I spent some time in Dhaka with an independent trade union in the garment sector about ten years ago. Bangladesh had a booming RMG sector even then (it almost collapsed after the US started bombing Baghdad  - an event that occurred whilst I was in Dhaka – but has come back stronger than ever as Chinese wages have risen), and I can recall the trade union head showing me a long list of factory fires that resulted in fatalities for the previous 12 months. I forget how many fires there actually were (the list ran to several pages), but even though I had been working in the labour rights area in Asia for several years I remember the shock I felt at the alarming regularity. None were anywhere near as deadly as the one reported above, but over the course of a year the numbers added up. 

During that time I talked with hundreds of garment workers (almost all of them young women), and the great majority of them said that a fire in their workplace was the thing they feared most. But, and this is the thing, they (and the union) felt powerless to prevent them. This latest fire (10 years later) shows that i) those fears are the result of a good grasp of reality and ii) workers, unions and others have had little success in the face of factory owners who demonstrate a blatant disregard for fire safety (and workplace safety in general). 

However, the lack of action on factory fires in Asia’s manufacturing hubs goes back further than ten years. I wonder how many readers of Boing Boing recall two fires in Asia during 1993 that claimed 275 lives. One was the Zhili Handicraft Factory fire in Shenzhen, China, which killed 87. The other was at the Kader Toy Factory in Bangkok, which killed 188. These happened 20 years ago! And we’re still reading of fires that kill over 100 workers. It’s little wonder that people fighting for better factory conditions lose heart…

The Bangladesh RMG sector is booming. It contributes about 15% to the country’s GDP and about 75% of total export income (figures may be a bit rubbery, but it’s in the ballpark). The government is outrageously incompetent and corrupt. I was in Dhaka again last week, and although there is a sense the economy is growing locals feel there is little hope of real development with the current levels of corruption. Rising export income and a corrupt government is not the equation most conducive to improving workplace safety. 

There ought to be some kind of medal for an accomplishment that significant.

The solution to all of this, of course, is to only buy from factories in a country that has no independent media.

Either way, screw Wal Mart.

Honestly though, I should say that my wife and I shop there but only because we’re poor and I’m a disabled vet who doesn’t get any benefits from the military as of yet (twenty years and counting!).

The Waltons are basically that guy who comes around your garage sale and tries to talk you down on an item that’s already $1. They are the dude on craigslist who tries to convince you that your motorcycle is actually worth half of what your’e asking for it. The are the descendants of the great American low-baller, a cynical contemptuous creature motivated solely by avarice.

Boy, they’ve come a long way since he died.

A substantial amount of nodding, winking, and politely looking the other way and whistling so long as the deliveries are on time and on budget is also to be expected; but I would assume that the policy of dropping suppliers foolish or unlucky enough to be caught doing something excessively visible is rigorously enforced.

Likewise if they want to pretend the prices/volumes they demand from manufacturers so they can still offer crap at low low everyday yet still magically profitable prices don’t contribute to this kind of thing Imma also lay claim to the Holy Land in the name of Spiderman. 

So tis true. Santa is real, he lays eggs in a wide range of colours and answers only to Spiderman who rules the North Pole from his lair in Jerusalem. There is nothing stranger than news about Wal-Mart.