Benetton to pay $1.1M to Rana survivors
Italian firm one of the last to compensate Bangladeshi workers in factory collapse
Nearly two years after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh killed more than 1,000 workers, Italian clothier Benetton announced Friday it would contribute more than $1 million (U.S.) to a fund for survivors.
Benetton, one of 29 brands that sourced clothes from the ill-fated factory, is one of the last big-brand fashion houses to compensate the survivors of the Rana Plaza tragedy. The structurally unsound building collapsed on April 24, 2013, killing 1,129 people, severely injuring hundreds more and leaving many children without mothers. Most of the garment workers at Rana were women earning less than $1 a day.
The International Labour Organization, a United Nations group, has recommended a survivors fund of $30 million be set up to compensate the victims and families of Rana. It was calculated that Benetton contribute $550,000, based on its level of commercial association with Rana, Benetton said in a statement.
However, Benetton said it wanted to double its recommended commitment to the Rana survivors fund and gave $1.1million. The company said it also had given $500,000 before the trust fund was established.
“We have decided to go further to demonstrate very clearly how deeply we care,” Marco Airoldi, CEO of Be- netton Group, said in the statement. Benetton hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to figure out how much it should donate.
The survivors fund is short $9 million of its $30-million goal.
Human rights, social media and labour activists have waged a war on global fast-fashion houses, trying to pressure them into donating to the fund, which was created to help nearly 5,000 survivors and family members of victims.
Rana Plaza was originally constructed to be a six-storey shopping mall but it was later repurposed into multi-storey garment factories with heavy machinery loaded onto the top floors.
Avaaz.org, a global online civic action group, said Benetton has not given nearly enough to ease the death and suffering its clothes have caused. Bennetton was one of the last holdouts of the global international brands to contribute to the fund, said Dalia Hashad, who directed an Avaaz campaign directed at the company.
“Benetton really stood out. They are a huge global brand. They make plenty of money and they refused to give any compensation. It was horrifying,” she said.
Canada’s Joe Fresh, a division of Loblaw, also contributed to the fund.
Big international retailers who use Bangladesh factories have also banded together into two groups: the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the North American-led Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which includes Hudson’s Bay Co. and Canadian Tire, to improve working conditions.