Safety improves but pay does not
Five years after the Rana Plaza disaster, many workers are safer but all remain among the world’s worstpaid, Reuters’
ALTHOUGH safety is a higher priority five years on from the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh that killed 1135 garment workers, dangerous conditions persist in smaller factories, campaigners say.
Among the improvements needed, they say, are raising the minimum wage, regulating work hours and mapping supply chains.
The collapse of the eightstorey building on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, on April 24, 2013 also injured more than 2000 workers, sparking demands for better safety in the world’s secondlargest exporter of readymade garments.
Brands, unions and the Government set up initiatives to improve factory safety. However, researchers say many workers still ‘‘work at their own peril’’, despite ‘‘great progress in many of the largest and best factories’’.
‘‘Workers in thousands of subcontracting factories, many of them young women, continue to work under unacceptably dangerous conditions,’’ Michael Posner, of New York University’s
Stern Centre for Business and Human Rights, said.
His statement was part of a report released earlier this month that assessed the postRana Plaza work environment.
‘‘Five Years After Rana Plaza: The Way Forward’’ estimates that up to 3000 subcontractors help ‘‘mother factories manage their export workload’’.
For many suppliers, subcontracting is a vital practice that helps compensate for ever increasing production pressures, said report coauthor Dorothee BaumannPauly.
‘‘With falling prices and faster fashion, the need to rely on subcontractors may be greater than ever for suppliers, despite the risks involved in the practice.’’
Among the risks for workers, the report said, are that many smaller factories ignore safety rules and operate out of unsafe buildings that lack fire exits, alarms and extinguishers.
Wakeup call
Parveen S Huda, who heads a project to map digitally every garment factory in
Bangladesh, said her team was going street by street to count even the smallest manufacturing unit and ensure it was logged in the system.
‘‘More than 1000 workers did not die in vain. They opened our eyes to the extreme conditions of workers, and we are slowly moving from just safety aspects to a more holistic approach to protect the rights of workers,’’ she said.
Two agreements after the disaster involved retailers in initiatives to improve safety: the Bangladesh Accord on fire and building safety, and an alliance on worker safety.
Since then about 2000 factories have been inspected, nearly 3 million workers have been trained on fire safety, and failings at many factories have been fixed. Other improvements include setting up helplines and forming safety committees.
‘Cheap labour’
But despite the progress on safety, Bangladesh’s garment workers remain among the worstpaid in the world, the Fair Labour Association (FLA) said in a report last week.
The legal minimum wage of $US66 ($NZ93.50) is below the World Bank’s global poverty line of $US85 and the Asia Floor Wage of $US454. That means many workers must work overtime to supplement their wages, the FLA said.
Overtime accounted for 20% of their salary, it said, and half of the workers put in more than 60 hours a week despite the impact on their health.
‘‘The ‘cheap labour’ branding of Bangladeshi workers needs to go,’’ Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies, said. ‘‘Within the factories, work conditions have improved in the last five years, but outside, the living conditions have not.’’
Way ahead
Posner said it would cost $US1.2 billion to fix poor conditions in subcontracting factories, and said a task force should be set up to count the number of factories and assess what it would cost to improve safety.
And, he added, a fund should be established by brands, governments and charities to help pay for improvements.
‘‘Western consumers are the beneficiaries of the cheap clothes produced in Bangladesh. Therefore, it is incumbent on western brands and retailers, as well as western governments, to step up to the plate,’’ he said.
In a statement, members of the alliance for worker safety — a grouping of mostly US retailers — said their factories had reached the ‘‘starting line for safety, not the finish line’’, and called on brands, factory owners and the government to cement the gains made.
Unions have also called on more brands to get involved.
The FLA report said buyers sourcing from Bangladesh should support a higher minimum wage and assure suppliers that they would pay more to meet that cost.
‘‘The work pressure, production targets, forced overtime and lack of social security makes the garment worker very vulnerable even today,’’ said Babul Akhter, of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers’ Federation.
‘‘Constant monitoring of the initiatives is required. The negotiating power of workers has to be strengthened to get them a fair deal for the clothes they stitch for global brands.’’