Bangladesh’s garment industry unravelling

Collected
Seven years ago, among the worst industrial disasters ever sold - the collapse of an eight-story commercial building in Rana Plaza, Dhaka - proven to the world the heavy price of making cheap clothing to fuel the ‘fast fashion’ industry for consumers in the global North.

The tragedy on 24 April 2013 killed 1129 and injured more than 2500 workers. In response, Western companies invested in two organisations: The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh created by European businesses and The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety created by North American retailers. The brands declared that it was no longer likely to be business as usual and they would strictly monitor and inspect some of Bangladesh’s factories.

In the last seven years, registered factories in Bangladesh have been required by the Alliance and the Accord to comply with electrical, fire safety and structural standards. The factories included in these monitoring agreements take into account 27 % of total factories, since Tier 2 and 3 subcontracting factories aren't monitored by these organisations. By 2018, 16 per cent of all Accord and Alliance registered factories had successfully completed the entire remediation process.

While the Accord spends US$11 million each year supporting engineers and monitoring staff, non-compliant factories did not receive any financial support to create necessary improvements. Smaller and under-resourced factories were simply terminated when they were not in a position to comply.

These agreements were successful to make a portion of Bangladesh’s factories structurally safer, but there's not been much progress in a number of other key areas. Garment personnel in Bangladesh still don't get paid a full time income wage which makes it impossible to build up any savings. They face brutal crackdowns on the right to organise and bargain despite a short increase in union registration after 2013. Brands adhering to the fast fashion business design continue steadily to squeeze suppliers by setting unrealistic targets, continually demanding that they produce increased quantities faster and cheaper.

Since the Rana Plaza disaster, lead times have declined by 8 %, prices paid to suppliers have declined by 13 per cent and wages have dropped by 6 %. The reality in 2020 is worse than business-as-usual in 2013.

The focus on the physical building as the primary culprit of the Rana Plaza disaster allowed for a narrow give attention to improvements to infrastructure alone, while ignoring power inequalities between brands, suppliers and employees that contain allowed this sector to flourish with low wages, poor working conditions and high profits.

Today, the industry is facing devastating consequences consequently of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2.7 million workers have already been fired or temporarily suspended. Most have already been sent home without pay and more than half of the garment factories experienced to shut their operations. By the center of April, buyers had already cancelled or postponed US$3.2 billion of garment orders from Bangladesh.

During this time of global upheaval, brands have used their unequal power positions with suppliers to justify cancelling or postponing orders and refusing to cover orders that suppliers have previously produced and materials that have already been procured, despite having a contractual obligation to take action. Brands have benefited from cheap labour from Bangladesh for many years but usually do not feel obliged to take care of those at the bottom of their supply chains. Therefore, thousands of garment personnel in Bangladesh may die, not from COVID-19, but from starvation.

Brands have bought in to the notion that necessary improvements to factories are better handled by alternative party monitors, rather than by labour groups or staff themselves. This has been ways to justify crackdowns on personnel organising - struggles are deemed disruptive and unproductive for the industry and the country’s monetary growth. Unfortunately little has changed within the last seven years to boost workers’ capability to bargain, negotiate and improve their conditions.

When garment personnel in the Rana Plaza building noticed cracks in early stages, they were told to come back to work to be able to meet the demanding targets for that day. These staff - who were threatened with not acquiring their wages or being fired if indeed they left the building - were forced to return to a predicament that eventually cost them their lives.

Seven years later, garment workers are still located in the unenviable position of experiencing to choose between their lives and maintaining their livelihoods. Many garment personnel have been told to go back to their factories, even under a nationwide lockdown, or elsewhere lose their jobs. That is a choice no person should have to create.

Unless there is meaningful change in the industry, you will have another disaster in the garment sector of unprecedented scale. Buildings that contain been made safer during the last seven years might not exactly collapse but if current practices by those at the top of global supply chains continue, the complete industry might.
Source: https://www.eastasiaforum.org

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