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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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...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

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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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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. Police 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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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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Bangladesh Deploys Paramilitary in Garment Zone After Protests

International Fashion Safety is becoming an international catalyst for change. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.bloomberg.com

Bangladesh’s government deployedparamilitary troops in the industrial belt of Gazipur to deterfurther protests as garment factories reopened after five daysof violent demonstrations. “The situation is now relatively calm,” MostafijurRahman, additional superintendent of police for Gazipurdistrict, said in a phone interview. Television footage showedthe troops patrolling streets where workers attacked factoriesand blocked traffic earlier this week to demand wage increases. The government is acting after factory owners met HomeMinister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir yesterday to urge tightersecurity. Thousands of garment workers clashed with police thisweek in the industrial belt on the outskirts of Dhaka, forcingabout 400 factories that supply companies such as Wal-MartStores Inc. to close. “Unrest in the garment sector will be firmly dealt with,”the minister told reporters, after the meeting. The labor unrest came five months after the collapse of theeight-story Rana Plaza factory complex killed more than 1,000people in the worst industrial accident in the South Asiancountry’s history. Low wages and production costs have helpedspawn the country’s $19 billion manufacturing industry thatsupplies global retailers with cheap clothes. The protestors, some of whom pelted factories with bricksand blocked a highway, demanded a minimum monthly salary of8,114 taka ($104), up from 3,000 taka now. Retailers such asWal-Mart, Inditex SA, Gap Inc. and ...

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Doing Business in Bangladesh

International fashion safety continues mirror the genesis of the workers" compensation moment in the US. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.nytimes.com

The owner of a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was at New York University last week to meet with clothing industry executives, labor activists and American and European government officials to talk about the Bangladeshi garment industry, the world’s second-biggest exporter of clothes after China. The workplace disasters in this business have grabbed the world’s attention, and for the past year, Western retailers that outsource their clothing production to Bangladesh have tried to come up with reforms. But there are big obstacles to improving safety in an industry driven by low profits and constant upheaval. I met with the businessman and another factory owner; both would speak only on the condition that they not be identified because they feared offending their customers. A central problem, the first owner told me, is the rapid turnaround big retailers like Walmart demand when they put in orders for tens of thousands of T-shirts or shorts. Since his factory isn’t able to make all the garments in time, he has to send some of the work to smaller producers. “I can’t do it officially,” he said, “but unofficially, I can.” Unauthorized subcontracting to smaller, uninspected factories is not supposed to happen, but it remains an entrenched practice. It is a primary reason safety guidelines that apply to bigger contractors have not prevented the hundreds of worker deaths in fires and building collapses in facilities like Rana...

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