Bangladesh Factory Collapse

[Goodsoulette]

Where exactly are primark, walmart etc exercising due diligence? After the factory fire 6 months ago they were supposedly going to look into the safety of workers in Bangladesh. Primark are apparently shocked, are they really??? they must know why the contracts are so cheap in Bangladesh?

[gness]

Of course I am not suggesting that Zeuhl. Forty years of working with a Third World Charity has shown me that many of these companies will put profit before their workers but I also know that things can change for those workers....if we make the effort to find out just what we are buying, where and how it is manufactured and how the workers are treated.
Will we do that once we have forgotten this tragedy? Will we bother to find out about the everyday lives of the people producing so much of what we wear and use? Somehow I doubt it. We have become too used to cheap throwaway T shirts.

[deggers316]

btw me how many on here have got "IPHONES"?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285980/Revealed-Inside-Chinese-suicide-sweatshop-workers-toil-34-hour-shifts-make-iPod.html

[Zacs-Master]

gness, so, assuming we have found out that we don't like the conditions in which the T shirt we were about to purchase, what do we do?

Stop buying them as a protest and make the company bankrupt?

[Zeuhl]

/Will we do that once we have forgotten this tragedy? Will we bother to find out about the everyday lives of the people producing so much of what we wear and use? /


Directly related issues such as Health and Safety in the work environment - few people want to think people are losing limbs making their consumables.

Pay will be an issue - but still needs to be related to the local norms

Building Standards and other infrastructure standards are a bit dissociated.

And if jerry building or back-handers to local officials are the local norm it is difficult to affect that without disrupting and having a negative effect on the lives we would like to see improving

[237SJ]

Maybe if everyone boycotted shops like Primark etc until they check out the conditions of the people who make their clothes (and regularly check) maybe something would change but that won`t happen because people in the West want to pay £6 for a skirt.

[Zacs-Master]

237...please see my question. If we stop buying the clothes, what do you think will happen?

[Zeuhl]

/ how many on here have got "IPHONES"? /

Indeed

the working conditions are unpleasant by our standards

but Chinese workers seem to prefer them to staying in the impoverished rural areas

[237SJ]

I`ve just answered it Zac. It won`t make the company bankrupt - it will force the company and others like it to ensure that their clothes are ethically sourced. I remember being in Madras many years ago when M&S were over there checking out places to get their leather goods made. They were very careful (as much as you can be anyway) that their goods weren`t made by slave kids in dangerous buildings. It can be done.

[Zacs-Master]

I'm afraid i have a different view of world economics, possibly a more realistic one.

[gness]

Stop buying and make the company buck up...why would they need to go bankrupt? How would spot checks and conditions cause bankruptcy?
Zeuhl....no time for a longer reply..sorry but I do know well from first hand experience about local officials and back handers, of course I do. But when I started...on my own.... to get Oxfam's finances away from Barclays I was told I was crazy...I am...but it grew and it worked. If we care we can do it somehow.

[Anngel]

Just for everyone's info, there is a company which specialises in ethically sourced clothing, called People Tree. Be warned though it is not cheap. What you have to remember is that, low though the wages are, it is sometimes the only income available to the poor of that country. It is work or starve. What is wrong is that the owner of the building knew of the cracks and still allowed the workers in there. It is my understanding that they were threatened with the sack if they didn't work. We may carp on about Health and Safety in this country. Over there it is non-existent. The owners should be made to compensate each and every family for loss of life. A lifetime's wages should just about do it. A drop in the ocean to them, but will mean some sort of future for the bereaved. Maybe time for one of our worthy politicians to poke their oar in.

[Zeuhl]

gness

i'm sure you're right

the devil is in the detail and overseas client companies can make gradual, incremental improvements at a very practical level in partnership with ngo's and local activists

[Goodsoulette]

Hear, hear zeuhl and gness.

[Zacs-Master]

It would appear that the factory owners in question had scant regard for health and safety. Do you seriously think they would not seek to recoup losses / maintain profit caused by spot checks through redundancies?

[deggers316]

Anngel
" The owners should be made to compensate each and every family for loss of life.
remember bopal in 1984 the Americans 28 years later have not paid a thing to the 30.000 that died then and since due to that tragedy,cant see and owner there paying anything out if they find himt

[jomifl]

According to Wiki 16,000 were Killed in the bopal disaster. The actual cause of the gas release has never been ascertained, the circumstantial evidence, points to sabotage but since the Indian government interfered in the investigation there was no forensic proof available.

[mikey4444]

Just seen this on child labour in Bangladesh ::::

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22305064

Look at all those well known names hanging up in the factory !

[douglas9401]

Maybe some of the current World Police could be seconded to World Building Control and solve problems like this tragedy overnight.
They've done such a great job of preserving life wherever they've gone so far.

[gness]

Thank you Mikey......much for us to learn from that video...if we listen. x

[anotheoldgit]

Why is it that the British have to whip themselves on the back for all the world's ills?

Can we or our companies be held responsible for how foreign governments or their companies teat their workers.

I wonder when some try to have a go at capitalism, when they post such sentiments as this,

/// Capitalism = Profits before people. ///

Consider this, when they are carrying out their weekly shop at their local supermarket and looking for the cheapest prices, or at their local 'White Product' retailers, checking out the best deals on fridge/freezers, washing machines, dishwashers or large screen TVs?