What to do when a human life is as cheap as a new T-shirt

"This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death," Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, said in a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, days after the March 25, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City.

More than a century on, her remarks ring true, especially in light of a rapid succession of similar tragedies in Bangladesh's garment industry, which employs more than 3 million workers, of whom 90 per cent are women.

According to reports, a total of 1,127 garment workers were killed after a garment factory building on the outskirts of Dhaka collapsed on April 24.

The tragedy, one of the deadliest in the history of the garment industry, came after a factory fire in 2012 that killed 112 workers in the same country. It appears that the death of 112 people was not serious enough to warrant action. The shaming and blaming of officials and other involved parties had to wait until a disaster killed 10 times as many, and did so in an election year, before anything happened. Human life is so cheap, as Schneiderman said.

Aware that it might be difficult to expect active government initiative in addressing the issue in a country known for official incompetence and corruption, some retailers sourcing garments from Bangladesh were said to be at a crossroads, not knowing whether to stay and introduce improvements or to leave for some "safer" developing countries. This is a no-brainer.

There is simply no reason to leave the country when so many people rely on their procurement contracts for a living and when at least part of their purported reason for being there is to create jobs in an arrangement that benefits both the host country and the retailers. There is, actually, a precedent to learn from.

Between 2002 and 2004, Nike audited its factories approximately 600 times, and then threatened to stop producing in factories in which the working environment was considered not satisfactory unless the conditions rapidly improved. This came following accusations that it had a history of using sweatshops - a working environment considered by many people to be dangerous and difficult, where workers can be exposed to hazardous materials, harmful situations, extreme temperatures, abuse from employers, and diseases.

So this time around, after the second, more appalling tragedy, some international retailers, perhaps aware that there is a fine line between the creation of jobs in developing nations to alleviate mass poverty and the exploitation of cheap labor in these countries to maximise profit, have chosen to do something.

Most retailers have vowed to stay and promised to work for change. Wal-Mart and the Swedish retailer HM, the top two producers of clothing in Bangladesh, have said they have no plans to leave. Other big chains have said the same. "Today's economy is global, and it is not a question of if a company like HM should be present in developing countries," Anna Eriksson, an HM spokeswoman, was quoted as saying.

"It is a question of how we do it," she said.

And then consumers, including those in Taiwan, may also do something to improve the lot of garment workers in Bangladesh. Both people "born to shop and shop until they drop" and ordinary shoppers should understand there is a human cost to everything we consume, especially when some commodities are so cheap. Perhaps it is time for us to rethink unbridled consumerism.

We don't live in a perfect, egalitarian world, but at least as one blogger said: "International retailers can do more to advocate safer standards at textile factories that manufacture their wares, in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Customers can do their part by putting a little pressure on their favourite brands, though that would require placing as much value on the cost of a life as you might on the cost of a T-shirt."

According to reports, the Facebook pages of Mango and Benetton, whose clothing or production documents were found in the rubble of the collapsed building, were peppered with angry comments from shoppers. Some warn they're going to shop elsewhere now, it said. There have also been street protests organised by student groups against the brands.

This is exactly what we, as ordinary citizens, can do.

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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2013/05/24/what-to-do-when-a-human-life-is-as-cheap-as-a-new-t-shirt/