On the 24 April, a building in the Savar district on the outskirts of Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, collapsed. Eight stories tall, housing garment factories for some of the UK’s largest clothing brands, the incident marked the most deadly ever industrial accident in Bangladesh and sparked major concerns over the safety of garment factories worldwide. Three weeks on, with the death toll standing at over 1,000, HCX asks: what impact will this have on the fashion industry?
The Rana Plaza building was home to over 5,000 workers, making clothes for brands such as Monsoon, Primark and Matalan. The day before the disaster, workers were briefly evacuated due to cracks being found in the sides of the building, before being told to return to work, with some claiming that they were threatened with a deduction in wages unless they did so. However the next day, apparently sparked by an attempt to start up generators in the building, the structure collapsed.
The incident comes less than six months after a fire at a Dhaka garment factory in November killed at least 110 people, drawing international attention to safety in such factories. On the 8th May, only two weeks after the Rana Plaza disaster, a fire also broke out at a knitwear plant in Dhaka killing at least 8 people. The incidents have raised increasing concerns over the use of such factories by the fashion industry. Primark have already pledged to compensate victims families, however the real question is whether these tragedies will spark the industry to take real and decisive action.
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The need to produce fast fashion at low prices often means that factory workers are paid very low wages and forced to work long hours in dangerous conditions. Often, brands are not actively aware of where their clothes are being produced – Doug Miller, author of Last Nightshift in Savar, argues that although brands might make orders with companies which meet safety regulations, often such companies cannot fulfil the orders at the desired price – and so subcontract to less reputable factories. Therefore it seems that technically, clothes companies can claim that they hold no responsibility for where their clothes are made. President of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, Babul Akhter, says that buyers often overlook their responsibility to ensure the safety and security of the workers making their clothes. Whether or not such deadly disasters such as the Rana Plaza collapse will finally incite them to take an active role in the production of their products is a crucial issue, and a large factor in this decision will be the reaction of the public.
Many are calling for a boycott of shops which use such factories – Primark being an often cited example. However, others question whether this would make a real impact, or whether it would instead lead to less jobs. The sad truth is that workers in the garment factories of Bangladesh, and elsewhere, need the money this work provides. For many, their families rely on the income they earn. However, others argue that this should not mean that the conditions in which they work should be any less than safe and clean.
John Hilary, executive director of the campaigning group War on Want, argues that “What is important about this tragedy is that is has thrown into stark relief the fact that this is an industry where the workers are not just exploited and forced to work in an environment of harassment, violence and abuse, but where basic guarantees of safety have been thrown to the wind, where corners have been cut to the extent that a building can collapse on top of thousands of workers.”
With the garments industry providing Bangladesh with significant economical growth, the impact of calls for a change in conditions remains to be seen. The 2006 Bangladesh Labour Act states that a company must devote 5% of its net profit for the welfare of workers every year, however this law often goes unenforced. The EU is considering putting pressure on Bangladesh to improve the safety of its factories, and Hilary believes that “There is the potential for something to come out of the devastation of Rana Plaza”. HCX wonders: Will the situation change, or is it simply too easy for things to remain the same?