After the suicides at Apple contractor Foxconn in China, the explosion of a fertilizer storage tank in Texas - and the deaths a month earlier at another factory in Bangladesh, many are asking what business is going to do about it.
The more pertinent question is what business customers are prepared to do. Which, we suspect - sadly, is not much. The death toll in Bangladesh is now approaching 600 and will probably climb higher. The factory building owner has been arrested - but so has the engineer who reported the safety issues. Turns out he helped the owner add three unapproved floors to the building and then panicked when he realized what his previous acquiescence had done. There is concern that powerful business interests in Bangladesh will turn the focus on this hapless engineer and the owner will skip in order to protect that country's primary source of revenue.
In China, Apple made a show of insisting that Foxconn improve conditions, but students were subsequently forced to work in Foxconn factories to meet demand for new iPhones and sporadic worker suicides have continued. In Texas, the primary concern appears to be ensuring that business be protected from additional regulations designed to better safeguard the communities in which such facilities are located thanks to popular support based on fear of competitive threats.
The Pope has condemned the conditions in Bangladesh as slave labor. But the moral outrage he expressed - and the support it engendered - may be for naught. The primary reason is that consumers continue to demand 'every day low prices' (as Walmart is wont to call them) so business does what it is trained and incentivized to do, meet that market demand or face extinction. Bangladesh has benefited, if such a term is appropriate, from the rise in Chinese compensation. The fact is that the moral responsibility may lie as much with consumers as with business owners. Owners could forego some profit to provide better working conditions. But then consumers could pay a few cents more to demonstrate their concern for fellow humans.
The values, principles and morals can and should be shared. Fingers can be pointed, hands can be raised in prayer and worry beads caressed, but there is plenty of responsibility to go around. Business and the governments that regulate it should take action - but the consumer/citizens who buy the products and services they sell have a responsibility to confirm those choices or to live with the consequences. JL
International Business Times reports via Salon:
“Today in the world this slavery is being committed against something beautiful that God has given us — the capacity to create, to work, to have dignity. How many brothers and sisters find themselves in this situation! Not paying fairly, not giving a job because you are only looking at balance sheets, only looking at how to make a profit. That goes against God!”
The Pope has condemned the climate of “slave labor” that led to the tragic building collapse in Bangladesh last week.
The Associated Press reported that during a private mass, Pope Francis was apparently outraged by a newspaper headline which noted that the 400 people who died in a garment factory in Dhaka were only paid the equivalent of 38 euros (about $50) per month.
“That is what the people who died were being paid. This is called slave labor,” he was quoted as saying.
The five garment factories inside the poorly constructed Rana Plaza in Dhaka housed some 3,500 workers – at last count, 402 had died in the collapse, while more than 2,500 are wounded. At least 150 people remain missing.
This disaster followed a fire in another Bangladeshi factory five months ago which killed 112 people.
The Pope then added: “There are many people who want to work but cannot. When a society is organized in a way that not everyone is given the chance to work, that society is not just.”
Meanwhile, thousands of workers and other activists took to the streets of central Dhaka on Wednesday to demand improved working conditions and the death of the owner of the collapsed building, Mohammed Sohel Rana.
AP noted that one person at the rally spoke through a loudspeaker on the back of a truck: “My brother has died. My sister has died. Their blood will not be valueless.”
Sohel Rana, 38, is now under police custody and is likely to be charged with negligence, illegal construction practices and forcing workers to toil in unsafe conditions. If no more charges are filed, he faces up to 7 years in prison (which will anger protesters demanding his death).
“I want the death penalty for the owner of the building,” said one garment employee, according to AP.
“We want regular salaries, raises and absolutely we want better safety in our factories.”
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh High Court has ordered the confiscation of Sohel Rana’s properties, and a freeze on the assets of the owners of the factories which operated inside Rana Plaza, so that such funds can be used to pay surviving workers and families of the victims.
The European Union also said it may take steps to force the Bangladeshi garment industry to upgrade facilities and improve work conditions by enacting changes to Bangladesh’s preferential, duty-free and quota-free access to EU markets. “The European Union calls upon the Bangladeshi authorities to act immediately to ensure that factories across the country comply with international labor standards,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht said in a statement.
The IndustriAll Global Union, the Swiss-based federation that represents 50 million workers around the world, established a May 15th deadline for Western retailer to propose fire and building safety standards for Bangladeshi factories.
Bangladesh’s huge garment economy accounts for some $19 billion of annual exports, with 60 percent of that figure going to Europe. The next biggest market is the U.S. (23 percent).
Some 3.6 million Bangladeshis work in the industry, the majority of them women. Garments account for 80 percent of Bangladesh’s total export business.
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