bangladesh

Illustration of French fashion model imposed on wreckage of Rana Plaza buildings

Rana Plaza, Coronavirus, and the Need for Worker Organizing

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The continuing aftermath of a disaster

As health and safety concerns around workplaces have reentered American public dialogue, it is worth noting that yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. Over 1,000 people died in the worst industrial disaster in the history of the garment industry.

Last August, I wrote a piece for Labor Notes on the state of efforts to prevent a similar disaster from happening again:

On April 23, 2013, a local television crew shot footage of cracks in the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The building was evacuated, but the owner of the building declared it safe and told workers to come back the next day. One Walmart supplier housed in the building, Ether Tex, threatened to withhold a month’s wages from any workers who didn’t return.

The building collapsed on April 24, and when the rubble was finally cleared, 1,134 people were found dead, with another 2,500 injured. It was the worst industrial disaster in the history of the garment industry.

From the ashes of Rana Plaza emerged the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. An international compact among nonprofit organizations, Western manufacturers and retailers, local Bangladeshi union federations, and several major global unions, the Accord has monitored fire and building safety in 1,700 factories in Bangladesh over the past six years for signatory brands.

The upshot of the story was that the Accord, while providing important gains in safety for Bangladesh’s enormous garment sector, did not go all the way in protecting the more fundamental right to organize from which real security on the job stems:

Chaumtoli Huq, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law and maker of the 2017 film Sramik Awaaz (Worker Voices) on the Bangladeshi garment industry, said that’s a problem..“The workers I interviewed in my documentary were very clear in what they think needs to happen—it wasn’t renew the Accord, it was put a union in my factory.” She argues that the international solidarity movement is not sufficiently listening to those workers…

“What’s odd is that you have almost these two parallel movements—you have the Accord piece and you have the wages and unionization piece,” said Huq.

At the time, minimum wage in the Bangladeshi garment sector was about $95 a month, or a quarter of what would constitute a living wage.

What’s changed in the last year? Well, wages sure haven’t gone up.

Instead, a different kind of industrial disaster has occurred. With the pandemic collapsing demand and supply chains around the world by March, one million garment workers in Bangladesh were laid off or furloughed, a quarter of the total workforce in the country’s garment industry. Most were sent home without severance or owed money, according to the New York Times. Most Western brands are avoiding financial responsibility to the workers.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA)’s members, who own not just factories but Parliament itself, are getting bailed out by the government to the tune of $590 million. Workers, on the other hand, have to face the twin calamities of extreme financial distress and worries about the spread of the virus.

The situation shows that responding to Rana Plaza with technocratic fixes and deals with the brands that were narrowly oriented on preventing another Rana Plaza-style industrial disaster—however well intentioned—was not enough. What’s needed to prevent the wide range of catastrophes that can affect workers in the global South is to emphasize building real worker power that can allow Bangladeshi people to advocate for themselves.

Otherwise, all you’ll end up with is another catastrophe down the line—one that is different in nature, but all too familiar in its decimation of the lives of the most vulnerable members of the supply chains that provide goods and services for Western corporations.

It’s not hopeless; it just takes respect for the will and the organizing capacity that Bangladeshi workers themselves already have. Solidarity, siblings.

British Lines, Brown Blood: A short note on Sri Lanka and Gaza

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The recent atrocities in Gaza have again refocused world attention on Palestine and the actions of the Israeli state and the Palestinian people.  Israel is engaged in yet another exercise of what is euphemistically called “Mowing the lawn”-  air strikes and military invasion undertaken on a periodic basis to subjugate the people of Gaza and make sure that Israel remains in control, on its own terms.  The most likely outcome, right now, looks like a worsening of the status quo, with Israel tightening the clamps around the throats of the Palestinian people.

At first glance, the people of Palestine and the people of Sri Lanka would appear to have little in common.  In point of fact, though, the two places are more similar than you might think.  Both are descended from British colonies and became independent in the same year, 1948.  Most pertinently, both areas experienced allegedly ‘ancient’ ethnonationalist politics of conflict in which there are calls for partition of the territory.   Both areas have experienced a lengthy military fight over land. 

When so many former British colonies have the same types of conflicts, we have reason to look to the history to examine whether correlation implies causation in this case.   The first key question for comparison is whether ethnicity and land play out differently in former British colonies like India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Cyprus, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Palestine, and Nigeria.  All of these countries experienced territorial partitions under the logic of ‘communal’ separation.  A tentative hypothesis as to why might look at the ways in which personal economic advancement in the colonial era was tied to the ability to stake a claim on behalf of a ‘community’.   The second is this: does the organizing of politics into militarized ethnic conflict lead to the overshadowing of a pro-people and pro-labor discourse?  In India, for example, the violence of the 1947 partition led many on the left to turn away from the politics of conflict as they witnessed the suffering of the people.  Is this the case in Palestine and Sri Lanka as well?

There are, of course, key differences as well.  The most notable one between Sri Lanka and Palestine is that Sri Lanka’s large-scale military conflict ended in 2009 with the defeat of the LTTE at the hands of the Sri Lankan government.  Proponents of the Palestinian people ought to take a lesson from the end of that war; tens of thousands of civilians died under circumstances that are being investigated by the United Nations. Another major difference, however, would seem to offer hope: the world stood by and barely blinked while Sri Lanka endured human rights violations that continue to today.  In contrast, the world is transfixed by what is happening in Palestine and Israel endures a level of scrutiny that is somewhat unusual among world states.

 

7/26/14: National day of action against REI

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On this Saturday, students across the United States are asking you to join them in a national day of actions at outlets of REI, a sporting goods chain.  In places like Rockville, Maryland (see below) or Seattle, Washington, they will be asking REI to do its part to support worker safety in Bangladesh.

In order to understand why students are protesting REI, we need to follow the money from Rockville and Seattle to Dhaka and Narayanganj in Bangladesh.

 

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The graphic above shows the path of the cash which leaves the consumers’ hand for the registers of REI.   REI, in turn, pays Greensboro-NC-based VF Corporation for the backpacks, pants, sleeping bags, and other goods it stocks.  VF Corporation, in turn, has contracted out the work to produce its goods to factories in Bangladesh like Medlar Apparels and Optimum Fashion (pdf).  Finally, these factories have pushed their  workers, for extremely low pay and long hours, to produce the goods on time and with sufficient quality; in exchange the workers receive a very small percentage of the total cost the consumer paid.

Bangladesh’s garment industry is experiencing a crisis in terms of building safety and other, very basic measures of worker well being.  This crisis was concretized in the collapse of Rana Plaza, a multistory building where over 1,100 workers died in April 2013.

There are two main efforts right now to try to establish basic conditions like ‘the building won’t burn down’ in Bangladesh’s garment sector.  The first is the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, which, according to USAS, is a legally binding agreement between brands and legitimate representatives of workers in Bangladesh.  Importantly, the Accord includes unionizing and other worker organizing into the basic framework for improving building safety; as such, it recognizes that worker organizing is important not just in and of itself, but also vital for ensuring that worker concerns about building safety are heard.

The alternative to the Accord is a company sponsored effort called the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety.  The Alliance is an initiative spearheaded primarily by American corporations like Wal-Mart and lacks the teeth that the Accord has.  Most importantly, it does not have the same practical commitment to the importance of worker organizing.

Back to this Saturday.  What USAS is asking consumers–asking you to do –is  to use the leverage that you have over REI by requesting that REI remove VF Corporation’s goods from its shelves.  If successful, this would put further pressure on VF Corporation to sign up to the stronger measure, the Accord, and thus lend support to active worker organizing efforts in Bangladesh by legitimate representatives.

It may sound complicated, but it boils down to a very simple fact: in that diagram above, the consumers are the only group of people besides the workers themselves that can be reliably asked to take the side of labor.  If you can, show up at an REI near you to support Bangladeshi workers on Saturday.  Here’s the announcement for the DC area action:

Take Action at REI in Rockville, MD to End Deathtrap Working Conditions in Bangladesh

Who: United Students Against Sweatshops, the nation’s largest student-run organization supporting workers rights, and YOU!

What: Since 2005, more than 1,800 garment workers have died in preventable factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh. In the wake of these disasters and in the face of massive pressure from consumers, over 175 apparel brands have signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally-binding agreement between brands and unions that holds the promise of bringing an end to mass fatality disasters in the garment industry.

Unfortunately, North Face its parent company, VF Corporation, have refused to sign this groundbreaking agreement. Instead, the company has teamed up with its buddies from Walmart to create a fake safety program that excludes workers and is not legally binding.

Students and consumers are taking action at REI stores to demand that the company pull all North Face products from its shelves unless VF signs the Accord. Unfortunately, just this month REI said that it would not cut ties with North Face or meet with students to discuss the company’s human rights abuses. Now we’re stepping up the pressure to show REI that our demands can’t be ignored.

When: 12:30pm, Saturday, July 26th

Where: 1701 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852

Report back from Government of Bangladesh meeting with US Congresspeople

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SALW received a report back from a lobbying meeting of representatives of the Government of Bangladesh with United States Congress members.  The meeting was held Tuesday and covered labor issues in Bangladesh’s garment sector.  Apparently, no members of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Export Association (BGMEA) were there, contrary to what had previously been indicated.

In attendance were reps from the Bangladeshi American Democratic Caucus (BADC), the Bangladesh Medical Association of North America (BMANA), the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the United States Department of Labor, the International Trade Council of the U.S. House of Representatives, The United States Trade Representative, staff from the office of U.S. Representative George Miller, and U.S. Senator Carl Levin.

The Bangladeshi government argued that progress to improve labor conditions in Bangladesh’s garment export industry was unprecedented.  Using a presentation from the BGMEA, the government argued that an increase in costs to production could be passed along to workers.  It requested that U.S. government officials visit Bangladesh in 2014 to meet with the BGMEA.

Senator Levin indicated that safety conditions had improved and some progress had been made on the implementation of laws for minimum wage, but that the Government of Bangladesh and the BGMEA were not taking worker organizing rights seriously enough.  He said that he had met with Bangladesh Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed when the latter had visited, and that despite the meeting, Ahmed had punished worker representatives upon return to Bangladesh.  Levin pointed out that because many families and workers are dependent on the income from garment work, the workers were made vulnerable.  He said that he recognized that garment owners might not be accustomed to dealing with worker rights issues, but steps were necessary.

The Worker Rights Consortium representative said that he agreed that Bangladesh had made enormous economic progress in the garment sector to have become the 2nd largest producer of ready-made garments in the world, but that it’s important to remember that brands sourcing from Bangladesh, the Government of Bangladesh, and others have responsibilities.  He pointed to recent violence against a union leader and said that violence against worker representatives indicated a serious problem that must be addressed.

Referencing a claim in the presentation from the BGMEA, the representative from the Worker Rights Consortium said that one of the figures was incorrect; contrary to the claim of the BGMEA that 21 factories had been shut down as a result of safety concerns, the WRC representative said that only 10 had been closed.  He acknowledged that this meant workers were left without work, but argued that the concern over safety ought to be paramount in such instances.  He also raised concerns that the BGMEA was not tolerating dissent from workers on important issues.

U.S. Congressperson George Miller’s staff member raised concerns that issues of repression against worker representatives were not being taken seriously enough and that the BGMEA and government were sending mixed messages with regard to a dispute at Pioneer.  He said they were acting contrary to the interests of workers by, for example, publicly arguing that it was against the interests of the state for workers speaking up about labor issues.

The representative of the Government of Bangladesh said that it was BGMEA, not the Government of Bangladesh, that had made that claim and that the Commerce Minister was not aware of what happened at Pioneer.

The Government of Bangladesh representative said that Bangladesh is a newer country that has only been independent for 43 years.  The rep asked for more time to resolve these issues.

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Bangladeshi government, garment owners, to lobby members of U.S. Congress on 7/15/14

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On Tuesday, representatives of both the Bangladeshi government and an industry body for garment manufacturers and exporters will be lobbying members of the U.S. Congress.   They will be looking to restore tariff benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences that have been suspended since last year by the Obama Administration.  The benefits were suspended by the U.S. government shortly after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building left over 1,100 Bangladeshi garment workers dead in a preventable factory disaster.

The Bangladeshi government and BGMEA will be meeting with several Democratic Congress members, including John Conyers, Sander Levin, Gary Peters, George Miller, and Mike Honda, and the staff members of others, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerry Connolly, Sheila Jackson, and Keith Ellison.  The parties will be discussing progress on a set of demands that the U.S. government has made of the Bangladeshi garment sector and the Bangladeshi government to improve safety and foster unionization.

A hasty return to better trade terms between Bangladesh and one of its main customers, the United States, would remove a substantial source of pressure currently pushing garment owners and the Bangladeshi government to allow improved working conditions and unionization.  Such a step might also signal brands like Wal-Mart and Children’s Place that the U.S. government feels enough progress has been made to return to the status quo in trade terms when in fact much remains to be done on both building safety and worker rights in the Bangladeshi garment sector.

The meeting is being organized by a Bangladeshi diaspora group that seeks participation of the Bangladeshi community in the Democratic Party.  Members of the media have also been invited.

Big up, BIGUF

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Nomita Nath is the 26-year-old President of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation, the largest garment workers’ union federation in Bangladesh.  BIGUF has 42 unionized factories as member unions and several more pending.  Nath was recently in Washington, DC for an International Labor Rights Forum conference on women’s rights and worker rights as well as several meetings with U.S. government officials.  Outspoken, clear, and committed, Nath is a leader of and an ally to garment workers in Bangladesh and elsewhere around the world.

 

 

Global Day of Action: Wal-Mart, Children’s Place, Pay up!

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On April 24, 2013, Aklima Khanam was forced to go to work despite serious structural problems at Rana Plaza, the building her garment factory was in.  A half hour after commencing, the electricity went out.  When the backup generator was started, the building collapsed, pinning Khanam under a machine for 12 hours.  1,136 others died in one of the biggest industrial disasters in the history of the industry.

Khanam and the other workers have received a few promises from brands like Children’s Place and Wal-Mart, but they have yet to receive full and fair compensation for their physical and mental traumas.  Moreover, the physical infrastructure of the Bangladeshi garment sector is in a dire state according to union activists like Aleya Akter of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation, and another disaster like Rana Plaza is just a matter of time.  Even so, companies like Wal-Mart refuse to sign on to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh that would provide the most effective means to prevent future tragedies like this one by promoting independent health and safety inspections and providing workers a voice in their workplace through a union.

Stand with Khanam, Akter, the BGIWF and many others this April 24, 2014, at an action in your hometown that will tell the brands that it’s time to pay up and additionally to sign the accord!