Trade union bodies call US Bangladesh plan “toothless”
11/07/2013
European companies, including H&M, Inditex, Mango, Marks & Spencer, G-Star and Esprit, drew up the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh following the fatal fire at a garment factory on the Rana Plaza complex in April. Seventy companies, including some US clothing brands, have signed it.
However, 17 prominent North American retailers, including VF Corporation, owner of brands such as The North Face, Timberland and Vans, as well as Wal-Mart, Gap, Target, JC Penney and Macy’s, were reluctant to add their names. On July 9, they unveiled their own plan, the Bangladesh Worker Safety Initiative.
According to a report in the Financial Times, Wal-Mart played a prominent role in putting together the alternative plan. The newspaper quoted its chief compliance officer, Jay Jorgensen, as saying the European accord “would subject us to potentially unlimited legal liability and litigation”.
He went on to point out common ground between the European and US proposals. Under both, companies commit themselves to funding better inspections of factories in Bangladesh, common safety standards and better safety training for local workers. Of the 17 signatories to the US agreement, those who outsource most production to Bangladesh will pay $1 million a year for five years in funding. In the European plan, funding will be a maximum of $500,000 per company per year.
However, the Financial Times quoted trade union groups in Europe who were critical of the new, US-led Bangladesh Worker Safety Initiative. Christy Hoffman, deputy general secretary of the Swiss-based UNI Global Union, which supported the European plan, told the newspaper that the US proposal included no “advocates”, which, she said, would make it difficult to enforce. “I don’t know that it’s enforceable in any way,” the FT quoted her as saying.
In a joint statement with UNI Global Union, Brussels-based trade union federation for the textile and garment sectors, industriAll, called the US plan “another toothless corporate auditing programme”.
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