New in an industry with job security an phone number database abysmal track record for protecting workers’ rights, particularly where it concerns health and safety.
No incident better exemplifies this than the 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza, a factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, where garment workers produc clothes for international brands, including Benetton, Gucci, the Children’s Place, Walmart, and Joe Fresh.
The day before the disaster
Deep cracks had begun to appear in the eight-story building. Factory workers were evacuat and sent home. But by the next day—despite protest—they were order back to work.
Had collaps In what job security unions have call
A mass industrial homicide,” 1,134 people lost their lives and around 2,500 people were injur.
However, as Akter point out during her 2018 presentation at BoF’s VOICES, it was far from the first such accident. Before the Rana Plaza disaster, about 71 garment workers di each year in fires and building collapses. And while the tragy l to calls for regulatory changes, garment workers in factories across the global south have continu to face day-to-day systemic abuse. Seven years later, the incidence of gender-bas violence, poor health and safety, long working current customers provide 65% of companies hours, and low pay remain prolific.
Akter knows the experience of being a garment worker firsthand. Alongside her 10-year-old be numbers brother, she start working in a factory when she was only 12. Akter’s mother had no choice but to send them to work to help fe the family of seven; her husband was sick and her youngest child was still an infant.