Corporate murder in Bangladesh

Cheers went up yesterday among the exhausted rescuers at Rana Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It had just been announced that six factory owners had been arrested.

So far 380 garment workers, mainly women, are known to have died in the rubble of that huge building, where 3,000 people were working at the time of its collapse.

The worst ever factory disaster in Bangladesh’s history has shocked people around the world, including those who wear clothes purchased at Primark, Benetton and Walmart, which used the factory. Matalan and Bonmarché are also appear to be connected with the New Wave Style company, the largest employer in the Dhaka building.

Many share the desire to make those who profit from employing cheap labour by making people work under such lethal conditions pay for their crimes. But – and there are several buts –  will punishing these men put an end to the crude and cruel exploitation of human labour that takes place day in and day out, not only in Bangladesh but throughout the world?

And how could this murder – and it is a kind of murder – happen so soon after the fire at the Tazreen factory last November, also in Dhaka, in which 112 people died?  Why was nothing done after that?

The factory owners at Rana Plaza insisted workers should return to work even after safety engineers warned that huge cracks in the building’s walls were evident. They were told they would be docked three days pay for every day they were absent.

In the wake of these events, many shoppers feel complicit in the suffering of those in the Bangladeshi rag trade. Are we wearing “blood clothes”, they ask?  Calls for consumers to boycott companies like Primark are widespread. Ethical buying is said to be the solution.

Like so many others, London Evening Standard fashion editor Karen Dacre calls for “consumer power” to force changes in the clothing industry. That sounds good. But how can you tell how a company treats its workers? And who is responsible for auditing conditions?

Responsibility Outsourced, a report by major US trade unions, is deeply critical of the companies and organisations that are supposed to monitor how workers are treated. The Ali Enterprises factory in Pakistan in which 260 workers died in a fire last year, had just earned its certification from the non-profit social auditing group, Social Accountability International.

In the report, which is dedicated to murdered garment workers leader Aminul Islam, the unions are deeply critical of social audit firms, including the Fair Labour Organisation which monitors the Foxconn plant that supplies Apple. FLA gets money from corporates such as Apple and Nestlé.  

Trade union and labour activists know that factories are not going to police themselves and are rightly calling for binding agreements. But even after a binding agreement was developed by labour organisations, Wal-Mart and Sears not only refused to sign but refused to pay compensation to the Tazreen victims.

But, while the report avoids saying so, it is the capitalist system itself which is the real murderer. As it notes: “While this globalised business model continues to provide vast profits for companies, it comes at a tremendous cost to working people and to the economies of many of the poorest nations.”

Human labour is simply another commodity to be bought and sold, at the cheapest price going. That’s why manufacturers moved into Bangladesh in the first place. The Rana Plaza was just one of the 5,500 factories Bangladeshi rag trade factories where the average monthly wage of the three million workers is around £25 per month. Clothing production accounts for 82% of Bangladesh’s GDP, a huge rise since 1985.

Companies must seek out the cheapest labour possible to out-do their competitors. No amount of consumer boycotting or regulation will abolish that underlying imperative. As one Bangladeshi union organiser told the BBC: "You buy one get one free - but it's not really free."

The global corporations will always find willing accomplices, whether it is in Bangladesh, China, Brazil or in Britain in their search for profits. Moving on from an economic system driven by greed and profit is the biggest priority of all.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Walmart workers and teachers turn up the heat

After eight days of solid strike action against a regressive restructuring of the education system in the third largest school district in the US, teachers in Chicago are going back to school having won a stand-off compromise that solves nothing.

They have avoided a court hearing scheduled for today that would have ordered them back to work, if Mayor Rahm Emanuel had got his way. 

Emanuel, former White House top aide to Barack Obama, is spokesman for a powerful group that believes poorly-performing schools should be closed and reopened with new staff or converted to "charter" schools that often are non-union and run by private groups.

Chicago has been devastated by the long, grinding recession. In the five-year period since the crash, its unemployment rate increased from 5.2% to 9.1% – higher than the national average. So it’s no surprise that many Chicago public school students perform poorly on the tests.

The union distrusts Emanuel, fearing he will use the poor academic record to close scores of schools now that the strike has been called off, leading to mass teacher lay offs. The deal only obliges Rahm to re-hire as few as one-half of those who lose their jobs.

Teachers want more resources put into neighbourhood public schools to help them succeed. Chicago teachers say many of their students live in poor and crime-ridden areas and this affects their learning. More than 80% of public school students qualify for free meals based on low family incomes.

The contract that was agreed with Emanuel includes several compromises, including his key demand that teacher evaluations be based on results of standardised tests in reading, maths and science. Test results will still be taken into consideration but not by as much as Emanuel originally wanted.

The proposed deal calls for an average 17.6% pay raise for teachers over four years and some benefit improvements.

Financial analysts have said the cost of the agreement could exceed the school district's budget and lead to its credit rating being downgraded, forcing it to pay higher interest rates to finance any deficits.

Across the other side of the country striking workers employed in one of Walmart’s warehouses yesterday completed a 50 mile “pilgrimage” with a rally in Los Angeles to highlight working conditions that they said they can no longer tolerate.

In the world’s largest corporation, workers are forced to work in temperatures of over 100F  without a fan, in heat and pollutants that make the workers vomit and get bloody noses, without clean water or regular breaks and with faulty, dangerous equipment.

Raymond Castillo, a 23-year-old warehouse worker who marched with the group said: "I felt joy because of all the supporters that walked with us and that lasted the whole time right by our sides. And I felt proud of myself because I'm fighting for something that I believe in."

Even though Castillo has a wife and one-year-old, he said working in the warehouse was "not worth risking my life." At the end of the pilgrimage, he said he felt inspired and rejuvenated. "I still feel like running more. Right now, I'm bouncing up and down because I’m excited. I'm not even paying attention to my blisters on my feet."  

The exhilaration that comes from collective action reflects the release of mounting but pent-up frustration and anger. The joy felt by one warehouse worker is directly connected to the ongoing revolutionary process that erupted in Tunis in January last year, inspiring the year-old global Occupy movement.  

We saw it in the mass demonstrations in Spain and Portugal at the weekend and the growing resistance to austerity in Italy, Britain and the rest of the capitalist world. A global tipping point has been breached and a period of intense, class confrontation is emerging.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor