Pressure grows on Walmart, US firms, over Bangladesh safety

Democratic leaders in the US Congress Friday added their voice to growing calls for more US firms to join a broadening global coalition to push for building and fire safety in Bangladesh. Only two US firms have signed on to an unprecedented commitment by western, mostly European industry earlier this week to improve factory safety in the south Asian country: Abercrombie & Fitch and PVH Corporation, which produces Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.

One other company from North America – Loblaws of Canada, which produces Joe Fresh – has also joined. Large US retailers such as Walmart and Gap have backed away from the commitment. Walmart said the agreement introduced requirements that should be left to retailers, suppliers and the government and that they were unnecessary to achieve safety goals. It pledged to carry out its own safety controls at its 279 factories in Bangladesh.

“Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is out of step. By not signing up, the Walmart brand sinks to a new low,” said Jyrki Raina, general secretary of the industrial Global Union that helped gather backing from industry for the initiative, on the group’s website. The leader of Democrats in the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said that senior House of Representative Democrats had sent letters to nine separate US retailers urging them to get on board: The Gap, JC Penney, The Children’s Place, Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, VF Corporation, Macy’s and Sears/KMart.

The letters warn that a “large-scale race to the bottom” has produced working conditions in Bangladesh in order to provide American and European consumers with “rock-bottom prices” lower than two decades ago. Lawmakers compared the horrific collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 workers to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City in 2011 that killed 146 garment workers.

The fire mobilised the US garment workers’ union movement and led to improved factory safety standards in the US. “Circumstances are at a tipping point in Bangladesh, much as they were in the wake of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York,” they wrote in the letter. “We urge you to help ensure that workers in Bangladesh do not needlessly lose their lives to produce the clothes we wear.”

Bangladesh already stood to lose its preferential import tariff status in the United States after a fire last year killed 112 workers in a Bangladesh factory, according to the US Trade Representative (USTR) office. A US panel that considers the system of preferences for importers said in January that it had concluded that “too little had been done to address worker rights concerns” and that withdrawal, suspension or limitation of Bangladesh’s preferential status could be in order.

US President Barack Obama could rule on the issue by the end of June, a USTR official told dpa. The AFL-CIO, one of the largest union coalitions in the US, has been petitioning since 2007 for the Bangladesh government to improve workers’ safety and rights.

“The time for granting the government the benefit of the doubt has passed,” said the AFL-CIO’s Celeste Drake at a hearing on March 28 – a prescient statement ahead of the tragedy that followed in April. At least 24 large retail companies, including Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) of Sweden and Inditex have agreed to improve safety at Bangladesh textile factories by contributing up to 2.5 million dollars each towards that goal, a coalition of labour groups announced Wednesday. Activists in the rights and labour groups who put

together the deal say that governments are notoriously reluctant to disrupt trade arrangements. They were doubtful that the White House would take away Bangladesh’s privileged status. A random survey of visitors to the US capital this week showed little of the issue awareness among consumers – but some willingness to act.

“When I buy clothes, how much it costs is my first concern,” said Tonya Thomson, 36, a housewife from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “I usually don’t pay attention to where it was produced.” She bought eight souvenir T-shirts for 40 dollars, and said she had not heard of the Bangladesh factory tragedy. But she voiced willingness to pay a few dollars more to improve the work conditions of textile workers in developing countries.

On the other hand, Eric Hunukunu, 48, who works at a hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, wasn’t concerned after he bought a new hat from a truck vendor near the Washington Monument. “I’m here as a tourist. And I happen to need a hat. Then I just buy it. I don’t care too much about its origin,” he said.