Last month, more than 600 Bangladeshi garment factory workers were killed when the building that they were working in collapsed. Last November, two factory fires killed and injured more than 200 workers. This series of deadly accidents, while shocking, is unfortunately all too common in a garment industry that struggles with downward price pressure from consumers in the developed world who demand cheap, mass-produced clothing in keeping with ever-evolving trends.
In recent years, many global clothing retailers have begun moving their orders to Bangladesh. At the current rate, Bangladesh, already the third biggest exporter of apparel to the United States, is on track to surpass China as the world's largest apparel manufacturer within the next seven years.
The 4,500 garment factories in the country, making clothes for retailers such as Gap, H&M, Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, Sears, Benetton and the Children's Place, are run with one rule, and one rule only: faster and cheaper, with no regard for workers' health and safety. To be fair, many large companies have supplier guidelines that set minimum working and building safety conditions. These retailers claim that they conduct audits to ensure that their suppliers are complying with these standards.
However, the results of these audits, if they are indeed being made, are not publicly available. Thus, there is no way for consumers to know if companies are policing themselves and terminating relationships with suppliers who do not meet standards. Even in the wake of last week's tragedy, Wal-Mart refused to confirm whether any of the factories in the collapsed factory building had been audited.
While Nicholas Kristof, writing in The New York Times in January 2009, famously argued that sweatshops and factory work are a dream, rather than a societal ill. However, I think that even he would agree that the preservation of life and limb takes precedence over all other concerns, even in the most desperate of conditions. Kristof's arguments against living wages, while unpalatable to many liberals, have an undeniable logic: imposing minimum wage floors on a country-to-country basis merely drives jobs out of those countries rather than improving workers' lives. Yet his opposition to labor standards as a similar disincentive against companies' manufacturing is not mutually exclusive with stricter factory and building integrity standards.
The imposition of such standards or really, the enforcement of ostensibly pre-existing ones will inevitably put a certain degree of pressure on companies. However, the benefit in terms of preservation of life is undeniable; and surely, the imperative to protect life must take precedence over the pursuit of corporate profit.
At the individual level, consumers, and particularly those who shop at fast-fashion and mass retailers that have factories in Bangladesh and other countries like it, can demand that audits be made public and that companies increase transparency.
Additionally, consumers can choose to support companies that have committed to treating their workers ethically. This proposition does not have to be pricey, either. For example, H&M has committed to producing clothing using 100 percent ethical cotton by 2020. Gap, some of whose factories in India were revealed to employ children as young as ten in 2007, invested tremendous financial and institutional resources to both bettering the lives of these children and ensuring that its factories would not hire children in future.
In response to the Bangladesh factory collapse last week, British companies Primark and Joe Fresh, both of whom had the factory in their supply chains, committed to helping victims and their families. Primark agreed to pay compensation, including "long-term aid for children who have lost parents, financial aid for those injured and payments to the families of the deceased." These responses contrast favorably with the response from Mango, another company that had the factory in its supply chain, which has yet to make any gestures towards the victims.
Ultimately, what we as consumers can do is to vote with our dollars by supporting companies that have committed to safe workplace environments. Eventually, consumer pressure will make brands commit to safe factory conditions as a public relations necessity.
