Desk Report (RMG Times) With 98 days until the current Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety expires, garment companies are urged to continue their involvement to create a safe and sustainable garment industry in Bangladesh and to sign its successor, the 2018 Transition Accord.
The new 2018 Transition Accord will continue the work of inspecting factories in Bangladesh, identifying safety hazards, and ensuring that they are corrected. As of today 110 garment companies have signed the 2018 Accord, covering more than 2 million workers.
This information has been confirmed by a tweet of IndustriAll on 22nd of February 2018.
However, the report also highlighted that many garments companies still must reconfirm their commitment to the safety of the Bangladeshi workers in their supply chain. Among the companies that are still dragging their feet are Marks and Spencer, Next, Sainsbury’s, Metro Group, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Dansk Supermarked.
The global union signatories to the Accord, IndustriALL and UNI, and the four witness signatories, Clean Clothes Campaign, International Labor Rights Forum, Maquila Solidarity Network and Worker Rights Consortium, call upon the garment companies that have not yet signed the 2018 Accord to do so as soon as possible.
“Not signing the 2018 Accord means that one hundred days (98 days from today) from now workers will be left in unmonitored factories. As a consequence, garment brands will fall short on their due diligence obligations to keep the workers in their supply chain safe”, says Ineke Zeldenrust, international coordinator of Clean Clothes Campaign.
“There is still no credible alternative to the Accord to protect worker safety in Bangladesh. It is simply not an option for brands to go back to the company-led programs that so clearly failed to prevent large-scale factory tragedies before. Signing the 2018 Accord is the only way for companies to meet their due diligence obligations to ensure that Bangladeshi garment workers can work in safe factories”, says Jenny Holdcroft, assistant general secretary of IndustriALL Global Union.
This is equally urgent for companies that have not fulfilled their obligations under the first Accord yet as well as for companies that have repaired all safety defects discovered in their factories under the first Accord.
The deputy general secretary of UNI global union Christy Hoffman states “The need for safety committees and inspection programme is ongoing because a factory can be safe one day, and then the fire doors are blocked the next. As long as the Bangladeshi government is not yet ready to assume this responsibility, the Accord will continue to provide the training, engineering expertise, and accountability structures necessary to make garment work safer”.
This less than a hundred –days’ warning is also aimed at encouraging garment companies that are not part of the current Accord, including those who have joined the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a corporate-led safety programme, to sign the 2018 Accord.
“We urge the Alliance companies and those that signed neither programme to join the 2018 Accord as soon as possible and thereby display their willingness to engage constructively with Bangladeshi and international trade unions and confirm their commitment to keeping factories in Bangladesh safe”, says Judy Gearhart, executive director of International Labor Rights Forum.
This is high time to care about the safety of the garments workers of Bangladesh because the world doesn’t want the repetition of such fatal incidents in any garments factory.