Long shadow cast by Rana Plaza disaster
Global fashion brands still have a long way to go to clean up an embattled industry
It was yesterday five years ago that cracks appeared in the walls of Rana Plaza, the ill-fated complex of clothes factories and shops in Savar, 15 miles from the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
Though employees were sent home, they returned the following day and around 3,100 were inside when the building began to give way. After a power outage, large generators had been fired up — sending vibrations through the structure, creating more cracks in load-bearing columns. That caused the building’s floors to collapse, trapping thousands of workers in a concrete concertina that ultimately killed 1,138 people.
It was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in history. As clothes labels were plucked from the rubble, it left many major fashion brands facing questions. The disaster has come to be the most potent symbol of how fashion retailers lost control of their supply chains as they offshored manufacturing in the pur- suit of lower costs. Even those brands not implicated were left with a reminder of how much harm they could cause by not keeping their supply chains in check.
“There is no doubt that the industry got a huge wake-up call,” says Peter McAllister, who runs the Ethical Trading Initiative, a collection of brands, trade unions and NGOs that campaign for workers’ rights.
Ireland-headquartered Primark now carries out its own programme of building inspections and hires an in-house structural engineer as part of its ethical trade team. But while great leaps forward have been made in building safety, it would be fanciful to think the fashion supply chain is as clean as it should be. “Mainly we are cheap labour — that is why we are scared; we need money, we need to survive,” says Nazma Akter, who began work as a seamstress in a factory aged just 11 and now runs the Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation trade union. Those on factory floors, mainly women, are often subjected to harassment and abuse, especially if they try to organise unions, she says. One of the industry’s big headaches has been the practice of sub-contracting, where manufacturers that have been through proper inspections pass the order along to another factory down the road. Most companies prohibit such deals in their supplier contracts, but without a physical presence at every factory, there is only so much they can do to ensure a garment has been made where it was supposed to be. McAllister says some brands have significantly boosted the amount of time they spend in factories but they are in the minority. One issue has been a lack of transparency. Without knowing which firms are manufacturing where, what their policies are and how they are being enforced, it is hard for unions and campaigners to keep tabs on them and hold them to account.
Carry Somers, founder of the Fair Trade Panama hat brand Pachacuti, launched not-for-profit group Fashion Revolution after the disaster in the hope of putting pressure on brands into revealing more details about their supply chains. “Campaigners had to search through the rubble for clothing labels to prove which brands were actually producing there,” she says. “That’s when I realised that the workers were invisible and the lack of transparency and responsibility in the fashion supply chain was costing lives.” The group publishes its latest Fashion Transparency Index today, a ranking of 150 major brands based on how much information they disclose about their supply chains. Having been among the earliest to face criticism for their overseas factories as long ago as the Nineties, the global sportswear brands Adidas, Puma and Reebok came out on top, with Nike not far behind. Primark was among the best of those brands implicated in Rana Plaza, with a score of 36 out of a possible 100. Matalan was among the worst on the list, with a score of just five.
It is clear the tragic events of five years ago have spurred real change in the industry, improving factory conditions in a way that means fewer people have to toil in deathtrap buildings. But while many supply chains remain opaque and companies continue to push for lower prices, it seems likely to remain a controversial issue for some time.
— Telegraph Group Limited