian plants that supply their products, particularly after the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh last year killed 1,100 workers. It could not be determined which...


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Monday, January 6, 2014

Garment Makers Stumble on Call for Accountability

PARETS DEL VALLÈS, Spain — From a sleek gray distribution center near Barcelona, the global fashion brand Mango ships 60 million garments in a year. Automated conveyor belts whir through the building like subway lines, sorting and organizing blouses, sweaters and other items to be shipped around the world. Human hands barely touch the clothes.
Five thousand miles away in Bangladesh, the Phantom Tac factory in the industrial suburb of Savar was a hive of human hands. Hundreds of men and women hunched over sewing machines to produce garments in an assembly line system unchanged for years. Speed was also essential, but that just meant people had to work faster.
Last spring, as it pushed forward with global expansion plans, Mango turned to Phantom Tac to produce a sample order of polo shirts and other items. Then, on April 24, the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people in the deadliest disaster in garment industry history, and destroying Phantom Tac and other operations in the building.
Now, eight months later, the question is what responsibility Mango and other brands should bear toward the victims of Rana Plaza, a disaster that exposed the murkiness and lack of accountability in the global supply chain for clothes. Under intense international pressure, four brands agreed last week to help finance a landmark $40 million compensation fund for the victims.
But many other brands, including Mango, have so far refused to contribute to the...
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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Clothing Brands Sidestep Blame for Safety Lapses

From a sleek gray distribution center near Barcelona, the global fashion brand Mango ships 60 million garments in a year. Automated conveyor belts whir through the building like subway lines, sorting and organizing blouses, sweaters and other items to be shipped around the world. Human hands barely touch the clothes.

Five thousand miles away in Bangladesh, the Phantom Tac factory in the industrial suburb of Savar was a hive of human hands. Hundreds of men and women hunched over sewing machines to produce garments in an assembly line system unchanged for years. Speed was also essential, but that just meant people had to work faster. 

Last spring, as it pushed forward with global expansion plans, Mango turned to Phantom Tac to produce a sample order of polo shirts and other items. Then, on April 24, the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people in the deadliest disaster in garment industry history, and destroying Phantom Tac and other operations in the building.

Now, eight months later, the question is what responsibility Mango and other brands should bear toward the victims of Rana Plaza, a disaster that exposed the murkiness and lack of accountability in the global supply chain for clothes. Under intense international pressure, four brands agreed last week to help finance a landmark $40 million compensation fund for the victims.

But many other brands, including Mango, have so far refused to contribute to the...

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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Bangladeshi Factory Owners Charged in Fire That Killed 112

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com


NEW DELHI — The police in Bangladesh charged the owners of a garment factory and 11 of their employees with culpable homicide in the deaths of 112 workers in a fire last year that came to symbolize the appalling working conditions in the country’s dominant textile industry.
The case is the first time the authorities have sought to prosecute factory owners in Bangladesh’s garment industry, so powerful that the state has long sought to protect owners from unionization efforts by workers and from international scrutiny of working conditions.
The fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory on Nov. 24, 2012, was later eclipsed by a building collapse in April that cost the lives of 1,100 workers and brought global attention to the unsafe working conditions and low wages at many garment factories in Bangladesh, the No. 2 exporter of apparel after China. The fire also revealed the poor controls that top retailers had throughout their supply chain, since retailers like Walmart said they were unaware that their apparel was being made in such factories.
Among those charged on Sunday were the factory’s owners, Delowar Hossain and his wife, Mahmuda Akther, as well as M. Mahbubul Morshed, an engineer, and Abdur Razzaq, the factory manager, according to local news reports.
Bangladeshi officials have been under intense domestic and international pressure to file charges against those deemed responsible for last year’s deaths. Fires have been a persistent problem in...
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Monday, December 23, 2013

Buying Overseas Clothing, U.S. Flouts Its Own Advice

Interational fashion safety, once a catalyst in the US of beter working conditions, still does not bring to the table the USToday's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com


One of the world’s biggest clothing buyers, the United States government spends more than $1.5 billion a year at factories overseas, acquiring everything from the royal blue shirts worn by airport security workers to the olive button-downs required for forest rangers and the camouflage pants sold to troops on military bases.
But even though the Obama administration has called on Western buyers to use their purchasing power to push for improved industry working conditions after several workplace disasters over the last 14 months, the American government has done little to adjust its own shopping habits.
Labor Department officials say that federal agencies have a “zero tolerance” policy on using overseas plants that break local laws, but American government suppliers in countries including Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan and Vietnam show a pattern of legal violations and harsh working conditions, according to audits and interviews at factories. Among them: padlocked fire exits, buildings at risk of collapse, falsified wage records and repeated hand punctures from sewing needles when workers were pushed to hurry up.
In Bangladesh, shirts with Marine Corps logos sold in military stores were made at DK Knitwear, where child laborers made up a third of the work force, according to a 2010 audit that led some vendors to cut ties with the plant. Managers punched workers for missed production quotas, and the plant had...
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Friday, November 29, 2013

Arson blamed for huge Bangladesh garment factory fire

It is feared that thousands of people could lose their jobs as a result of the blaze
Arson is being blamed for a huge fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh which makes clothes for Western brands, fire and police authorities say.
The fire gutted a 10-storey building at Gazipur, 40km (25 miles) from Dhaka.
Firemen are battling to extinguish flames in four adjacent buildings.
Smoke rises from the fire at the Standard Group garment factory in GazipurPolice say that the fire follows protests by garment workers to demand higher wages and better conditions. A garment factory collapse in April killed more than 1,100 people.
No-one was reported injured in Friday's fire.
The fire inside the Standard Group garment factory warehouse is believed to have caused million of dollars worth of damage The blaze also destroyed numerous trucks carrying garments for export, officials say A large consignment of clothes for export abroad was damaged in the fire
A Reuters photographer at the Standard Group garment factory said that burnt garments were strewn at the scene bearing brand names from US and other international retailers.
Officials say that the factory was one of the biggest in the country and as many as 18,000 people worked there.
At least 15 trucks carrying garments were also reported to have been set on fire.
"We think it's an act of arson committed by workers from both inside the factory complex and outside," Mosharraf Hossain, a senior officer...
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Sunday, November 24, 2013

U.S. Retailers Decline to Aid Factory Victims in Bangladesh

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

One year after the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh, many retailers that sold garments produced there or inside the Rana Plaza building that collapsed last spring are refusing to join an effort to compensate the families of the more than 1,200 workers who died in those disasters.
The International Labor Organization is working with Bangladeshi officials, labor groups and several retailers to create ambitious compensation funds to assist not just the families of the dead, but also more than 1,800 workers who were injured, some of them still hospitalized.
A handful of retailers — led by Primark, an Anglo-Irish company, and C&A, a Dutch-German company — are deeply involved in getting long-term compensation funds off the ground, one for Rana Plaza’s victims and one for the victims of the Tazreen fire, which killed 112 workers last Nov. 24.
But to the dismay of those pushing to create the compensation funds, neither Walmart, Sears, Children’s Place nor any of the other American companies that were selling goods produced at Tazreen or Rana Plaza have agreed to contribute to the efforts.
Supporters of compensation plans say they are needed to pay for medical care for those who are paralyzed or otherwise badly injured, to provide income after a vital breadwinner died and to give families enough income so that children are not forced to quit school and go to work.
“Compensation is so important because so many families are suffering — many...
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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Europeans Fault American Safety Effort in Bangladesh

Workers' Compensation is not a byproduct of safety it is only the result of non-safe workplace conditions. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Tensions broke into the open on Monday involving two large groups of retailers — one overwhelmingly American, the other dominated by Europeans — that have formed to improve factory safety in Bangladesh.
An official from the European group voiced concern that the American retailers would piggyback at no cost on the efforts of the Europeans — which includes H&M, Carrefour and more than 100 other retailers — in financing safety upgrades at hundreds of factories.
The members of the European-led group, the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, have made binding commitments to help pay for fire safety measures and building upgrades when shortcomings in safety are found in the more than 1,600 garment factories its members use in Bangladesh. While the American-dominated group, which has 26 members, including Walmart Stores, Target and Gap, has stopped short of making such a binding commitment, it has pledged to provide loans for the improvements.
Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a labor rights group based in Washington that is a member of the Europe-led accord, said members had a “significant concern about a free-rider situation.”
Jeff R. Krilla, the president of the American-dominated group, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, said he was surprised by the criticism, noting that his alliance had agreed to make $100 million in low-cost loans available to Bangladesh factory owners to finance...
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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Dozens Hurt in Bangladesh Garment Factory Protest

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from abcnews.go.com


Riot police fired tear gas to battle thousands of stone-throwing garment workers who rampaged through two industrial towns in Bangladesh during a protest over wages Tuesday that closed at least 200 factories and left dozens of people injured, police said.
The protesters built roadblocks with abandoned vehicles and wooden logs in violence that highlighted the poor working conditions in an industry that earns Bangladesh $20 billion in exports yearly but whose workers are the lowest paid in the world.
Thousands of angry workers hurled stones at security forces and attacked factories in the towns of Savar and Ashulia outside the capital, Dhaka, Industrial Police Director Mustafizur Rahman said. At least 200 factories closed in the second day of the protest, and 80 people were injured over two days.
Authorities deployed hundreds of paramilitary border guards to help police fighting the protesters.
"We can't accept the wages that are being offered to us. This is not enough for us," said Kahirul Mamun Mintu, a protest leader at Savar. "Our movement will continue until our demands are met."
A government-appointed panel voted last week to raise the minimum wage for garment workers to 5,300 takas ($66.25) a month — a raise by 77 percent but still the lowest minimum wage in the world. The workers are demanding 8,114 takas ($100) instead.
Factory owners have not endorsed the proposal, arguing the proposed wage for an unskilled newcomer would increase production costs...
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Retailer sandblasting bans have changed little in the garment industry

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.mercurynews.com

Three years ago, when Levi Strauss announced it had banned the use of sandblasting, labor advocates hoped the move by the top-selling jeans maker would help end the deadly practice, which gives denim a fashionable look but is linked to a fatal lung disease.
But even as Target and Gap joined Levi Strauss in proclaiming bans, sandblasting persists in factories that make those retailers' clothes in China, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh, countries responsible for the bulk of the five billion pairs of jeans made each year, research by nonprofits, medical groups and labor organizations shows.
"There clearly is sandblasting going on. I don't know how anyone could really deny it," said Katie Quan, associate chair of the Labor Center at UC Berkeley.
Counterfeit jean production, outsourcing in the supply chain and vast factories that make jeans for dozens of brands under one roof make it difficult to track jeans from production to the shopping mall. But the groups say their research establishes that workers in many of these overseas factories are sandblasting -- spraying sand on denim to make it appear bleached or distressed -- without the necessary protective gear.
Levi Strauss says its suppliers have removed sandblasting equipment from their factories and that it regularly conducts on-site inspections at factories.
"No Levi Strauss & Co. products utilize sandblasting in product development, design, finishing or in any other aspect of garment...
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Sunday, October 20, 2013

Bangladesh: Is Worker Safety Failing in the Global Supply Chain?

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed 146 workers in New York City more than 100 years ago probably is the worst single workplace tragedy in U.S. history. Workplace safety and health reforms followed the fire and eventually led to the signing of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the creation of OSHA and MSHA. Unions gained strength and demanded safer working conditions for members. And now, modern building codes demand certain standards of construction, as well as sprinkler systems, warning systems, appropriate storage of flammable goods, an appropriate number of exits and the ability to access those exits.
Download the pdf of the Bangladesh features.
But as U.S. corporations shifted the bulk of their manufacturing overseas, how responsible should they have been for contractors that set up shop in countries where production is the only concern? Should U.S. and European companies bear some responsibility for the welfare of their contractors’ employees?
The authors of the articles in this special section say that yes, the multinational companies doing business in countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan have a moral responsibility to improve the working conditions and safety of the people who manufacture their clothing and other products. After all, manufacturing in Bangladesh is big business: The ready-made garment (RMG) sector in Bangladesh exported goods worth more than $20 billion in the past year; nearly 12 percent more than a year earlier.
The...
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Saturday, October 12, 2013

Deadly factory fire again underlines importance of Bangladesh Accord

Fashion Safety continues to be flamed by fires and failue in safety. Today's post is shared from .industriall-union.org

The IndustriALL Bangladesh Council of trade union affiliates is working to assist the humanitarian relief effort following the fire that also injured a reported 50. The joint IBC team is working with both the families of the victims and the injured workers. This effort will coordinate with the labour ministry and the employer associations BGMEA and BKMEA.

135 workers of the factory complex's 2,000 strong workforce were inside the two-story building when the blaze took hold around 5.30pm.

Investigations are ongoing and we must wait to learn the causes of the fire. The Gazipur factory fire is shocking, but not surprising. The Bangladesh government has estimated that at least 50% of the country’s garment factories are dangerous.

IndustriALL Global Union General Secretary Jyrki Raina said,
This is a truly shocking tragedy. It underlines the need for urgent action to make the safety improvements that are so badly needed in Bangladesh’s ready-made garment factories. Through the Bangladesh Accord, we will be doing our utmost to make progress as quickly as possible, so that we can avoid tragedies like this in the future.
UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings said,
The Bangladesh Accord, by bringing together industry and trade unions, will help to ensure that long-overdue safety improvements are made. We know the size of the...
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