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But the pledge taken by those major brands affects only about a third of Bangladeshi factories, leaving some 5,000 sub-contracting factories and 3 million garment workers without strict oversight or safety improvementsent
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Most of the women employed in the sector work as seamstresses, while management is predominantly made up of men.
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More than 200 fashion companies including Adidas, Gap, H&M, Target, and Walmart quickly pledged $100 million through two efforts to increase inspections, enforce standards, and pay for safety upgrades.
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the fashion industry experienced the deadliest accident in its history: the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh that than killed more 1,100 w orkers 3. 24, 201 l i r p A on
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“Bangladesh should enforce its own labor laws and protect its own citizens and workers but I think they lack the political will and capacity to do that.”
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“I want to give credits to the brands,” Labowitz said.
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and this is where I do think you need a bigger vision for which factories get fixed and who pays to upgrade the facilities,” she said.
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The Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety told that while the factories are responsible for paying for safety improvements, the Alliance and the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh have helped them secure loans and financing as well as lower the cost of importing fire doors and sprinkler systems.
Labowitz’s research team has proposed shared responsibility for workers’ safety, encouraging companies, local governments, Western governments, as well as financial institutions and brands to all come together to develop solutions. Though it’s been three years since those images of the collapsed factory shocked the world, Labowitz remains hopeful that their power may still bring transformation to Bangladesh and the global fashion industry, even if progress is slow.
And while the Alliance acknowledged there was still a lot of work to be done to install the upgrades, it said that significant progress had been made in the years since the collapse, including training garment workers and security guards on fire safety practices.
“The question for me is whether Rana Plaza and Bangladesh become a turning point in how the fashion industry thinks about its supply chain, and I guess the optimist on me hopes that it is at turning point, that the industry is going to take some time to adapt to an increasingly transparent supply chain,” she said.
And because the fast fashion industry is so globalized, there is no single regulator that oversees or enforces safety standards to protect workers in the various countries where clothing is contracted to be produced.
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