Preserving the legacy of the Rana Plaza wake-up call

Abstract

22 | International Union Rights | 27/4 FOCUS | TRADE UNION RIGHTS IN ASIA Preserving the legacy of the Rana Plaza wake-up call On a day in April, a 2-storey building at the site of a garment factory in Bangladesh partially collapsed. The workers of the factory were terrified and refused to continue working. The workers refused to believe assurances by the factory owners that the factory was safe to work in. They knew there was an independent safety entity they could turn to that would promptly send inspectors over. These declared the building unsafe and ordered that no worker would be allowed to enter the building until the damage was repaired. Five days later, the inspectors confirmed that after repair the factory was safe for use again and workers could return to work1. This incident happened in April 2017. The entity the workers turned to was the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Four years before, when workers in another garment factory in Bangladesh were afraid to return to work in a visibly unsafe factory which their employers guaranteed was safe, they had no such organisation to turn to. Thousands of workers entered the Rana Plaza building on 24 April 2013 under threat of losing a month of wages. Over 1100 died when the factory collapsed later that day and thousands more were injured and traumatised for life. This horrible tragedy was the push that brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh needed to sign on to a legally binding programme for factory safety in the country2; something which unions and labour rights organisations like Clean Clothes Campaign had been advocating for years3. As a result, the Accord has in the past 7.5 years successfully improved workplace safety for over 2.5 million Bangladeshi garment workers and empowered them to take their safety in their own hands through a powerful complaint mechanism, which protects them against retaliation by factory owners. The programme’s rigorous standards, unprecedented levels of transparency and enforceable character have been crucial to this success and have made the Accord exemplary in showing how change in the garment industry is possible. The one area of progress The RMG industry makes up over 75 percent of Bangladesh’s export and unfortunately has built its attractiveness to global apparel brands and retailers on the basis of a reputation to be cheap and lax on labour regulations4. This means that Bangladesh’s garment industry is built on poverty wages and rife with instances of union busting, repression of worker protests5, and – especially during the Covid19 pandemic6 – non-payment of dismissed workers or workers who are injured on the job. While the minimum wage has more than doubled since the Rana Plaza collapse, it still amounts to less than one one-third of what workers would need to ensure a decent living for them and their families7. Amidst this plethora of issues – on which the government of Bangladesh and the brands and retailers sourcing from the country have shown limited appetite to initiate meaningful improvements – there has always been one ray of light: the progress in the field of factory safety enabled by the consistent work of the Bangladesh Accord. Its work was challenging and did not always move as fast as many would have wanted, but progress was steady: over 90 percent of factories under the programme are now fully remediated8, factories that refused to comply with the safety requirements were made ineligible for business with Accord company signatories9, noncompliant signatory brands and retailers were held to account in court10, and workers’ trust in its transparent and credible complaint mechanism continues to grow11. But, substantial work remains to be done. It is often the most challenging and expensive fire safety and structural renovations that remain outstanding12. Above all, ensuring safe factories is a continuous process: without the threat of action by the Accord, factory owners could resort to old measures such as locking exits or storing product in hallways and stairwells needed for swift evacuation in case of emergency. Uncertainty about the Accord’s future Despite the clear success of and continued need for the Accord’s vital work, questions about its future started to mount from...