What I Do
IBEW helps build Busch Gardens' newest roller coaster.
IBEW helps build Busch Gardens' newest roller coaster.
Working people around the world watched in horror and disbelief at the number of workers who needlessly died in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh’s worst industrial accident to date, 1,129 workers— a significant majority of them young women—were killed when the shoddily built Rana Plaza building where they worked collapsed upon them April 24, 2013. About 1,500 more were injured and millions of other garment workers remain vulnerable as they continue to toil in death traps for poverty wages. A recent study concluded that as many as 60% of Bangladesh’s garment factories are vulnerable to collapse.
Bangladesh is now in the process of amending its labor law. A “standing committee of the Parliament” will hold a public hearing before the bill moves to consideration by the full Parliament. Unions have taken a variety of positions on the bill. Major concerns include the right of unions to represent workers in the country’s labor courts, the role and independence of “participation committees,” which have an ability to represent workers in the absence of a trade union, exempting the garment industry from a profit sharing mandate applied to other industries, the time period for the payment of severance benefits and the lack of coverage of Export Processing Zone Workers under the law.
Many of Bangladesh’s four million garment workers risk their lives every day, working in thousands of unregulated and often poorly constructed factories. Their contribution to the $19 billion garment industry has been rewarded by denial of their rights and workplace conditions reminiscent of the U.S. sweatshops of 100 years ago. Their jobs literally can kill them. Major brands and retailers in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere have made millions from high profit margins based on low wages and dangerous conditions. We call on the retailers not to leave Bangladesh, but to take an active role in improving conditions by pressuring the government to implement reforms and by negotiating with workers and local employers. We must collectively as a nation and as a world, together with Bangladesh, take immediate steps to prevent these kinds of disasters in the future.
In a dramatic demonstration of how deadly the global supply chain really is, Scott Nova, director of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), opened a panel on workers' rights in Bangladesh during the recent AFL-CIO Convention with this observation:
Of the four deadliest factory disasters in history, three of those four happened in the last 12 months.
