Labor and student activists protested outside the Bipartisan Policy Center in downtown Washington, D.C., to highlight the hypocrisy of a corporate public relations spectacle led by the Gap and Walmart. The retail giants announced today yet another toothless voluntary private regulation scheme for the garment industry in Bangladesh. More than 1,800 workers have died in preventable factory fires and collapses since 2005. In response, workers and their allies recently negotiated an innovative and enforceable agreement to improve safety and rights for these workers. Since May 15, 80 companies have signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. 

This Saturday, June 29, Students Against Sweatshops will lead a coalition of groups and individuals in an international day of action to pressure Walmart and Gap to stop the use of unsafe factories that have killed more than 1,800 workers in Bangladesh since 2005. To date, the two corporate giants have refused to sign on to an Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh that would go a long way toward making workers in Bangladesh safer. The accord would require independent inspections by trained fire safety experts, mandatory repairs and a central role for workers and unions.

Following the tragic building collapse that killed more than 1,300 Bangladeshi garment workers and recent fires that have claimed the lives of more than 400 Bangladeshi clothing workers, more than 40 clothing retailers have signed on to the Accord on Building and Fire Safety. But two of the major retailers that count on low-wage Bangladeshi workers to make the clothes they sell have refused.

Today. Walmart and Gap announced they would develop their own nonbinding safety code and turned their backs on the accord developed by international and Bangladeshi unions, retailers and other groups—groups with firsthand knowledge of what’s needed for worker safety and of the deadly consequences of inaction.

A coalition of faith organizations, investors and labor groups—including the AFL-CIO—is urging major U.S. retailers, including Walmart, Gap, Sears and others, to sign on to a binding workplace and fire safety plan to prevent tragedies such as the recent building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 garment workers and two 2012 fires that claimed the lives of more than 400 Bangladeshi clothing workers.  

Rana Plaza, the Bangladesh factory that collapsed three weeks ago, killed more than 1,100 workers, many of them young women. This tragedy adds to the more than 1,500 Bangladeshi workers killed in preventable fires and building collapses since 2005. Documents found at the factory show that the workers produced for big names in global retail, revealing the link between poor workers in Bangladesh and major retail brands. Obviously, the government must improve local laws and their enforcement to stop these tragedies, but brands also must take responsibility for their supply chains. They must be held accountable to the tragedy that happened in their supply chain.

Last year, local Bangladeshi and international unions and workers’ rights groups negotiated an agreement to stop these deaths and help Bangladesh’s garment workers claim their rights. Two brands signed the agreement; the other major brands must sign on now!

After last week's Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh, which killed at least 377 garment workers, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) started a petition calling on three of the leading users of Bangladeshi garment workers—Walmart, the Gap and H&M—to demand that factories in the country be made safe for workers. The building collapse is already the deadliest garment factory disaster in known history and the death toll is not yet final. USAS says the deaths could have easily been prevented, as cracks appeared in the structure the day before it collapsed. Workers were ordered to work in the building anyway, under threat of losing a month's pay.

Women still make only 77 cents to the dollar men earn in America. Worldwide, "women are paid 18 percent on average less than their male counterparts at work." This pay gap has persisted without change for a decade. 

In a 52-47 vote, the U.S. Senate blocked a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act this afternoon. With 60 votes needed to proceed to a vote on the bill, Republicans succeeded in blocking pay equity for women for the second time. 

Guatemalan workers received support from an unexpected quarter this week. A group of global clothing brands (including the Gap, Liz Claiborne, Nike, Under Armour, American Eagle, Adidas, PVH and PF) and an association to which they are affiliated with, the Fair Labor Association, wrote to the Government of Guatemala to urge it to move swiftly to reach a satisfactory resolution to a complaint filed four years ago by the AFL-CIO and six Guatemalan unions under DR-CAFTA (the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement).