Rana Plaza one year later: Companies must pay up!

In another seven weeks, we mark the first anniversary of the building collapse at Rana Plaza, in Bangladesh.  Over 1,100 people were killed in one of the worst industrial accidents in history.

As you may know, this was followed up by a ground-breaking agreement signed by global unions, local unions in Bangladesh, employers, major clothing brands, the International Labor Organization, the Bangladeshi government and others.

In addition to trying to ensure that the tragedy doesn't repeat itself, the employers also agreed to help compensate the injured and the families of those killed.

As the Clean Clothes Campaign put it, "The survivors and victims families have suffered enough and should not have to relive that horrible day without being secure that their financial losses at least are covered. They suffered terrible injuries, lost husbands and wives, children and parents, brothers and sisters; and will bear the physical and emotional scars for life. This can never be compensated for, but they can and should be compensated for loss of income and medical costs before the anniversary."

But among those companies which have not made public donations to the fund are these:

Adler Modemrkte, Auchan, Ascena Retail, Benetton, C&A, Carrefour, Cato Fashions, Children's Place, Grabalok, Gueldenpfennig, Kids for Fashion, KiK, LPP, Manifattura Corona, Matalan, NKD, Premier Clothing, Primark, PWT, Walmart and Yes Zee.

IndustriALL, UNI Global Union and the Clean Clothes Campaign have launched an online campaign hosted by LabourStart to pressure those companies to pay compensation now.

Please sign up and send your message.  And please spread the word about this very important campaign.

Meanwhile, halfway around the world in Peru, the government is attempting to privatize the country's water supply -- over the objections of citizens and the country's trade union movement.  Those unions and their global union federation PSI have launched an online campaign demanding that Peru stop this privatization now.  Please support the campaign and spread the word.

Thank you very much!



Eric Lee

- Submitted by Bev

Unionizing Bangladesh garment factory workers face intimidation, violence: Report

Garment factory workers in Bangladesh who try to start trade unions are being intimidated and threatened with murder to stop their efforts to organize, a human rights watchdog says.

 Read more here. 

 - submitted by Gareth

USAS Year-End Report: ‘Tis the Season of Solidarity

 

On the eve of the six month anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, which claimed the lives of 1,134 Bangladeshi garment workers, we launched a new movement on college campuses across the country to demand an end to deathtrap factories. In the last eight years alone, over 1,800 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in building collapses and factory fires while earning just $37 per month on the job. On our campuses we are calling on our universities to require brands producing college-logo apparel to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally-binding contract — a Contract to End Deathtraps — between unions and brands that will transform the Bangladesh garment industry from deathtraps to safe workplaces — if enough brands sign it. Already, we’ve won impressive victories, with Temple, Duke, UPenn and NYU announcing that they will require their licensees to sign the Accord, and we won’t stop until every university in the country does the same! In response to this pressure, Adidas, Knights Apparel, Top of the World, and Fruit of the Loom just recently signed the Accord!

Campaign for a Contract to End Deathtraps

Campus Worker Justice

On dozens of campuses across the country, USAS locals are campaigning alongside campus workers and their unions to halt corporate outsourcing, raise wages, and negotiate fair contracts. Students in Boston, LA and DC are standing with adjuncts in their fight for a union voice. All across Tennessee, USASers are supporting the United Campus Workers in their fight for a living wage, and recently won a dollar raise for the lowest-paid campus workers in the UT system. In California, USASers walked the picket lines with AFSCME 3299 and UAW 2865 in the largest strike ever in the University of California system. At the University of Texas at Austin, USAS and the Texas State Employees Union successfully halted plans to outsource food service workers, and continue to campaign against the administration’s efforts to privatize other parts of the campus.

You can find the USAS website here.

-Submitted by Kathleen

Social Purchasing Shopping Tour (Dec. 11)

2nd Annual Holiday Shopping Bus Tour

The Social Purchasing Portal is offering a tour similar to Augustine's Ethical Shopping Tour.  For those who aren't finished after Augustine's tour on December 7, or if you have a conflict on the 7th, you can register for this one on Wednesday, Dec. 11.  It says that space is limited, so register ASAP.

For more information CLICK HERE.

-submitted by Gareth

Clothes on your back: Inside Cambodia's garment industry

This article, from the Toronto Star, takes us to Cambodia, whose garment industry is not as  big as Bangladesh's, but just as critical to its economy.  I've selected just a few small excerpts here, in part to reflect the seeming roller-coaster of progress, followed by regress.  Please read the entire Star article here.



Excerpt 1:  Moch (Moch and Sar are sisters) starts work at 7 a.m., sewing T-shirt sleeves until eight or nine in the evening, six days a week. She is given a one-hour break for lunch at 11. Her sewing quota is 950 shirts a day. For every 100 shirts above the quota she is paid an additional 25 cents. After adding the two or three hours of overtime, shift after shift, Moch can boost her monthly earnings to $130. Both Moch and Sar work under short-term contracts. Contracts for some workers run as short as three months. The sisters say theirs run for a year.

Four-fifths of Cambodia's exports are garments, from factories like this one southeast of Phnom Penh. 
Isabelle Lesser/Associated Press

Excerpt 2:  But Clinton was right about one thing. “We know sweatshop labour will not vanish overnight,” he said. That was April 1997.  Two years later, the bilateral agreement with Cambodia set a new standard.  It was a huge step forward.  Followed by a giant step backward.  Along with the expiry of the bilateral agreement at the end of 2004, Cambodia was fast-tracked to join the World Trade Organization. Under pressure from the garment industry, Better FactoriesCambodia (BFC) changed its reporting methods. As garment factories spread like wildfire in Phnom Penh and as garment exports exploded, transparency was abandoned.

Excerpt 3:  David Welsh is the Cambodia country director for the Solidarity Center, the international labour rights organization launched by the AFL-CIO in 1997. “Stakeholders who benefit most from the presence of the Better Factories program, namely the brands, the government and the industries, have been pushing this notion that if you’re the average consumer in Washington, Toronto or London you’re not to be blamed for thinking, well, the ILO is monitoring every factory there. Surely when they unearth infractions something’s done about those findings. That is exactly not the case. Quite the opposite. So it’s a real misnomer. They’re doing a great job monitoring. But it’s not within their mandate, deliberately not within their mandate, to do anything beyond that . . . I can tell you first hand, all the data that’s given to the government, to the brands and to the factories — it’s virtually always the case that never is any proactive measure taken unless they’re pressured to do so.”

You can read the entire Star article here.

-submitted by Gareth 

Bangladesh Accord appoints its leadership team

This is very exciting!

Brad Loewen, an administrator with the City of Winnipeg, has just been appointed the Chief Safety Inspector for the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Banglades.  He'll be moving to Bangladesh at the beginning of December to do his work.  This is from the press release:

“Brad Loewen’s task is central to all that we want to achieve. Under his experienced leadership, the Accord will establish and apply safety standards to all factories that supply to Accord member brands. It is a mammoth task but one in which Brad will have the capacity and authority to make decisions that will make direct, positive impacts upon the safety of Bangladeshi garment workers.”

Larry, an acquaintance of mine, is a good friend of Brad's.  This is from an email from Larry:  "Brad is off on Dec 1 to Dakka. A very interesting chance to make a difference. The consortium flew him first class to London England a couple of weeks ago, and from he tells me, the unions, the government, and the consortium all okayed his hiring. In fact he was the unanimous choice. Now for the next five years he has to try and change the world. Exciting stuff."

You can read the entire release here.

Click here to go to the home page of the Accord.

Walmart and Gap: End Deathtraps Now!

The latest in a series of preventable factory disasters in the Bangladesh garment industry occurred on October 8, 2013. Yet again, Walmart and Gap are responsible and must be held accountable.
Hundreds of workers were inside the Aswad Composite Mills factory when the fire broke out. Eight workers were killed and 50 were injured, some critically.
Aswad is one of 23 factories owned by the Palmal Group, which Walmart and Gap have praised as a top supplier. According to the Worker Rights Consortium, workers and management at the factory said that Walmart was the largest customer of the factory at the time of the fire – they had been producing for the company’s George brand. Reporters onsite uncovered documents of Gap, Walmart and other brands.
Walmart now owes compensation to the victims of three major factory catastrophes that have taken place in the Bangladesh garment industry within the past year. This is no coincidence. Walmart’s “always low prices” approach has helped create a garment industry of low wages and low safety standards in Bangladesh. As the second largest buyer of clothing from Bangladesh, Walmart bears a major responsibility to clean up the industry from which it has greatly profited.
While 90 other companies have joined together in the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, an agreement between companies and unions, Walmart has refused. Instead, Walmart teamed up with Gap to create a corporate-controlled program that is hardly more than a facelift of the programs that have failed Bangladeshi workers in the past. Meanwhile, the death toll continues to climb. Please take action now – join with us in calling on Walmart and Gap to stop putting profits over people’s lives.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT WEBSITE WITH PETITION.

- submitted by Bev 

Spinning tragedy: The true cost of a T-shirt

A Globe and Mail's months long investigation results in a lengthy report by Mark MacKinnon and Marina Strauss in today's Report on Business.  A number of excerpts are posted here, but you can read the entire report BY CLICKING THIS LINK.  The report begins by returning to the tragedy at Rana Plaza.

MARK MacKINNON AND MARINA STRAUSS

SAVAR, BANGLADESH and TORONTO — The Globe and Mail

At about 8:30 a.m. one morning in April, a generator rumbled to life at Rana Plaza – rattling the building, as it always did when it started.
Work had just begun at the welter of garment factories when the power went out. So a manager on the seventh floor, home to the New Wave Style factory, was quick to stand up as the lights went back on and announce that the building was safe. Everyone should continue doing their jobs.  But this time, Rana Plaza didn’t stop shaking.

“He died on the spot as he was announcing that we should keep working,” Raehana Akhter recalls. Then she fell, too. “It was like stepping into an elevator [shaft]. I felt this feeling in my stomach, and then everything fell.”  When she landed, Ms. Akhter, a 22-year-old mother who worked as a quality control officer for about $2 a day, was in complete darkness, with her left leg trapped under shattered cement.  “The ceiling was just here,” she says, putting her hand about 30 centimetres above her face. “I felt like this would be my little grave.”
..........

Excerpt 2
As garment factories have pushed into new markets in search of ever-cheaper labour, the apparel industry has become perhaps the ultimate symbol of two decades of globalization. Once a cornerstone of Canadian industry on Spadina Ave. in Toronto and Chabanel St. in Montreal, the manufacturing of clothing now ties together Western consumers and distant Asian workers in a cycle driven by trends and budgets that change with the seasons. No product better represents how our economy has been altered than the global tee, the fashion basic that’s sold for miraculously cheap prices, sometimes just $5.

A child is seen in a residential area adjacent to the Dignity Knitter garment factory in Sa’ang District, Kandal province, Cambodia. Factory workers rent small rooms in the compound – which has one water pump and four squat toilets – for just a few dollars a month. (Photo source:  Lauren Crothers for the Globe and Mail)

As The Globe and Mail found during more than two months tracking such T-shirts – from the cotton fields of China to the gleaming offices of Hong Kong and Singapore, to factories in Cambodia and Bangladesh and back to Canadian stores – supply chains are increasingly fragmented. Production leapfrogs from city to city. Middlemen outsource to other middlemen. Governments make bold claims but few checks on safety. And the consumer knows little about the long and tortuous path journey of that T-shirt to the store – only that it has become far more affordable than it ever used to be.
Yet as the ties between countries have become stronger, accountability has become a loose thread. The Globe’s investigation shows how companies such as Loblaw place their orders through middlemen, who in turn source work to a network of far-flung factories. The retailer whose shelves are stocked with cheap T-shirts in many cases does not know where in the world it or its materials is going to be produced when an order is placed. Inspecting buildings and working conditions has been beyond the retailer’s scope.
..........
Excerpt 3
No one personifies the middle man more than Bruce Rockowitz.
The 53-year-old – originally from Vancouver – is the chief executive officer of Li & Fung, the industry’s largest middleman.
After moving to Hong Kong from Canada in 1979, Mr. Rockowitz co-founded his own trading house – and outbid established players to land major American clients. Soon, one of those established players, Li & Fung, founded in 1906, bought up his company and asked him to head up the firm. (The first non-Fung to do so.) Since then he’s expanded the company’s network to 15,000 factories across Asia.
Along the way, the gregarious Mr. Rockowitz has also become a billionaire, married a local pop star and, when he’s not working at the glass-clad LiFung Tower, is seen driving a blue Bentley with a “Rock 8” licence plate around the city.
But that flash shouldn’t deflect attention to his real power over the supply chain. He works with such industry giants as Wal-Mart and Tommy Hilfiger. Hudson’s Bay Co. has Li & Fung manage much of its apparel outsourcing. And Loblaw and Joe Fresh are another client.
Twice a year, designers from Joseph Mimran & Associates, the creators of the Joe Fresh line for Loblaw Cos. Ltd. (Mr. Mimran is the “Joe” in Joe Fresh”), travel to Asia clutching precious cargo – the next season’s designs – which are then passed on to factory bosses.
Those bosses say that when deals are consummated, middlemen generally take about 5 per cent of the contract’s value from each side.
To Mr. Rockowitz, the logic of outsourcing the outsourcing is inescapable.
“Retailers are very focused on opening stores, marketing, designing product,” he says. “We focus on the supply-chain aspect, the sourcing side, the logistics side, and then creating brands they don’t want to do in-house … basically, doing what our customers don’t want to do, so that they can focus on growing their business.”

THE ENTIRE ARTICLE CAN BE READ HERE.

-Submitted by Kathleen

Update on the Situation in Bangladesh after Rana Plaza disaster

Victims of the Rana Plaza disaster still waiting for compensation

Almost five months after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, only nine of the twenty-nine brands invited to discuss compensation for the victims showed up for a meeting convened by IndustriALL Global Union and chaired by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
» Read more

Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity regains legal status

Thanks to international solidarity from trade union and labour rights organizations around the world, as well as pressure from the U.S Department of Labor, the NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh (NAB) has restored the legal status of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS).
» Read more

- submitted by Bev

Life, Dignity, and the Tragedy in Bangladesh

Kathleen and I are away from Winnipeg for a little stretch of time.  I like that phrase "stretch of time". Out here next to a lake, where time seems more elastic, there's time to read and reflect, along with walking, canoeing, and eating (of course).  I brought the August 2013 Sojourners magazine along, which on first skimming, appears to have quite a few excellent articles.

The first article that caught my attention is the one entitled "Life, Dignity, and the Tragedy in Bangladesh", and picks up on some of the other posts here in the Just Living Blog.  It is written by Mary Priniski, who is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Adrian and serves on the executive committee of Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice.  She has been involved with worker rights issues for more than 30 years.  I'll post some excerpts here, but encourage you to read this brief column in its entirety, including detailed statements of the seven social principles, by clicking here.  (The image is taken from the online version of this article.)

THE APRIL 24 collapse of a garment factory near Dhaka, Bangladesh, killed more than 1,125 people. That tragedy followed a fire that killed 112 last November at a factory making goods for companies including Walmart. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, at least 1,800 garment workers in Bangladesh have died in fires or other factory disasters since 2005. The collapse near Dhaka is the largest disaster in that time and the one that has gotten global attention.

Image: Chinese garment factory, Luisa Fernanda Gonzalez / Shutterstock.com

 
As a Dominican Catholic sister and member of Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice, I approach reflection on such a disaster from the foundation of Catholic social teaching. Each of the social principles relates to the situation in Bangladesh and challenges us to reflect on our own regard for those who provide our clothing.

• Life and dignity of the human person
• Call to family, community, and participation
• Rights and responsibilities
• Option for the poor and vulnerable
• The dignity of work and the rights of workers
• Care of God's creation
• Solidarity 

The social teaching of our churches challenges us to conversion to a way of life where consumerism is not our ruling value. The disaster in Bangladesh is just one indication that we are a long way from a society in which we value both individual flourishing and the common good.

 - Submitted by Gareth

Delivery of Letters to Walmart and Gap Re: Bangladesh Safety Accord

On Sunday June 23, Bob and I went to the St. Vital mall and delivered 26 letters to Walmart and 26 letters to the Gap.  The letters, which many of you signed, urged Walmart and the Gap to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, an internationally recognized, legally enforceable, union supported safety accord. 

At Walmart, we talked to an assistant manager, who promised to give the letters to the store manager.  The store manager phoned me the next day and said that he gave the letters to the head office in Toronto, and someone would contact me to discuss them. 

At the Gap, we met with a store manager who gave us a standard response letter, which says that the Gap is committed to improving working conditions in Bangladesh, but does not have any details.  The manager also promised to send the letters to the head office, and someone would contact me. 

I have not heard anything from the head office of either store.  I intend to follow up with this issue in the coming months.  Perhaps we can discuss further action at one of our fall meetings. 

 - Submitted by Amanda

Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh

Here's more good news re Bagladesh working conditions. I am saddened to read that most Canadian companies have not signed on.

I hope we hear more about who they are and how we might pressure them.

- submitted by Bev

  
Thirty-one of the world’s leading apparel retailers and brands have committed to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, accounting for more than 1,000 Bangladeshi garment factories. The legally binding program for fire and building safety includes independent inspections, worker-led health and safety committees and union access to factories, commitments to underwrite improvements in dangerous factories and resolve fire safety and structural problems. Importantly, the Accord also grants workers the right to refuse dangerous work, in line with ILO Convention 155.
The Maquila Solidarity Network welcomes the participation of so many key companies in the Accord, which will be signed by IndustriALL and UNI global unions and witnessed by labour rights organizations including the Clean Clothes Campaign, the Worker Rights Consortium, International Labor Rights Forum, and MSN.

With the May 15 deadline for initial signatures passed, the next step is for participating company and trade union signatories to begin implementation. For companies that have not yet signed – including most Canadian companies, with the notable exception of Loblaw – signing on now will ensure that they are part of the solution in Bangladesh and not part of the problem.
Read more from Clean Clothes Campaign here
 

Can global brands create just supply chains?

Note 1:  The author of this article, Richard Locke, is the Head of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Political Science Department and the Deputy Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management.  His current research is focused on improving labor and environmental conditions in global supply chains.  

In this article, which appeared first in Boston Review (see note 2), before appearing in Salon.com, Locke asks the important question: "Can global brands create just supply chains?"  His opening comment is:  "To do so, the public will need to hold companies like Apple and Nike accountable for fair labour standards."  The article is quite long, however it's well worth the read, providing a detailed and comprehensive overview of the global supply chain involved in the production of many of the goods we value, and why hoping that corporations "police" themselves is misplaced hope.  He calls for significant engagement by civil society and governments.

Note 2:  I hadn't heard of Boston Review before, so I looked it up.  On its website, it describes itself this way:  "Boston Review is a magazine of ideas, independent and nonprofit. We cover lots of ground—politics, poetry, film, fiction, book reviews, and criticism. But a few premises tie it all together: that democracy depends on public discussion; that sometimes understanding means going deep; that vast inequalities are unjust; that human imagination breaks free from neat political categories; and that powerful images are worth piles of words."  I might add that the cover title of the most recent Boston Review is JUST WORK: A Corporate Responsibility?.

Posted here are the first few paragraphs of Locke's article, followed by a link to the whole article:

Workers are seen inside a Foxconn factory in the township of 
Longhua in Guangdong province. (Credit: Reuters/Bobby Yip)

When Jia Jingchuan, a 27-year-old electronics worker in Suzhou, China, sought compensation for the chemical poisoning he suffered at work, he appealed neither to his employer nor to his government. Instead, he addressed the global brand that purchased the product he was working on. “We hope Apple will heed to its corporate social responsibility.”

In the past, his appeal would probably have fallen on deaf ears. But today, throughout the world, buyers in many industries have acknowledged a degree of responsibility for workplace conditions in supplier factories and pledged to ensure that the goods they eventually market are not made under abusive, dangerous, environmentally degrading, or otherwise unethical conditions. These businesses have committed to using private, voluntary regulation to address labor issues traditionally regulated by government or unions. And for the most part, the companies have acted on these commitments.

But have these private efforts improved labor standards? Not by much. Despite many good faith efforts over the past fifteen years, private regulation has had limited impact. Child labor, hazardous working conditions, excessive hours, and poor wages continue to plague many workplaces in the developing world, creating scandal and embarrassment for the global companies that source from these factories and farms.

That is my reluctant conclusion after a decade studying this issue. Before I turned my attention to global labor standards, I was a student of labor and politics in Western Europe and the United States. I came to the idea of private regulation with the hope that it might be a new, suppler way of ensuring workers fair compensation, healthy and safe conditions, and rights of association.

To test that hope, I began studying Nike because I was impressed with its commitment to labor standards. After several years of effort, with many conversations and visits to corporate headquarters, I convinced the company to share its factory audit reports and facilitate visits to its suppliers. Eventually my case study evolved into a full-fledged research project involving the collection, coding, and analysis of thousands of factory audit reports; more than 700 interviews with company managers, factory directors, NGO representatives, and government labor inspectors; and field research in 120 factories in fourteen different countries. What began as a study of one company (Nike) in a particular industry (athletic footwear) grew to include several global corporations competing in different industries, with different supply chain dynamics, operating across numerous national boundaries.

But what started in hope ended in disappointment. ...

Access the whole article by clicking here.

- submitted by Gareth

Letter to Bob from the International Labor Rights Forum

Dear Bob,

This International Workers’ Day, we are with heavy hearts as we watch the official death toll rise to over 400 dead, with at least another 400 unaccounted for, at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh where construction crews have begun to bury the unclaimed bodies of the workers who were crushed to death when five garment factories collapsed last Wednesday.

Activists protest in front of Gap global headquarters in San Francisco, April 25, 2013.

 As much as ILRF has followed these horrific accidents for years, written about their cause and warned against continued risks in Deadly Secrets, we too were shocked to our core last Wednesday. Shock has since turned to anger and more determination – for us and for many of the activists we have been hearing from and at the protests we’ve convened during the past month. 

Bangladesh Garment & Industrial Workers Federation march on May Day 2013, calling for justice for garment workers.

ILRF staff is flat out in response mode now, working to get the word out in the press and social media: something big has to change. Corporations need to stop prioritizing profits over human lives! We need to tell global companies that they cannot send production abroad in search of lower costs, and then just hire a factory auditor, pay for some more training, but still walk away when things get too difficult to fix – all while keeping secret the problems they find and sidelining trade unions and legitimate worker organizations.
The legally-binding Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement is built on principles that break the mold from how companies have managed their supply chains up until now. Already two companies have joined the agreement, but Gap Inc has so far refused, despite their earlier promises and previously-touted leadership in social responsibility. Please join us in a Week of Action to Stop the Murders of Garment Workers by delivering a letter to a manager at a Gap Inc store - Gap, Banana Republic or Old Navy. And if there isn’t a store near you then please help circulate our petition to your friends. With any questions in advance of your action, and to report-back from your action, please email liana@ilrf.org.
Now is not the time for global brands to walk away from Bangladesh. Now is the time for them to join with worker advocates globally and locally, to ensure transparency and make a real commitment to ensure change for garment workers and save lives.
Please take action and help us drive real corporate change. And please join us – in person or in solidarity – on May 22nd at our Annual Labor Rights Defenders Awards: Down the Supply Chain; Driving Corporate Accountability.

In solidarity,
Judy Gearhart
Executive Director
International Labor Rights Forum

- submitted by Bob G.

From Mourning and Outrage to Action

Bev received this letter from Linda Foxvog (International Labour Rights Forum).

Right now, scores of garment workers are still trapped under the rubble of a building in Bangladesh which housed six factories making clothes for dozens of US and European brands. These workers were denied their right to refuse dangerous work: they were told they would lose a month’s pay if they didn’t report to work the day after cracks appeared in the walls. Over 370 people have perished as a result of Wednesday’s tragedy, and it remains unclear how many more victims will lose their lives as the rescue operation continues. This is now the deadliest disaster in the garment industry in known history. 

Image included in email to Bev

Today, on International Workers’ Memorial Day, ILRF is observing a day of mourning for workers who have been killed as a result of corporate greed and criminal negligence. Then tomorrow we are kicking off a Week of Action to Stop the Murders of Garment Workers. Please click here to sign our new petition to H&M, Walmart and Gap - the largest buyers of clothing from Bangladesh - and we’ll keep you updated on ways to help echo the voices of workers who are demanding change. 

Image included in email to Bev

With your help, we can build enough momentum to make real change. We’ve just wrapped up our 10-city “End Death Traps” tour with Sumi Abedin, a young woman who survived the Tazreen fire. The tour received excellent news coverage – check it out on our facebook and twitter pages. Please help us keep growing this movement for safe workplaces and justice for garment workers.


In solidarity,

Liana Foxvog
International Labor Rights Forum

- Submitted by Bev R.

Cheap clothes help fuel social revolution

I found this a very interesting article in the Globe this morning.

My immediate reaction when I hear about things like the disaster in Bangladesh is to stop purchasing any clothing made there, or generally to reconsider what I'm buying and why.  The article points out where simply boycotting clothing made in any one particular country may not be the solution.  Here's a good quote that encapsulates what the whole article is about:

"A despairing friend who says she struggles to pay the price of Canadian-made clothes, or shop only at the Maritime second-hand chain Frenchy's, asked me this week if she had to "go naked" in order not to feel guilty.  But our cheap clothes have helped fuel a social and economic revolution in Bangladesh, and Bangladeshis do not want that to end."

Food for thought.

- Submitted by Nancy R.

Bangladesh Death Toll Passes 250

Western Firms Feel Pressure as Toll Rises in Bangladesh 

Photo source:  NY Times, April 26, 2013

Excerpt from NY Times article, Friday, April 26, 2013:

“Even in a situation of grave threat, when they saw cracks in the walls, factory managers thought it was too risky not to work because of the pressure on them from U.S. and European retailers to deliver their goods on time,” said Dara O’Rourke, an expert on workplace monitoring at the University of California, Berkeley. He added that the prices Western companies pay “are so low that they are at the root of why these factories are cutting corners on fire safety and building safety.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

 - Submitted by Gareth 

GAP - "Detox Our Water" Campaign

The textile industry in Indonesia has been caught dumping wastewater with a pH of 14 directly into the Citarum River. If you can't remember your chemistry lessons from school - most drinking water has a pH between 6.5 and 8.5. Oven cleaners have a pH around 12. 14 will burn your skin.

The owner of the offending facility is in business with a number of global fashion brands, including Gap. I don't think that's what Gap means when they talk about basic clothing.

Photo Source: Greenpeace.org

It gets worse - the same facility is also releasing a number of hazardous chemicals, some with hormone-disrupting properties - taking advantage of a system that requires little transparency. Most people who live alongside this river and who depend upon it for their livelihoods do not know what is being released into it. But this is our water, and we have a right to know!

Companies like Gap have the power to influence their suppliers and work with them to provide greater transparency. Their major competitors have all committed to Detox, what is Gap waiting for?

Facebook Photo: Detox our Water

Thank you,

Marietta Harjono,
Detox Campaigner
Greenpeace International

PS: if you're not on Facebook, you can forward this email to your friends and family and invite them to check our detailed page to spread the word!

- Submitted by Bev

Tell Nike: Stand Against Slavery

Nike claims to be a champion of human rights, but if that is true, why is Nike doing business with Daewoo International, a company that is knowingly profiting from forced labor in Uzbekistan? Join us in calling on Nike to stop doing business with slave cotton companies, like Daewoo International.
Every year, during the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan, over a million children and adults – including teachers, nurses and doctors – are forced to work in the cotton fields and meet daily picking quotas enforced by the Uzbek Government.

Over 130 apparel companies (including Nike) have taken a stand against forced labor in Uzbekistan by pledging to not buy forced labor cotton from Uzbekistan. Now, Uzbek human rights activists are calling on apparel companies to completely cut ties with companies, like Daewoo, that are profiting from Uzbek cotton.
Unfortunately, Nike, which sources synthetics from Daewoo, is refusing to end its relationship with the South Korean company in spite of the fact that several other companies, including H&M, The Limited, C&A, and Michael Kors, have moved to cut ties with Daewoo. Nike’s decision to protect Daewoo sends a dangerous message to other companies and damages the efforts of Uzbek citizens who have risked their lives to bring justice to Uzbekistan’s cotton fields.
Please join us in asking Nike to stop doing business with Daewoo and agree to implement the Daewoo Protocol – a series of steps the company needs to take to eliminate forced labor cotton from Nike’s supply chain.

Sincerely,

Sean Rudolph
International Labor Rights Forum

- Submitted by Bev R

Introducing the Maquila Solidarity Network

A link to the Maquila Solidarity Network has been added to the Recommended Website List.  The Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) is a labour and women's rights organization that supports the efforts of workers in global supply chains to win improved wages and working conditions and a better quality of life.

The March 5 "Maquila Solidarity Wire" can be found here.

Submitted by Bev R.