There has been this back and forth about how to improve conditions between the companies who make a profit on the backs of dead people…well, truly, that’s the reality of profits in the garment industry — you either die standing up at work, die later because your body is broken down from slaving away for pennies or you die quickly, or perhaps slowly, when places like the Rana Plaza collapse. Now, there is a new turn in the story — and I remain skeptical still that much will change.
Via The Wall Street Journal (paywall):
Three parallel safety pacts spurred by the death of more than 1,100 people in the April collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh have tentatively agreed on common standards for plant inspections in the country.
Experts from the three groups—the Accord on Fire and Safety in Bangladesh, which is led by mostly European retailers; the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Gap Inc.; and the government’s own National Tripartite Action Plan—reached the deal last week.
It would prompt the groups to adopt unified standards to simplify inspections and avoid duplication, officials with the three programs said.
But my old friend, Scott Nova has it right:
Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, was skeptical about the impact, however. While “a strong, common standard” would be “an important and useful tool,” duplication of effort wasn’t the major concern in Bangladesh, Mr. Nova said.
“The reason the industry inspection programs of the last 10 years failed is not that they duplicated effort or that they lacked a common standard,” he said. “They failed because they were not carried out by competent safety engineers, were not independent or transparent, and involved no willingness by the brands and retailers to fund necessary factory renovations.”
I would just add the point I’ve made repeatedly that real change in these industries will only come when there are strong, protected rights to form unions because ultimately organizations of workers are needed to make sure people don’t die at work. Companies don’t really care — it’s inconvenient to a company when a worker dies (because there’s the messy clean up and sometimes more scrutiny, temporarily) but it’s not a moral issue.
