LESSONS LEARNT FROM RECENT TRAGEDIES IN BANGLADESH GARMENT FACTORIES
I. Summary of recent major tragedies in Bangladesh that relates to garment factories:
The eight-storey Rana Plaza building collapsed that had housed five garment factories, several house shops and bank. It is located near Dhaka on 24 April 2013 with an unknown number inside. According to the local authorities source of information, there were a total of 1,127 bodies had been found and about 2,500 people injured, almost 650 out of the total bodies have so far been identified. Majority of the victims are female workers. As being reported, there was a very similar building collapse in the same town seven years ago (in 2005) killed 64 garments workers and left dozen more missing; the last major building collapse was in 2010, when a four-storey building in Dhaka caved in, killing at least 25 people and injuring several others.
A chemical explosion in a residential area of the capital caused by improperly stored chemicals, which killed 120 in 2010.
There have also been fires, stampedes and other incidents at various garment factories in Bangladesh, causing hundreds of deaths. For examples, there was a fire in a garment factory in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka that has killed at least eight people on 9 May 2013 and according to the source from local officials, the blaze happened overnight in the Mirpur industrial district. As being reported, it took around two hours to tame the blaze. Last year, more than 100 workers perished in a fire in November at Tazreen Fashions in Ashulia, a township near Dhaka.
There was a widespread of pledges to reform the building industry and improve worker-safety standards in Bangladesh since 2005 or earlier. But since then, very little has changed or improved. These recent tragedies in Bangladesh are the wake-up calls for the country, for the industries – building industry and manufacturing industries, for the trade unions, for the brands, for the factory owners and for the related stakeholders on the working conditions in general and safety problems in particular in Bangladesh’s garment industry which is the second largest in the world, just behind China.
(Source: BBC news)
II. Who should be the key stakeholders accountable for these tragedies?
Many opinions claimed that it should be either the responsibility of the Government of Bangladesh, or the responsibility of the building architects and engineers, the responsibility of the local manufacturers, the responsibility of the brands sourcing there, and the responsibility of the consumers who should refuse buying products produced under such conditions or should pay a little bit more to the products or to the factories because it might help to improve factory conditions.
It is believed that consumers are willing to pay for high quality products that are produced in fair, safe and better working condition factories. However, there would be a concern that if consumers pay a bit more, the“more” will go to whom or go to which stakeholders actually? Who would be the real beneficiary? Shall it go to brands, or to middlemen, or to factory’s owners, or really go to workers? Further, buying more expensive clothes isn’t a guarantee that they’re produced responsibly or low store prices mean bad conditions for the factory workers or poor working conditions.
We have to admit that the problem is too complicated and it is about the systemic failure, where there are multiple responsibilities. It is about people at all stages including from architects and engineers to profiteering owners, traders and government officials.
Therefore, it is important to identify the key stakeholders involved in these tragedies and level of responsibility of each stakeholder attached to these tragedies directly and indirectly. This identification would help us to understand the nature of existing situations, the real matters behind in order to identify the roles, the position, the scope and the power level of each stakeholder as well as who, what, where, when or how to start the process to tackle the problems, to amend the gaps from its roots and develop prioritized appropriate actions for sustainable, systematic and feasible solutions in a cost effective and high-efficient both in qualitative and quantitative manner.
Based on the facts of these recent tragedies, there would be four key stakeholders that should be taken into account and examined the level of their accountability.
Firstly, Building designers and engineers: The tragedies were more related to the flaws in building design, structural integrity design and safety systems design including fire safety, emergency evacuation, electrical safety and ventilation system. It is known that the problem was not the building codes and OHS legislation. There is The National Building Code since 1993 and building construction guidelines since 2008. The legislation related to Occupational Health & Safety ((OHS) particularly the Factories Act 1965, Factories Rules of 1979 and a number of other laws and regulations that are also have some provisions related to occupational health and safety. In practice, though companies should submit detailed plans to their local planning officials, which are then approved by an architects and engineers. The collapse building had been constructed with weak materials, such as sub-standard steel rods and heavy loads than the building could bear; support columns were erected haphazardly, building materials and methods were below par; the electrical wiring is set up for residential buildings, not for heavy industry with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of machines. Stampede during an emergency as only maximum two people are able to fit through exit routes and staircase’s width at once. Building Designers and Engineers absolutely can help to get things done rightly and ethically right in the very first two stages of building design and construction process, less chance for the similar disasters to happen. Should this group of professionals in the Architecture and Construction Industry be held accountable roughly 10% of the responsibility!
Secondly, Government: There are laws. However, it seems most of the laws are not updated, not specific, not detailed enough and rather general in nature, and lacking in standard values. Concerning the building construction, though companies should submit detailed plans to their local planning officials but mostly only rough sketches, not a proper or detailed outlines and they are approved by an architect and engineer. Building collapsed and fired are examples of a broken system for authorizing, carrying out and monitoring construction, the current process of signing off constructions seems to be not strictly controlled and unsystematic; the building was built for house shops and offices purposes but then added more floors and arbitrarily turned into industrial building that housed five factories with large numbers of workers, heavy machines and equipment. Tens of thousands more buildings - and millions of people inside them - face the same fate. Also, there are laws but it seems lack of monitoring, inspection and enforcement from related governmental authorities and bodies. Further, high numbers of casualties in these incidents reflected the rescue operations from related governmental bodies seem to be poorly managed and coordinated when the incidents occurred and lack of capacity for rescue operations. Should the Government of Bangladesh be held accountable for roughly 30% of the responsibility.
In a macro aspect, the building collapse highlighted the dangers of unplanned development, more businesses and people located in cities and over-construction in one area as well as the country’s high level of corruption (based on the statistic on Transparency International Organization at http://www.transparency.org) that might contribute greatly to the big question on the ethic of the related groups of individuals and/or professionals.
Thirdly, it is undeniable that Manufacturers should bear the highest level of roughly 35% responsibility. They are the direct owners, the key stakeholder to decide whether or not to implement and comply with the laws and legislation, whether or not to ensure the fair, safe and decent workplace. It is important to have the laws and legislation or codes of conduct to ensure the minimum standards are met. However, it is the mindset, the heart, the thorough understanding, the awareness, the knowledge and last but not least is the commitment from the factory owners, otherwise little can be done, maintained, enforced or transformed. We can find some of the evidences from these tragedies that (-) Rana had permission to build five stories for retail merchants but added three more floors illegally and converted into industrial purposes. When huge cracks appeared in the building a day before its collapse, police ordered an evacuation. The next day, a bank and some house shops refused to occupy the premises but factory managers told their workers to go back inside. A couple of hours later the building came down in a heap of concrete and bricks due to heavy loads of almost six times greater than the building was intended to bear, evidently (-) the four huge electronic generators inside building on third and forth floors started up after a power cut sending powerful vibrations throughout Rana Plaza, together with the vibration of thousands of sewing machines and the heavy load of at least 3,000 workers working in the five factories excluding the number of people working in the house shops and offices and number of guests in-out, (-) support columns were erected haphazardly, building materials and methods were below par, and this triggered the collapse. (-) Further, majority of the factory fires happened were due to electrical circuit shortage, no proper fire emergency plans, blocked exit doors and windows, no proper trained to employees on emergency responses and first aid and so forth.
It is also reported that more than thirty garment industry owners are members of parliament, accounting for about ten percent of Bangladeshi law makers, majority of the rest industry owners have political ties, and at least fifty percent of the members of parliament have business links at some sort. The common mindset of businessmen is doing business is to earn profits at maximum extent. Therefore, these politically connected garment makers could take advantage of their clout to disregard the regulations stipulated under the law.
It is also reported that more than thirty garment industry owners are members of parliament, accounting for about ten percent of Bangladeshi law makers, majority of the rest industry owners have political ties, and at least fifty percent of the members of parliament have business links at some sort. The common mindset of businessmen is doing business is to earn profits at maximum extent. Therefore, these politically connected garment makers could take advantage of their clout to disregard the regulations stipulated under the law.
I believe that these tragedies happened were due to the severe negligence from factory’s owners or their severe lack of awareness on the building integrity, occupational health and safety, fair and decent workplace standards and how important it is to their business operations and existence.
Fourthly, Brands: Last but not least importance is the Brands who are sourcing and placing orders in these factories. Since the collapse happened, one minor point that I doubt if anyone has ever wondered the reason why factory managers told their workers to go back inside the building despite the prominent danger that was warned, what are the roots of this action? We do believe there are irresponsible factory owners, but it is hard for us to see the reasons why should these owners risk their life to lose all what they had been investing for many years and in some cases finally “settled”in jail if tragedies happen to their own factories and to the workers?Therefore, what are the reasons behind? Is it because they need to finish the important orders or rush orders or urgent delivery? Many brands did not even know that their products were produced in these factories and the factory was producing clothes without their authorization. The fact is that suppliers or middlemen for top brands sometimes source their clothes from factories which produce at cheaper costs, probably without the knowledge of the buyers. In reality, Brands or middlemen give orders to a supplier or one factory and its get passed along to other factories and in this case Brands or Middlemen would not know where their products are made. Given the recent tragedies, the Brand’s supply chain management system seems to be failed, especially, when they are sourcing products through the middlemen.
It is known that the business contract between brands and suppliers or manufacturers usually contains an article asking supplier’s commitment to comply with local legal requirement, their Code of Conducts and the full right of review on the supplier’s business operations, documents and workplace conditions. The brands have the strong privilege to investigate, monitor and enforce the fair, safe and decent working conditions in their supply chain. The brands have the strong right to enforce the better working conditions in its supply chain. However, it seems the monitoring or auditing programs to ensure the fair and safe workplace in their suppliers in these countries seem to be failed, especially when it is done through third parties and sometimes it might get passed along to other subcontractors or service providers that hardly to ensure the capability, work ethic, the quality of the work done, the approach and process integrity. Therefore, should the Brands be accountable for 25% of responsibility.
It is known that an argument between manufacturer’s owners and brands over - who is responsible for fair, decent, better health and safety implementation that has been going on for years. Hopefully, the roughly analysis on the level of responsibility of the four key stakeholders above in these recent tragedies could help to give an answer to this argument at some extent. The decisive stakeholder in the whole process is still the manufacturer’s owners. And, the brands play the key and essential role in facilitating the supplier’s change management and supporting the supplier’s implementation, changes and improvements toward sustainable compliance, corporate social responsibility and sustainable operations. The most importance is that the needs, the difficulties and the dilemmatic circumstances of the manufacturers should be listened and understood by Brands and related parties for better mutual and sustainable solutions.
III. What actions need to be taken to prevent future similar tragedies?
Since these tragedies happened, there have been numbers of international stakeholders jumping into the playground such as ILO, EU committee, UN, local ministries, US Associations, related Governments and others to seek solutions and enforce the compliance within the industries and country. Below examples could give us some pictures on several actions that have been taken by appropriate stakeholders at different levels of responsibility and impacts.
* Government level: Several proposals have been initiated and taken at governmental level to prevent the future similar tragedies such as (-) The Urban Development Directorate, part of the Housing Ministry, is seeking government approval to draft a national urbanization plan up to 2021 which would centralize planning power in the Housing Ministry once again. (-) Widespread advocacy a professional registry of architects and engineers to weed out unethical ones and to boost standards and requests for more engineers and architects has gone through six departments in three ministries for approval. Besides, proposals are circulating on boosting local officials’ expertise on construction standards and safety monitoring, as well as creating high-level district committees that will bring together architects, engineers, health officials and representatives from local government and the Ministry of Housing and Public Works. (-) The country’s Garment Manufacturers’ and Exporters’ Association has asked garment factories in the capital to submit structural drawings. (-)The labor and employment minister is heading another committee to investigate factories outside the capital. Also, the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology is supposed to conduct risk assessments to find the most vulnerable buildings in the capital. (-)Strengthen its urban search and rescue capacity program, according to the Department of Disaster Management, the government has 23,000 trained volunteers and plans to train 66,000 more in the coming years. (-) The UN’s highest official for disaster risk reduction called in 2012 for an update of the building code, the proposed revisions to the building code are now before parliament and spearheading by the governmental Housing and Building Research Institute. (-) Based on the Conclusions of the ILO's high level mission to Bangladesh, the tripartite partners and the ILO have agreed on the necessity to develop an action plans focusing on the short and medium term steps as follows: reform the country's labor law package to bring it in line with international norms; assess by the end of 2013 the structural building safety and fire safety of all active export-oriented ready-made garment factories in Bangladesh, and initiate remedial actions, including relocation of unsafe factories; launch skills and training program for workers who sustained injuries in the recent tragic events that resulted in disability; recruit, within 6 months, 200 additional inspectors by the Government and upgrade the Department of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Establishments to a Directorate with an annual regular budget allocation adequate to enable the recruitment of a minimum of 800 inspectors and the development of the infrastructure required for the proper functioning; implement, in full, the National Tripartite Plan of Action on Fire Safety in the RMG Industry in Bangladesh, and extend its scope to include structural integrity of buildings to improve health, occupational and structural safety and other vulnerable sectors, to be identified in consultation with the relevant stakeholders (please visit www.ilo.org for more information). (-) European Union (EU) threat to withdraw its duty-free, quota free (DFQT) access to the EU market (a 27-nation bloc, accounting for about 60% of the country’s RMG exports, the entire section will hugely affected) if Bangladesh Government, owners, and other stakeholders do not take serious steps. (-) US Government will consider its existing Trade Preference Programs – Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) – whether or not to withdraw some preferences as its response to Bangladesh’s Government for the recent tragedies and widespread poor working conditions in the country.
These proposed actions seem to be on the right track and different stakeholders work with different governmental authority bodies to attack the issues from different angles. However, from personal point of view on the last two actions that EU threats to withdraw its duty-free, quota free and US Government is to consider withdrawing some of trade preference programs in the GSP would put this poor country in the dilemma situations in tackling poverty and unemployment not only in one industry but in many related industries and social impacts at larger extent. If cost increases, more trade restrictive regulations and more troubles, corporations or brands would definitely again shift its productions and sourcing to other countries such as arising Myanmar. It is a harshly competitive market and it is a common trend to move to cheaper cost countries. This is a big concern that related stakeholders should take into account when EU and US impose their actions against Bangladesh Trading Preferences. It is better to think of the consequences of these two actions of response.
* Manufacturer level: Though there have been several actions from Government level against the manufacturer level as listed above, no transparent actions from this level itself has been announced which related to the fair, safe and decent workplace. After more than two decades of little or "humble" action, the Bangladeshi garment industry needs to commit to long overdue improvements. The tragedies in Bangladesh’s factories have not only put workers at risk, it has put its own business at risk due to its disregard for legal compliance, ethical business practices, workplace safety and universal human rights principles. It is believed that they have learnt much or less from the recent tragedies. What they would need to do right now is to strengthen its management systems, its governance to take the ownership in implementing the compliance and improvements. They should develop a compliance and improvement road-map starting from most feasible improved issues, and should be more accountable to integrate corporate social responsibility into their business practices and operations.
Brands can help by contributing to supplier’s awareness raising programs, capacity building, technical supports and sponsorship through its acting more urgently and seriously with more practical, feasible, cost-effective initiatives that focus on actual improvements and real impacts. The active and wise supports from Brands would be a great contribution to the improvements not only in a small scale at factory, industry level but in a larger scale at government, national level.
* Brand level: Besides, the regular monitoring, due diligence, CSR and/or capacity programs conducted by the brand’s internal team or by second or third parties, there have been several initiatives taken by brands at industry level since these incident strategies happened so far such as: (-) Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh: the agreement signed by international fashion retailers along with other companies and trade unions to prevent workplace disasters and the ILO stands ready to provide appropriate support to this initiative in response to the requests of the signatory parties, to help ensure effective implementation and coordination with national organizations. There have been more than 40 Brands participating in this accord. The agreement requires that the companies conduct independent safety inspections, make their reports on factory conditions public and cover the costs for needed repairs. It also calls for them to pay up to $500,000 annually toward the effort, to stop doing business with any factory that refuses to make safety upgrades and to allow workers and their unions to have a voice in factory safety. However, the pact is only the start of a process, which with continued key support (please refer to http://www.uniglobalunion.org for the details of the Accord). (-) U.S. Retailers Announce New Factory Safety Plan - This effort, to be spearheaded by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), a nonprofit group based in Washington. As part of the new effort, the National Retail Federation, the American Apparel and Footwear Association as well as Gap, JCPenney, Sears, Target, Wal-Mart and other retailers, will seek to “develop and implement a new program to improve fire and safety regulations in the garment factories of Bangladesh”. (-) Besides these joint efforts, individual brands have taken different initiatives and actions such as engaging in several programs with NGOs and Associations.
Personally, I believe every effort is worth and valuable at this moment to support Bangladesh and make the conditions better. Effort "A" or "B" or "C" does not a matter, every party has the reasons - sometimes it is not simply the matter of factories, Brands, but Unions, Governments, Politics and other related stakeholders - for their moves. Binding or not binding agreement, costing or not costing solution is not a matter, costing does not mean that it would work, no costing does not mean that it would not work. Actually, the only matter is that all of the efforts come from the true heart of making differences and all parties mean it by each of their actions. No-one could be sure that effort "A" or "B" or "C" would be success or if anyone could tell the percentage of success of effort "A" "or "B" or "C"? We should look at the positive side of each effort, it is supposed that effort "A" does not work, yet there is effort "B" and/or effort "C". As we know what happened in Bangladesh are complicated, no-one could be sure that he/she could understand or grasp the whole picture "behind" of what happened or if each effort could cover all the angles of the issues.
However, the only three things that I concern most are that if it would be the duplicate efforts at some extent and if factories have enough capacity, capability and resources in dealing with all of these different "efforts" running at the same time in their facilities without disturbing its production activities and its productivity!? Further, some of the joint efforts above might require the financial contribution from manufacturers apart from the Brands’ contributions. If this is not done wisely, this would make the manufacturers strongly believe that these programs are very expensive and an extra cost without ROI (Return of Investment) that would make them more reacting against the compliance requirements and/or “unresponsive” improvement than active compliance and sustainable improvement.
Besides, the multiple initiatives above, I would like to contribute some recommendations that Brands could take into account and work on internally to ensure the right is done in the beginning stages and that could have the potentials to improve workers’ lives, health, and dignity, while creating a stable, sustainable supply chains follows:
-Existing Supply Chain Review: Brands should work with its trading companies / middlemen (if any) to review and investigate across the global supply chain to see if there has been any factory subcontracted without the authorization and increase the transparency in the supply chain such as announce a list of approved suppliers/factories in public. It is also suggested that Brands should conduct thorough review on health and safety status including the building, electrical, fire safety in these supplier factories to determine the best opportunity to work with factories for feasible solutions and create effective change on the working conditions.
Withdrawing businesses and walking away from the country or shifting its sourcing to other countries, the story would never end and tragedies would not stop from happening because the nature of the issues never change. This action would not help to solve the problems but would create more social burdens, economic burdens and negative impacts for this country such as factories closed down, jobless, unemployment, poverty, negative impacts on related supporting industries, services industry and so forth. Or stopping taking orders that had been already placed, done and/or garments already in-process from those supplier factories whose building structural revealed safety issues identified in the entire Bangladeshi suppliers review after the recent tragedies would create negative impacts on workers and would be unfair to factories at some extent. So that would be catastrophe.
As a responsible business partner, Brands should stay with suppliers and factories and help improve working conditions for the safety, security and the welfare of workers.
-Supply Chain Approval Procedure: it is recommended that there should be a transparent supply chain approval procedure for both new suppliers and existing suppliers. It requires a close coordination among the internal departments such as CSR department and other business units. Brands should also review its existing purchasing practices. In practice, due to the significant price and cost pressures and/or orders amount, styles complexity and so forth, some Brands or trading companies / middlemen constantly shift its set of suppliers that leads to the ignorance of fair, safe, and healthy working conditions and opportunistic subcontracting to small producers who would never be approved by leading brands in the first place. A more stable set of relationships with suppliers committed to fair working conditions is a necessary first step.
-Ethical sourcing program and/or monitoring programs done by internal teams and external auditing parties or organizations or associations should be re-evaluated thoroughly and reviewed its relevance, effectiveness and impacts to the overall Company’s missions, strategies and approaches. The revision should also include the screening and selecting qualified external parties or consultants to ensure the integrity and quality of these programs.
-Capacity trainings for compliance teams. It is believed that Brands have been sending many internal auditing teams and using many external auditing parties or organizations to audit or monitor or assess these factories. Some brands have its own systems in place to ensure worker safety with full-time inspectors who make regular visits, both announced and unannounced to factories. However, it is a big question on why these visible issues have not been captured or raised or solved for such a long time and why there are still many similar buildings and poor working conditions exist after more than two decades. Theological knowledge means nothing without the maturity to do it in love and with passions for positive change.
IV. Conclusions:
It is reminded that there have been several workplace incidents happened in other regions as well such as (-) Three textile workers were killed when a ceiling collapsed a the Wing Star Shoes factory, located in the Kampong Speu province of Cambodia, which manufactured footwear for major brands on May 16, 2013, (-) Fires in Pou Yuen Company in Binh Tan District, Ho Chi Minh City on May 15, 2013, (-) Duy Hung Footwear Company in Song Than Industrial Zone (IZ), Binh Duong province, on May 18, (-) On 27 May 2013, approximately 3,000 workers, almost all women, had staged a sit-in on the road leading to the factory in order to demand an increase in health and living expenses from Sabrina Cambodia Garment Manufacturing, (-) May 20, 2013, 23 workers were injured by a structural collapse at the Top World Garment factory, which was found to have manufactured clothing for major retailer brand; and many more.
There are similar working and safety conditions in factories located in other countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, India, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and so forth. Yes, Bangladesh is not alone in needing improved working conditions or CSR or vendor due diligence innovation. It is not a country-specific issue but it seems to be a global problem.
Posted by: June 16, 2013
Written by: Huong Vu
Suppy Chain Compliance, CSR and Sustainability Advisor