Black Friday In Bangladesh

Walmart marks the holiday season this Friday with deals on its Faded Glory women’s sweaters. But this time of year marks a different occasion in another corner of Walmart’s empire: In Bangladesh, survivors and families remember the second anniversary of a massive fire at the Tazreen factory on the outskirts of Dhaka. After the fire on November 24, 2012, as families mourned over the incinerated bodies in the factory ruins, activists dug up some damning shreds of evidence: they uncovered a Faded Glory label, proving that the workers had produced Walmart-branded clothes.

Today, two years on, Walmart seems eager to put the horrific legacy of Tazreen behind it. But the victims, including 112 dead and many others left injured and impoverished, can’t move on.
The disaster left Maliha partially blind, with severe leg and head injuries, leading her husband to abandon her “to avoid taking care of me.” She recounted in a 2013 report by the Clean Clothes Campaign and International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), “The money I used to earn at Tazreen helped me support my ill mother in the village. Now, I wonder everyday how to survive and feed my children who are so young.”
Some of the world’s largest corporations should have an answer for her, but on Tazreen’s second anniversary, labor and human rights groups have reminded the many multinationals linked to the factory that they have yet to take responsibility.

A coalition led by the Clean Clothes Campaign and other labor groups declared, “Walmart still hasn’t paid any compensation to the victims nor has it engaged worker organizations to find a solution.” In addition, the workers at the “death trap” factory had “also produced clothing for Delta Apparel, Dickies, Disney, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, El Corte Ingles, Sean John Apparel, Kik, Piazza Italia, and Sears. None of these companies have paid a cent towards compensation.”

To date, activists report that workers have been left with only meager, piecemeal payments from charitable funds from the government and some local business associations.

The Tazreen tragedy was a prelude to an even larger disaster, the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory compound, which killed more than 1100 people and galvanized international outrage. Though both incidents have led to some compensation offers (a separate program has been established to support Rana Plaza victims, with some donations from Walmart, but still underfunded), workers still face massive physical and economic hardship.

The two tragedies show that industrial catastrophes happen so routinely in Bangladesh’s garment sector, the devaluing of workers’ lives is structured into the gears of the production chain, reflected in the abysmally low wages and astronomical profits generated by high-paced overseas mass production.

If the overall culture of the workplace remains hostile to workers, they will remain unprotected in terms of both physical safety and protection of their labor rights. Kalpona Akter of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity testified to Congress in February that currently in the factories:

Their right to refuse dangerous work is denied. When I say this, I’m thinking of the workers at Tazreen who were ordered to go back to their sewing machines when the fire alarm went off and then when it became really clear that it was a real fire, the exit doors were locked and the floor managers with the keys were nowhere to be found…. This is why I fear that until the largest U.S. companies that buy from Bangladesh–companies such as Walmart, Gap and VF Corporation–join the Accord, garment workers will continue to die on the job in my country.

taken from here