On April 24, 2013, a multistory garment factory complex in Bangladesh called Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers and injuring another 2,500. It remains the worst accident in the history of the apparel industry and one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the world.
Several factories inside the complex produced apparel for Western brands, including Benetton, Primark and Walmart, shining a spotlight on the unsafe conditions in which a sizable portion of Americans’ cheap clothing is produced. The humanitarian tragedy hit home as wealthy nations’ shoppers wrestled with their own complicity and called for reforms – but a decade later, progress is still patchy.
As a professor of operations and supply chain management, I believe it is important to understand how the complex and fragmented supply chains that are the norm in the clothing industry create conditions where unsafe conditions and abuse can flourish – and make it difficult to assign responsibility for reforms.
Shamed into action?
Rana Plaza was not the first garment industry accident in Bangladesh. While the government had stringent building codes “on the books,” they were rarely enforced. Most workers lacked the information and power to demand safe working conditions.
Yet the fact that the Rana Plaza collapse was not only a humanitarian crisis, but a public relations crisis, prompted swift action by international organizations and Western brands and clothing retailers. A campaign for full and fair compensation for families of victims was launched immediately, facilitated by the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency. Within a few months, two initiatives were designed to bring garment factories in Bangladesh up to international standards: the European-led Accord for Fire and Building Safety, and the American-led Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety.
While the two initiatives differed in some important ways, both shared the common goal: to improve building and fire safety by leveraging the purchasing power of the member companies. In other words, Western brands would insist that production partners get up to standard or take their business elsewhere.
Altogether, the two agreements covered about 2,300 supplier factories. The coalitions conducted factory inspections to identify structural and electrical deficiencies and developed plans for factories to make improvements. The initiatives also laid the groundwork to form worker safety committees and to train workers to recognize, solve and prevent health and safety issues. Member companies set aside funds for inspections and worker training, negotiated commercial terms and facilitated low-cost loans for factory improvements.
Both were five-year agreements: the Alliance was sunsetted in 2018, whereas the Accord operated for a few more years before handing operations over to the locally created Readymade Sustainability Council in June 2020.