On April 24, 2024, the global community marks the 11th anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy. The Rana Plaza, an eight-story structure that accommodated five garment factories with more than 5,000 workers, collapsed on April 24, 2013. The incident left the deaths of 1,132 workers and injured more than 2,500 workers.
On the morning of 23rd April 2013, the three pillars of the building got two-inch-deep cracks, and the following morning, anxious workers who noticed cracks attempted to refuse to enter the building and work. Despite visible cracks in the building, factory owners ‘forced’ workers to enter the building and work, and the building collapsed. This is known as the deadliest disaster in global fashion and clothing production history. During the incident, the victims were producing garments for global brands, including Matalan, Benetton, Primark, and Mango among others. The tragedy exposed dangerous working conditions, exploitation and slavery in the global clothing and fashion industry.
Since the Rana Plaza tragedy, fast fashion retailers have increasingly used ethical codes of conduct, CSR disclosures, and social compliance audits as corporate transparency mechanisms to improve working conditions in their garment manufacturing factories in Bangladesh and other developing countries. Research over the past decade shows that despite the use of transparency instruments such as social compliance audits by retailers, the workers’ livelihood and human rights at the workplaces have not improved, while retailers continue to profit and factory owners become wealthy. In fact, social compliance audits were in use for factories affected by fire and structural disasters, and these were found to be ineffective in preventing the Tazreen fire incident and the Rana Plaza disaster. The research, accordingly, found that the retailers and their suppliers often use ethical codes, CSR and social compliance audits as symbolic rather than protecting workers’ rights. Therefore, existing research suggests that there has been little or no improvement in working conditions in the Bangladeshi garment sector since the collapse of Rana Plaza.
Despite CSR, social compliance and other transparency practices, as well as several international initiatives (such as ACCORD, ALLIANCE, UK Modern Slavery Act, and EU Laws), to improve working conditions in the global fashion supply chain since the Rana Plaza incident, workers' vulnerability and suffering have not improved. Responsibility partly lies with global fashion retailers involved in unfair practices, including sudden order cancellations, price reductions, refusal to pay for goods dispatched or in production, and delaying payment of invoices. One study during Covid time shows that retailers' unfair practices during the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated women workers' vulnerabilities in economic, job, food and housing security, as well as health and well-being in Bangladeshi garment factories for big fashion retailers. This research shows the pandemic has intensified poor working conditions and exploitation.
In order to explore deeper into the unfair practices by global fashion retailers (the practices are partly responsible for the exploitation of workers in global fashion chains located in the global south), we conducted a survey of 1000 garment factories in Dec 2021. The survey found that more than half of factories reported being subject to at least one of four unfair practices investigated: sudden cancellation of orders, price reduction, refusal to pay for goods dispatched or in production, and delaying payment of invoices. Major global brands, including Aldi, Asda/Walmart, ASOS, Bestseller, Costco, H&M, Lidl, Inditex/Zara, KIK, New Look, Nike, Next, Pep & Co, and Primark had the highest proportion of unfair practices. In Dec 2021, 76% of factories were selling to brands at the same price as in March 2020, although the cost of raw materials had increased. Nearly one in five factories struggled to pay the minimum legal wage in Bangladesh. Not a single retailer/brand took legal action against brands for cancellations of orders or refusal to pay for goods dispatched or in production.
We suggest governments in the global north introduce Garments Trade Adjudicator or Fashion Watchdog to eliminate brands' unfair practices, and many MPs from Westminster and civil society organizations in the UK have already endorsed such support.
