A Report On The Garment Industry

On the 24th of April 2013, a tragedy occurred in Dhaka, Bangladesh, resulting in the deaths of more than 1000 people and the destruction of a nine-story garment factory “Rana Plaza” (Manik& Yardley, n.d.,). However, the unsatisfactory condition of the building was known to employees. The day before the tragedy, several cracks were noticed, yet the owner of the factory ignored the warning by police to suspend the factory. In addition, workers were physically intimidated which shows, illustrating the power of society and the desperation of financial condition as individuals (Hossain, 2013). 80% of the workers at the Rana Plaza were female; this was because their labor was the cheapest in the world, with the minimum income BDT being 3000 taka per month (the equivalent of 37 Australian dollars) (Burke, 2013). This industry represented the international fashion labels in Europe, America, cosmopolitanism and progressive brands such as Benetton etc. Most of the factory’s textile products were internationally exported, earning foreign currency and allowing it to become the largest industry in Bangladesh. The “Rana Plaza” was one of the main industry, which maintained the economy and society as individuals in Bangladesh. The power of capital at the Bangladesh level is the arrangement of dominance transnational businesses at the global level, which is a smaller rate of powerful

On April 24, 2013, NewYorkTimes journalist Jim Yardley reported on the collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-story factory complex in the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, which claimed the lives of 1,100 people. A 400-page report of the incident places the blame squarely on the shoulders of the building's owner, Sohel Rana, along with the owners of the building's five garment factories, who now face possible charges of murder, along with accusations of “ignoring safety warnings and locking exit doors,” while the Bangladeshi government continues to receive harsh criticism for its lax enforcement of labor safety standards in the country's billion-dollar clothing manufacturing industry (“Sweatshop Labor”). The garment industry in Bangladesh is one of the world's leading exporters of clothing, second only to China, with more than 5,000 garment factories employing an excess of 3 million workers, producing merchandise for top brand retailers in the United States and Europe (Yardley; “Sweatshop Labor”). Workers in these factories endure long hours and unsafe working conditions for wages so low parents must send their children to work instead of school so that they have enough to eat. The tragedy of Rana Plaza brings to the forefront the true cost of things; is it worth 1,100 lives to save a few dollars on a shirt or a pair of jeans?

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory brought attention to the lack of safety regulation and lead to an overhaul city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations. The business models and practices of the Triangle Factory owner is today just shipped overseas as we see in the Rana Plaza incident. It highlights the corruption and unethical practices of today fashion industry. The Large company uses the overseas business as sub-contractors. This way the can turn a blind eye to the local business practices and lack thereof. These companies get the benefit of large mass produce garment at cheap rates, but bear no responsibilities for maintenance of the factories, equipment or training for the workers. The business models and practices of the Triangle Factory owner is today just shipped overseas. Modern sweatshops are not only a problem, but an unethical system of abuse and waste exploits workers of the poor. Companies use terms such as “Terms of Engagement” or “Corporate sustainability” to show there care about the treatment of people and the environment and have standards in place to maintain ethical practices in the facility that manufactures the products that carry our brands. However, these companies have little control over the subcontractors. Brown ( ) state that “even if the contractors and their subcontractors had the desire and political will to implement effective safety programs, few of them have the resources necessary to accomplish

When our group found out that this year’s History Day topic was “impact and innovation” we had an epiphany to exemplify what impacted people’s lives the most, so we concluded to do our on project on the innovation in the textile industry and impact of the textile mills. The textile mills provided people with a cheap source of cloth that had an impact on every person’s lives during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The introductory of the documentary examines the fabric mills of Bangladesh. It is very competitive in the international market place to find low cost labor; when merchandise manufactured in another country is imported these country put on a duty rate. Apparel companies contemplating low cost labor,

“Sweatshops still make your clothes” is an article written by Jake Blumgart. Blumgart’s article speaks about how the owners of sweatshops treat their workers. The article suggests that workers in sweatshops are treated as if they’re slaves with little pay and long hours. It also shows how many people buy their clothes without knowing where it came from. He explained how defeated it made a reporter named Charles Kernaghan feel who exposed the cruelty of this issue to the public on live television in an interview with Kathie Lee Gifford sixteen years ago.

Doug Saunders’ article, “Are garment workers’ deaths on our hands? No” is about the sufferings that the Bangladesh garment workers have to experience in the hopes of meeting consumer needs in Europe and North America. According to the tone of the writer, this article presents an argument on ethical concern about the existing business relationship between the developed and the developing countries. Developed countries such as Europe and North America go for cheap markets in countries like Bangladesh but in the process they affect the welfare of these countries. Saunders uses the fire outbreak and a collapsed eight-storey building, as evidence for the suffering of Bangladesh workers. Conversely, Saunders claims that clothing agreements by developed

In Bangladesh there have been many problems due to the small market and their extremely low cost. So for american companies like Walmart, H&M, Tommy Hilfiger,etc bangladesh is a goldmine because they produce quality work and at a very cost. Although with their low cost there is a high demand for their goods, which rushes the production process resulting in injury.

This article addresses how working conditions of garment workers in global South have merely changed after Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 and struggles on implementing corrective action plans in factories due to companies’ apathetic actions towards this approach. This collapse is widely known as killing thousands of people at Rana Plaza, an eight-story factory located in Bangladesh’s capital city that consisted several factories manufacturing clothing for multinational brands such as Walmart and Joe Fresh. In the wake of this disaster, companies, trade unions, and worker’s rights group decided to make the buildings safer and improve working conditions for employees in factories across Bangladesh, which meant adding sprinkler systems and

This article is very important because Silverstein highlights key issues that occur in the garment industry, which many Western consumers are unaware of. Important examples include the treatment of workers, unsafe working conditions, and the cost of production. On March 18, 1969, the United States began their campaign of bombing Cambodia for the following four years. This caused sociopolitical trouble that eventually caused the Pol Pot regime

However, after the Rana Plaza Factory Fire, major retailers such as H&M, Zara, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein entered into an agreement with UNI and IndustriALL, two global union federations in order to ensure safety for their workers abroad. The signing of this Accord places retailers and branded corporations at the top of the entities with obligations to its workers below. “This Accord imposes on these buyers substantive obligations – most notably, financial obligations to help suppliers pay for safety upgrades, such as the installation of fire exits, or, in the case of structurally unsound buildings, major repairs while guaranteeing the payment of workers’ salaries for time lost at work.” Anner and his peers find this Accord to be the first of many promising and successful steps towards ending these tragedies. However, I found that contrary to what the media and these retailers may publicize, this accord applies to Bangladesh only. Many of these corporations have factories within India, China, and Pakistan as well that are not affected by this agreement. Although this may be one attempt at solving the problems of global outsourcing, it does not reach far enough.

War on Want’s 2010 report states, “the garment industry in India is deeply reliant on the sweatshop model of production and exploitation.”(“Fashion Victims-The Facts”) Factory workers are only paid £60 a month and work up to 140 hours of overtime each month(Fashion Victims-The Facts). Indian workers make very little money that an entire month’s of wage wouldn’t even buy the clothes they make. The reason for these low wages would be the stores of the biggest names on the British high street abusing, threatening and poverting pay the workers(Chamberlain). Depending on where the workers are at the paycheck varies. For instance, in Bangladesh, a garment factory worker’s wage is £25 a month (“Fashion Victims-The Facts”). Some workers earn £32 on sewing machines.(“Fashion Victims-The Facts”).

"I saw what appeared to be handprints and scratch marks on the walls of the stairwell where eight workers were crushed to death as 350 people tried to push through a single locked exit," stated Jason Motlagh when he visited the Rana Plaza sweatshop a year after the building collapsed(Motlagh). Sweatshops are manufacturing facilities,such as that at Rana Plaza,where workers receive low pay for working exhausting long hours under poor conditions("Sweatshop Labour"). The sweatshops in developing countries are detrimental to their workers because of low wages and poor working conditions as well as the exploitation of workers.

I think the major goal of this industry is to create not just comparative advantage but also competitive advantage on a global scale and at the same time largely will contribute to combat the extreme poverty and hunger in Bangladesh. This stimulates economic growth and move towards the marked based economic system (privatization, deregulation, improving the legal system and protect the private property).As part of the above the goal in the textile industry isto move from command economy to market economy and this is evident with the Privatization process of the textile businesses and encouraging the entrepreneurship and investments in technology within the industry. In addition, stimulating businesses that will decrease the import of raw materials and the same will lower the transaction cost and dependency from

The Myanmar garment industry is still extremely small and it tends to specialists in higher quality by comparing with other countries in the region. MGMA Chairman, U Myint Soe said that “Myanmar’s apparel industry is small compared with our neighbors in Bangladesh, China and Thailand, but we currently experiencing robust and sustained growth as international investors and retailers discover the attractive features of our industry”(Russell, 13 Jan: 2015). The future potential of the Myanmar garment industry is sourcing location. Nowadays, buyers’ belief that the workers can be trained for collaborative partnerships with them to improve efficiencies and compliance. The Myanmar garment also has some advantages over other regional garment producers, and authors again point to low wages (lower than everywhere except Bangladesh) and a supply of relatively well-educated labor. In the Myanmar garment sector, as present, production with CMP contracting system with reasonable reasons included with reduce taxes, easy of finance flows within the business. But today, some factories used FOB system which is common model in international garment industry and also the Myanmar’s tax system provides incentives for CMP production over the FOB system.