Ross and Mosk report: "The 100-plus workers who died in a fire late Saturday at a high-rise garment factory in Bangladesh were working overtime making clothes for major American retailers."
A firefighter inspects Tazreen Fashion factory in Bangladesh after a fire swept through it, killing more than 100 people, 11/25/12. (photo: Reuters)
US Brands Blamed in Deadly Bangladeshi Blaze
26 November 12
he 100-plus workers who died in a fire late Saturday at a high-rise garment factory in Bangladesh were working overtime making clothes for major American retailers, including Wal-Mart, according to workers' rights groups.
Officials in Bangladesh said the flames at the Tazreen Fashions factory outside Dhaka spread rapidly on the ground floor, trapping those on the higher floors of the nine-story building. There were no exterior fire escapes, according to officials, and many died after jumping from upper floors to escape the flames.
As firemen continued to remove bodies Sunday, officials said at least 112 people had died but that the number of fatalities could go higher.
The Tazreen fire is the latest in a series of deadly blazes at garment factories in Bangladesh, where more than 700 workers, many making clothes for U.S. consumers, have died in factory fires in the past five years. As previously reported by ABC News, Bangladesh has some of the cheapest labor in the world and some of the most deplorable working conditions.
"The industry and parent brands in the U.S. have been warned again and again about the extreme danger to workers in Bangladesh and they have not taken action," said Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an American group working to improve conditions at factories abroad that make clothes for U.S. companies. Nova said the fire was the most deadly in the history of the Bangladesh apparel industry, and "one of the worst in any country."
Workers' activists went into the burned-out remains today to document which major retailers were using the Tazreen factory.
They say they found labels for Faded Glory, a Wal-Mart private label, along with labels they said traced back to Sears and a clothing company owned by music impresario Sean "Diddy" Combs.
"There's no question that Wal-Mart and the other customers at this factory bear some blame for what happened in this factory," Nova said.
Nova also said that Wal-Mart "knew exactly what's going on at these facilities. They have staff on site in Bangladesh."
Wal-Mart actually warned of dangerous conditions at the Tazreen factory last year, in a letter posted online by the factory owner.
Wal-Mart told ABC News that the company has not yet been able to confirm that it was still making clothes at the factory.
In a statement, Wal-Mart told ABC News, "Our thoughts are with the families of the victims of this tragedy. ... [F]ire safety is a critically important area of Wal-Mart's factory audit program and we have been working across the apparel industry to improve fire safety education and training in Bangladesh.
"As part of this effort, we partnered with several independent organizations to develop and roll out fire safety training tools for factory management and workers. Continued engagement is critical to ensure that reliable, proactive measures are in place to reduce the chance of factory fires. "
Spokespeople for Combs and Sears did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Comments
We are concerned about a recent drift towards vitriol in the RSN Reader comments section. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. No one likes a harsh or confrontational forum atmosphere. At the same time everyone wants to be able to express themselves freely. We'll start by encouraging good judgment. If that doesn't work we'll have to ramp up the moderation.
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I'm involved for 45 years in solidarity with such as the United Farm Workers, First Nations & worldwide indigenous peoples. The key is not endless consumer-nation political-machi nations or charity as their supposed heros. Successful campaigns come from subscribing-to & investing-in the leadership & intelligence of the workers. Some get this clearly, some don't.
Its a long process of deprogramming those who don't. Often there are false concepts of superiority or privilege involved in not recognizing the knowledge & decision-making acumen of those most intimately involved. The mainstream & social-media are unfortunately rife with one-sided treatment of issues. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy/participatory-accounting
any employer who houses workers in a multistory building with no fire escapes, no means for fleeing an incendiary workplace is at best - at best -- guilty of depraved indifference to human life. such an employer is not at all helping employees to take significant steps toward achieving the goals of adequate nutrition and safe shelter.
we ought not buy products made under such conditions, and u.s. businesses ought not have contracts with companies that have so little respect for the well-being of its people.
the people who work in these dreadful sweatshops are poor and poorly educated. they don't have a voice -- and if they dared raise it, my guess they would lose what little assured income they have. (at least that's what has happened to walmart complainers).
the outcry over suicides in china has led to changes in the conditions chinese workers are treated. apple customers made their voices heard and apple managers were embarrassed. trouble is, it doesn't seem to be possible to embarrass walmart.
whew. enough already.
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Parallel research points out that given a basic sentence structure, most words don't have to be in the right place or order either. Most readers agree as to the correct meaning of any author's message. However some readers who don't want to understand relevant information, which expands or upsets their worldviews, will take the false 'didactic' stance of 'teacher' in order to avoid communication & responsibility for the world in which they live.
https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/5-collaborative-language
has been going on.
One, at least I, would thnk that through all the past Christmases, New Years, Easters and summers seasons, Wal-Mart and the others could have gotten their fabricators in Bangladesh to improve the conditions in which the workers had to be working.
Move everything back here where it's a bit safer, if not as profitable. If they won't do that, why should we condone their apparent inactions throughout the years? Are we that bad a people?
Merchandise sits on shelves to entice people into a store, and while it sits on those shelves, the workers who made those items are not paid. Everything is on commission; nothing is "owned" by a big store. The manufacturer is not paid until each item is sold. This means that the manufacturers have to take out high-interest loans to be able to pay their payroll, and of course that high interest loan is passed along to the consumer. Whether we are talking about Macy's or Walmart, the same problem exists: stuff sits too long on shelves, and workers are not paid for that time; the mark-up is huge, and both those who make merchandise and the store clerks are paid less and less.
"Big box" might make a little more sense in a catalog or internet where the merchandise doesn't have to be displayed, but often those businesses are run the same way, and altogether, the executives make way too much money.
How cheap is the question. For the supply side believers this tragedy becomes a critical question which can only be solved with stringent regulations for human rights. It's a tough one, but desperately needed. The idea that an other company will come along and will compete with alternative methods may have been true in a world market which was much smaller. Today, this is no longer true as the monopoly of a handful of companies reigns.
Anything that goes wrong in any part of the planet is our fault.
Had there been no factory - no jobs then every one starving and ya all would be happy
what this really does is undercut the whole us economy, plunging more into poverty and using up more resources, creating more co2, ruining more land, killing more animals, and creating more poverty while ignorants like you go on about how great it is.
you think people would buy this crap if they had any idea?
would you?
Meanwhile, "Made in the U.S.A." means very little when slaves are brought to U.S. territories, or illegal aliens are given two choices: work for very little or be deported.
I don't know why America is so timid about itself that it cannot afford to protect people. We can build a giant military, but they don't do anything to make sure people live fairly.
Sometimes people with good intentions contribute to the problem: Bono and the "market share" of cheap products that bring some jobs to poor places; these jobs must be fair from the start.
That's where so many American jobs have gone, innit?
Your first sentence was a favorite whine -almost mantra- of that appalling ol' Franco-fan, Paddy Buchanan ("It's always America's fault") before he was turfed off the air.
So it's OK for way > 1/2 of the world to go to bed hungry, yet still enslaved, to satisfy the "Wants" verses "Needs" of the west
Did you know that NIKE doesn't even pay it's Indonesian workers minimum wage for that country?
The US is certainly not alone in this but it is by far and away the biggest consumer-waster -dumper-pollute r on the planet, all in the name of "economic, unsustainable corporate growth", especially it's earth-raping military.
Of course if you won't acknowledge even that, then you won't be likely to dispense with a seeming state of blinkered denial.
I suggest you take a trip to Saipan or even more conveniently, just over the southern US border to the maquiladores of Tijuana and other similar towns.
We're now in the "Are there no prisons, no workhouses?" season here but permanently elsewhere. So if you get all weepy, warm and fuzzy watching the inevitable "Christmas Carol" soon, know that conditions set in Dicken's time are still normal in a large part of the world.
Just how are the regular folks in countries that don't even have clothing factories doing anyway?
There are what 7 billion people on the planet maybe a million or less 'factories' planet wide - One burns down and ya want to condemn every one on that and similar countries to starvation and the horrors of the per-industrial age...
That is cruel to billions of people.
Gawd, you are hopeless; I see no point in trying to penetrate your concrete helmet.
I give up; by-ee.
Just before I finally consign you to my "do not respond" list, dig this.
If you REALLY want to know about what you question, get up off your butt and find out instead of inflicting baseless, Libertarianism on RSN to no purpose.
OK, a few facts.
In (for instance) Indonesia, those who don't work in sweatshops live in self-supporting local cooperatives much more ancient than imperialist aggressions, in a "Kampung system in which those who have incomes give an agreed percentage to an elected and revolving "Kepala" or trusted head man/ woman, who distributes it to those families without income so that everybody has the basics. Even the huge, overpopulated cities like Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung etc, are divide by invisible lines into these established communities.
Most of the sweatshop labor is recruited and often press-ganged into the factories by middlemen and their goons hired by the factories. and live in company compounds in conditions far inferior to the Kampugs they originated in and are pretty much indentured, isolated slaves.
Please, if you can, take this in the spirit of sharing factually- based experience.
Coda.
Yes, That seems to be the case, When people get paid in the upper 6 figures, they do not see those who are struggling to find a way to feed themselves and find a roof to sleep under.
Really? What a childish response!
That is so vapid. You are so shallow. Time for a morality check.
The much-touted wealth of India is still being built on the backs of the huge-majority poor, including Bangladeshi labor, which also can be found in Dubai, Bharain and other Middle eastern countries.
I used to watch from my office in Bandung, Java, Indonesia, as cattle trucks full of sari-clad women were driven to sweatshops in the industrial part of the city; all by Indian middle-men for markets in the US and some European countries too.
THAT'S where your jobs are going folks.
Know is the time for international union movements to go to Bangladesh. It isn't like the clothes made there reflect a cheaper item because workers are park of a cheap labor force. The marin of profit for WalMart and P Diddy is wide and benefits no one but themselves. These are not cheap goods in terms of price or human conditions.
NO MORE HUNGRY CHILDREN ?
really - why?
How? because with no work they and their parents starved to death with zero income zero resources to live on?
Again I ask:: Just how are the regular folks in countries that don't even have clothing factories doing anyway?
You just don't know because your life is all peaches and cream and what the hell do you care? You just simply say..."get a job or they have a job" and that's ok.
Go live there. Give it a try. Remove yourself from the American system and put yourself right in the middle of a garment job in Bangladesh. Throw away your credit cards and cut yourself off from your American life. Rent a shit hole dwelling and go to that job and tell yourself that "I got a job...I get paid."
Get yelled at by the shop supervisor and tell yourself that "he's right and I'm wrong."
Go ahead Mr smart guy. Give it a try. Prove to us that you're the shit.
Those folks just like early industrializing America people fled the hardship of scratch farming for a better life in factories.
Or are you living the delusion that they are all gaily prancing about in the Elysian fields then snatched up by horrible factory bosses and chained to a post to make my shoes.
I guess if they starve to death with no opportunities rather then surviving with bad ones you will be happier.
We're all institutionally indoctrinated (church, school, media etc) with a version of history starting with the colonization of various regions of the world. We're told that colonization with 2-dimensional agriculture (Latin 'ager' = 'field') civilized the lives of supposed 'savages' (L 'sylva' = 'tree'). We aren't told that 3-D 'indigenous' (L 'self-generatin g') polyculture-orc hards are 100 times (10,000%) more productive than agriculture for food, materials, soil, energy & water-cycles.
Indigenous 'sylvalization' in the Americas held the largest most densely populated urban areas in the world with some of the longest human memories in the world. Indigenous urban elemental design around solar, wind, soil, biosphere, biodigestion etc is far more advanced than modern design. Their medicine, engineering, economic design sustainably managed abundance for humanity & all species for many 10s of thousands of years. 3-D polyculture orchard biosphere design sylvalization is also the buried heritage of Europe's Celtic peoples by 2-D 'exogenous' (L 'other-generate d') Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, Phoenicia, Babylon. Space here only allows us to skim the surface, please visit https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/design/1-indigenous-welcome-orchard-food-production-efficiencies
What a wonderful idealized sounding load of manure.
Their pre industrialized lives were typical of hunter gather technology to wit: short, hard and miserable plagued by disease, starvation and sporadic wars for limited resources.
you can go and check on the remaining few scattered tribes on the planet that still live that way - how many of them make it to their 5th birthday?
True, They lived in a life 'in tune' with nature as it were because they had little experience mastering their world -- they were mastered by it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
If I were to buy into ever weird notion that blows across the internet - Id be on a space ship heading to the Pleiades where our ancient ancestors are from - they just vacation here on Earth.
I'm interested in hard provable facts. I'm involved in science research now for 45 years in various fields of study starting with Structural Geological Mapping of X-sections of the Western Cordillera for Canadian & US Geological Surveys working on doctoral projects in British Columbia BC & Idaho. I worked as a quality control chemical laboratory technician, pollution-contr ol, health & safety, reforestation in Pulp & Paper bringing participatory multi-stakehold er investment to a network of forest products companies.
I've owned an orchard, worked in orcharding, agriculture & now have 200 sq. metres of polyculture orchard which involves a community in growing. I helped develop the BC Natural Foods Co-op Network during 70s & operate the Quebec Network in the 80s, with equipment-design.
Background in architecture, engineering & urban planning led to involvement as a research assistant on Canadian Mortgage & Housing Corporation projects in community ecological design. Films with Radio-Canada feature my work in fecal-biodigest ion, How we change the weather, GIS ecological & cultural 1st Nation placename heritage mapping. www.indigenecommunity.info
When you use phrases like "industrial slavery" It triggers the BS filter big time.
Industrializati on has freed the common man from a multitude of mundane activities and freed up time for more pursuits about subsistence living. That fact that you and I can converse in this fashion while potentially being on opposite sides of the planet is one such benefit.
your anonymous as am I -- I could make a claim that I am a Nobel prize winner as well.
While I have long seen opportunities like Bio-digestion of fecal matter as a means of power and agricultural nutrients -- that can/will be part of industrialized society -- once government regulators get out of the way and high energy cost drive us to make it worth while
The biosphere's a huge integrated waste-free, mechanics-free industrial machine producing massive abundance. Food's wrapped in biodegradable packaging, trees constantly percolate water through phylum & root systems. Climate generate through warm-moist ocean winds drawn to continents by 92 - 98% solar photosynthesis 'cold-spots' generated on polyculture leaf surfaces. Animal species are messengers, seeders, humus planters & transporters. Life's 'intelligence' (Latin 'ability to choose between') is of knowing, precision & complementation.
My decades involved in agriculture & orcharding has fed comparison of 3-D 'indigenous' polyculture-orc hards & colonial 2-D 'agriculture' (Latin 'ager' = 'field'). Fields absorb between 2 - 8% of solar energy. Polyculture orchard treeroots descend as deep as the canopy is high pumping water, mining minerals, developing nutrient colonies into the earth's substrate. Agricultural field plants descend only centimetres leaving much of the earth barren hard compact clay without significant life. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/design/1-indigenous-welcome-orchard-food-production-efficiencies
aww your killing me ;)
In historical exhibits, we hear that looms were often in attics, not a fire-safe place, but on a small scale. Factories that were powered by water wheels were dangerous places where children lost arms. Spinning, weaving, and sewing are more difficult and dangerous than people give credit; songs have been written about "the weavers" who were underpaid and exploited for centuries.
Our labor laws, including laws about labor on goods brought into this country, need serious revising. There is a long history; it shouldn't be news, or a shock, that the conditions are dangerous and unfair. President Obama has said that he doesn't want to hurt jobs in favor of climate regulations, but it seems that labor has also been neglected. It is both political parties that need to wake up about labor conditions here and in other countries.
I am at a loss for families but I am not surprised. It was matter of time these Enslavement Factoriesill come to bad ends. These are the equivalent of Slum Lords and they will continue. I f you visit foreign owned companies or factories even motels here, they are not of high standards...Man t rat traps , motels flea bed bugs....sorry I can blame Everyone who shops for these crap clothing, they allowed Wallie World and others to sell us out.
Stop buying, we asked everyone for decades to buy American...all I hear is excuses like the food ones. So where bad clothes, eat bad food, you are the problem.
I do not see why we are bad guys...People either had to work or chose to...The owners know what they are
Companies who had contracts, had contracts nothing more,,,,cheap crap to sell people to make them rich What's New about this?
Have any of you boycotted Red States yet? Have you changed banks? Have you done anything....Ran ted for a year....Done nothing, Just Yuppies, Tea Partyers...
The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own.... Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.
Also within Wealth of Nations, (1776); Adam Smith:
Our merchants and master-manufact urers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
Working at Goodwill Industries in the 70's, for a dollar an hour, with handicapped help getting around 20 cents an hour, management asked us to stop stealing used clothing and they would pay us more; we told them to pay us more and we wouldn't have to steal.
It would be great if this outrage sparked a people''s movement, as the Triangle Fire did. But when the slave work force is far away, it's out of sight, out of mind, and it's easier to 'unsee' the 'other'.
Sue S
Presidents aren't omnipotent, you know. Get the rest of government doing its job.
The black or white thinking of some of the commenters here is appalling. It's not a choice to either starve or die in a fire... the choice is to have a job AND be safe and fairly paid. Fair trade businesses strive for a balance,WalMart does not. I, for one, do not need their merchandise if this is how they choose to run their business. And the Waltons ARE making a choice!!!!
If you despise the ideas expressed here, don't look at this site.
Obviously, you do not recall that American clothing manufacturers/s ewing factories have a long tradition of being unsafe and lethal: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, March 25, 2011 ring a bell?
I'm poking fun at the stupid premises that pass as moralality and follow up with a reasonable question (Just how are the regular folks in countries that don't even have clothing factories doing anyway?)
and that is called hatred - Oh I forgot that is how the open minded liberals deal with arguments they are wrong on -- attack the person because they can't touch the ideas.
Do we have to see that? Shouldn't we assume that is the case as we buy the latest fashions? We don't care if they're shabbily constructed because we'll throw them away when they're passe. If we don't die immediately from that 2000 calorie burger then its OK. If they put in additives that make you crave more of their product, I guess that's just how business is run these days? NO! We have govt. oversight to protect us and our jobs from this. It is our job to make these treasonous takers to do what they are being paid to do. These immoral companies will do what they can in order to report increased profit at the next board meeting in 3 months. Sofar, we, like chickens in the field, eat what is strewn. We're all to blame.
We must work to restore the imbalance on all levels and realize that the planet has the resources to maintain us all quite abundantly if we use our intellects and hearts to seek the greater good for all mankind--before exhorbitant profits.
My name is Lovely. On February 23, 2006, my life changed forever. That was the day that KTS Textile Factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, caught fire. I was 11 years old and my job was to pack socks.
Working there was like working in a death trap. We didn’t have safety equipment. We never had a fire drill. When the fire started, we couldn’t escape because management had locked the exits. 63 of my coworkers died and 150 of us were injured.
During the chaos of the fire, I fell down the stairs. When I finally woke up in the hospital, I learned that my injuries would prevent me from working for the rest of my life. I still go to the hospital because of the pain, something I can barely afford because I never received compensation for the accident. I'm from a poor family, and now I am a burden to them. My family is so poor that they can’t even give me food every day.
Today I find the courage to speak to you because I have had enough. Six years later, working conditions in Bangladesh have hardly changed. Since 2005 more than 700 garment workers have died in sweatshop factory fires. Every day I wonder: Is this the day when there will be another fire and more people will die? cont
http://www.change.org/petitions/walmart-h-m-gap-join-fire-safety-program-fix-death-trap-factories?utm_source=action_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14259&alert_id=bfXpfwpGup_veLzPEahcd
My worst nightmare came true two years ago when 21 workers died in a fire at an H&M supplier and then another 29 workers died at a Gap supplier. After 112 workers were killed in a fire at a Walmart supplier this weekend, I couldn't be silent any longer.
For us Bangladeshis who sew the clothing that you wear, please sign my petition calling on the largest buyers from Bangladesh – H&M, Walmart and Gap – to commit to a real fire safety program that will save the lives of the companies’ sweatshop workers.
Thank you.
To:
Sustainability Director, H&M (Helena Helmersson)
Ethical Sourcing, Walmart (Barbara Gregory)
Global Human Resources and Corporate Affairs, Gap Inc. (Eva Sage-Gavin)
I am horrified to learn that workers were killed in a fire at your supplier factory. As a consumer, I ask you to join with Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein in a comprehensive fire safety program that includes worker input, transparency, and binding commitments to protect workers.
I support the consortium of Bangladeshi and international unions and labor groups calling for an effective fire safety program that will protect the lives of workers who sew your clothing.
Thank you for your attention to this deeply concerning matter.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
http://www.change.org/petitions/walmart-h-m-gap-join-fire-safety-program-fix-death-trap-factories
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