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Hasan Raza / AP
Bangladeshi firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, late Saturday.
Updated at 3:25 p.m. ET: DHAKA, Bangladesh -- At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, an official said Sunday.
The blaze broke out late Saturday at the eight-story factory operated by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a subsidiary of the Tuba Group, which supplies Walmart and other major retailers in the U.S. and Europe.
By Sunday morning, firefighters had recovered 100 bodies, fire department Operations Director Maj. Mohammad Mahbub told The Associated Press. He said another 12 people who had suffered injuries after jumping from the building to escape the fire later died at hospitals. The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said.
Local media reported that up to 124 people were killed in the fire. The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, and authorities have ordered an investigation.
Army soldiers and paramilitary border guards were deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered at the scene, Mahbub said. He would not say how many people were still missing.
Working conditions at Bangladeshi factories are notoriously poor, with little enforcement of safety laws, and overcrowding and locked fire doors are common. The cause of this fire was not immediately known.
Tazreen was given a "high risk" safety rating after May 16, 2011, audit conducted by an ethical sourcing assessor for Wal-Mart, according to a document posted on the Tuba Group's website. It did not specify the conditions or violations that led to the rating.
A spokesman for Wal-Mart said online documents indicating that the factory received an orange or "high risk" assessment after the May 2011 inspection and a yellow or "medium risk" report after an inspection in August 2011 appeared to pertain to the factory where the fire occurred.
The August 2011 letter said Wal-Mart would conduct another inspection within one year. Spokesman Kevin Gardner said it was not clear if that inspection had been conducted, or if the factory was still making products for Wal-Mart.
If a factory is rated "orange" three times in a two-year period, Wal-Mart won't place any orders for one year. The May 2011 report was the first orange rating for the factory.
There was no indication whether the violations had been fixed since the May inspection. Neither Tazreen's owner nor Tuba Group officials could be reached for comment.
The Tuba Group is a major Bangladeshi garment exporter whose clients include Walmart, Carrefour and IKEA, according to its website. Its factories export garments to the U.S., Germany, France, Italy and The Netherlands, among other countries. The Tazreen factory, opened in 2009 and employing about 1,700 people, makes polo shirts, fleece jackets and T-shirts.
Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.
In its 2012 Global Responsibility report, Walmart said that "fire safety continues to be a key focus for brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh." Walmart said it ceased working with 49 factories in Bangladesh in 2011 due to fire safety issues, and was working with its supplier factories to phase out production from buildings deemed high risk.
At the factory scene, relatives of the workers were frantically looking for their loved ones. Sabina Yasmine said she saw the body of her daughter-in-law, who died in the fire, but had no trace of her son, who also worked at the factory.
"Oh, Allah, where's my soul? Where's my son?" wailed Yasmine, who works at another factory in the area. "I want the factory owner to be hanged. For him, many have died, many have gone."
Mahbub said firefighters recovered 69 bodies from the second floor of the factory alone. He said most of the victims had been trapped inside the factory, located just outside of Dhaka, with no emergency exits leading outside the building.
Many workers who had taken shelter on the roof of the factory were rescued, but firefighters were unable to save those who were trapped inside, Mahbub said.
He said the fire broke out on the ground floor, which was used as a warehouse, and spread quickly to the upper floors.
"The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor," Mahbub said. "So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building."
"Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower," he said.
Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition. The recovered bodies were kept in rows on the premise of a nearby school.
Meanwhile, many of the bodies were handed over to families but at least 60 bodies remained unidentified till late Sunday, said police official Moshiuddoula, who uses one name. The unclaimed bodies were later taken to Dhaka Medical College where the corpses will be kept until Monday morning for identification.
Otherwise, the bodies will be handed over to a charity organization, Anjuman-e-Mufidul Islam, for burial, said local chief government administrator Sheikh Yusuf Harun. The charity group is a voluntary organization which buries unclaimed bodies.
By late Sunday, firefighters had concluded their search and left the scene, the fire department's control room duty officer Bhajan Sarker told The Associated Press by phone.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed shock at the loss of so many lives in the blaze and asked authorities to conduct thorough search-and-rescue operations.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said it would stand by the victims' families.
Separately, a flyover under construction fell onto a busy market, leaving at least 14 people dead including three construction workers in southeastern city of Chittagong, an official said Sunday.
Local fire official Abdul Mannan said the concrete structure collapsed on Saturday night, and authorities recovered the bodies by Sunday morning from under the debris in the second-largest city after Dhaka.
This article includes reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.
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This happens a little more than 100 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in a New York 10 story building, killing 146 workers, many who jumped to their deaths. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire ).
Tragic.
And your point? Many past events should be mourned, but they don't always relate to current situations. Trying to equate something that happened 100 years ago to modern times is just stupid. With the creation of OSHA, and the National Labor Relations Board, this kind of occurrence is a thing of the past in the U.S.
Here is a link to another tragedy and is certainly more recent and relevant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/world/asia/pakistan-factory-passed-inspection-before-fire.html?pagewanted=all
The article in this link cites the Triangle tragedy, as well.
Sad coincidence that Bangladesh was formerly East Pakistan.
No matter the country, horrors like this should not be happening in this day and age.
I don't think it's a "stupid" comparison at all. This is what our factories were like in the U.S. before OSHA and labor unions. People died. Now we support people dying in other countries. Every one of us who buys products from these countries has blood on our hands.
pretty defensive there Darryl, did your boss wake you up to come here and troll. Try to put the public relations fire out? That is what we had in this country before unions and OSHA. I like the inexpensive clothing and share some blame by shopping at these store.
It was only about 20 years ago that a Tyson food plant caught fire in North Carolina where over twenty people died because of poor safety measures and locked exit doors. So we are not as perfect as OSHA and others claim. Money is the root.
It's not necessarily over in the USA. Remember that G W Bush and Cheney told us that "Industry with Self-Regulate." We don't need laws! And yes we have OSHA, etc. but when Bush was President inspectors weren't even allowed to complain about bad airplane tires.
How does this relate to anything in America today? Ask Mitt Romney, or Rush Limbaugh, or John Boehner, or Bill O'Reilly, or........!!!
Does it mean that Bangladesh is 100 years behind the US?
High level of corruption with poor morals, values and characters and Islamic madness are two major problems of Bangladesh!
This is what we had here before we had unions and OSHA. Now, Republicans want to see all those "job killing" pesky regulations go away.
Daryl: Perhaps you should read Santanya: "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it"
@ Darryl-3181220:
This tragedy most certainly does relate to past tragedies.
If we don't learn from past mistakes we are condemned to repeat them.
Also, can you honestly tell me that representatives of Walmart, JC Penney, Kohl's and the others weren't there for product quality purposes? If they weren't I would be shocked. Those representatives had a pretty clear idea of common safety practices in America but found no voice to express them nor take any action or offer suggestions for improvement.
Shame on them and, to a degree, shame on all of us. Every one of us knows the working conditions in foreign countries would not be acceptable here yet we remain silent. Wages and benefits are one thing. Loss of life however is another.
I can't believe that one of you commenters up there actually tried to reference this back to being Bushs and Cheneys fault.... you people are unreal sometimes.
"Also, can you honestly tell me that representatives of Walmart, JC Penney, Kohl's and the others weren't there for product quality purposes? If they weren't I would be shocked. Those representatives had a pretty clear idea of common safety practices in America but found no voice to express them nor take any action or offer suggestions for improvement." Excellent point Denverdude7!
The Point? What's the Point?
The point is that the Invisible Fist of the Free Market doesn't give a damn about workers or their safety. Only after people in the U.S. said "Enough!", did we begin to have regulations to protect us from the Invisible Fist of the Free Market.
And now... for the past 30 years we've heard a constant drumbeat of "Deregulation! Free Market!". THIS is where that mentality leads.
Oh - and as for how we have done away with this sort of thing in the U.S.? Might want to take a look at Massey Energy and see just how effective our regulatory agencies have become thanks to the De-regulation / Free Market propaganda nonsense that has led to their impotence.
As for foreign working conditions: Why do you think corporations outsource? Because it's cheaper. And they don't give a damn about workers. Eventually, if we continue to deregulate / turn over regulatory agencies to the corporations they regulate (Monsanto's Michael Taylor @ the FDA comes to mind), we will wind up back where we started before people demanded limits be placed on the "Free Market".
Free Market & Free Trade - this is what it looks like.
Here's the real deal...who buys most of the output of Tazreen Fashions? Walmart. See
http://www.emptywheel.net/tag/tazreen-fashions/
Labor standards here prevented Walmart from reprising the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the states- so they did it abroad.
What lesson should we take away here? Low prices have a direct consequence (murder) and a direct cause (greed).
The ongoing quest for ever-higher profits and ever-lower prices drives bad behaviors.
Utility companies here in the United States are another excellent example of this principle in action.
Productivity targets, deaths per capita in the workforce, and the directly caused deaths of customers (phone doesn't work in an emergency, power line falls, gas main explodes) have all risen over the last decade.
Thank deregulation. Thank the Right. Thank people like Daryl- and those who pay him.
Greed is NOT good, boys and girls.
That's why avarice has always been one of the "seven deadly sins"- it has so many negative effects that it eventually destabilizes any society which tolerates it.
Greenspan thought greed would self regulate. It doesn't. How sad for those currently driving this nation into the dirt for the sake of short-term profit; they're creating a situation in which a real, bloody, lawyer-on-every-lamp-post class war may shortly be the only option- and revolution is bad for business.
Gofigure---This story has a huge political element. The Cheney/Bush administration repeatedly made statements referring to what they called an "over-regulated" business atmosphere. This has been the mantra of the American right: Too much regulation hurts the economy, hurts everything.
During the Cheney/Bush administration, they realized they could not eliminate the various regulating agencies,OSHA, FDA, SEC, FAA, etc., so they simply placed representatives of the regulated industries in charge of the regulating agencies. The perfect example is the American mining industry. Lobbyists, representatives and ex-executives of various mining companies were put in charge of enforcing mine safety regulations. They let mining companies ignore air quality and mine safety regulations and almost never revisited inspection sites for followup.
Why do you think the big mine owners like the Koch Bros. and this piece of @!$%# at Murray Coal spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to defeat Obama and are now going insane over his re-election? My God, if we actually started enforcing all these mine safety and air quality regulations it might actually lower some of their HUGE profits.
Taking advantage of the culture of abuse. The environments in which cheap labor outsourcing thrive, invariably reside in countries with communism, a caste system, or other extremism, all of which perpetuate the cycle. Intentional behavior and by design.
theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/asian-pacific-business/unrest-threatens-bangladeshs-19-billion-clothing-industry/article4528109/
nytimes.com/2012/09/10/world/asia/killing-of-bangladesh-labor-leader-spotlights-grievances-of-workers.html
I think the comparison the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in incredibly valid.
In both cases, what safety standards existed were meant to cater to the interests of the business owners than the safety of the workers. Locked doors, no fire sprinklers, no evacuation plans. In both cases most of the dead were poor young women who worked 12-18 hour shifts for pennies a day.
While I understand that some unions have become tainted by power and scandal, most of them were born out of a sincere desire to attain safer working conditions and fairer wages for employees. I also acknowledge that not all government regulations are necessary..but many ARE.
That tragedies like this are still happening 100 years later in countries that outlaw unions and workers don't even have the right to safe working environment...is a testament to the fact that the unions and federal government in our country did get some things right.
We enjoy(?) low priced goods today because we shipped all of these jobs overseas to countries who don't have or enforce laws on labor, pollution etc. Someone asked what this had to do with Triangle, it had everything to do with Triangle from the height of the building to the product being produced to the number and manner of deaths. More importantly, was the the economic considerations when garments are manufactured for pennies, and human life is secondary. If you want to learn about it, Netflix is currently streaming a documentary on the Triangle fire.
Welcome to Walmart and Corporate America......The Dead Bodies of women & children in Bangladesh don't count when the UN Globalists on Wall Street are "Rolling Back Prices" and destroying American Jobs in the process and weakening US even further with their "Debt"!
"If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool."
"All that harms labor is treason to America."~Abraham Lincoln
Funny how the Repubs never seem to quote those lines from their hero, MUW...
To all of those above (with the exception of Darryl-31812200), congratulations! I made the post above as a "factoid" - call it a Rorschach test of whether current events reflect the past and do we all have something to learn?
Darryl-31812200, it is you I take issue with as you assume that
Unfortunately, not being stated in that pesky Constitution, this is always "up for grabs", and the past 30 years proves it.
It is tragic that those "regulations" that protect "real" people (as opposed to "corporate" people) are constantly a political football. "Real" people have families and DNA; they are born (and I'm not getting into the abortion issue here), live, feel pain, and eventually die. "Corporate" people don't - they are legal entities, and (sorry) I have yet to see a "corporate" person with a brain and a nervous system.
As the current one-liner goes, qudrcps, I'll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one...
Conjuring Cat....Please NEVER Mistake me for a modern Demo-Republo-Burea-RAT for they are all members the same Corrupt Political Party and beholding to the same Corrupting Corporate Robber Barons on Wall Street!
All that is left of our once Great Country is a False Veneer of Democracy covering a Corrupt Plutocracy of Oligarchical Power and Bankster Slavery!
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.~ Thomas Jefferson
After watching the Amazing Race and seeing the conditions of how the real people of Bangladesh work, I'm not surprised by this article. It's sad...RIP
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Has nothing to do with this.
Darryl, what are you trying to hide? The two fires are very similar and both very sad.
Darryl, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. You obviously slept through history class. We have measures in place that hopefully prevent something like this happening in America DUE DIRECTLY to the Triangle incident. Whether it was yesterday or a hundred years ago, people are protected now because of those poor women's deaths.
If it weren't for the onerous obligations of OSHA and the National Labor Relations Board, this could have been 110 dead American workers and the insurance payments would have stayed in the US of A so we could be proud and free! But the unions wrecked it all. Now the Job Creators can only kill poor Americans by sending them to die in oversea wars.
The two most important factors surrounding the Triangle Shirt Factory which helped to change conditions in the United States was the outrage which the vast majority of citizens in the nation felt towards the company and sympathy towards so many victims families.
There had been many factory fires before but the reason this fire was so awful was because the owner had locked the exit doors so only the elevator and one exit door worked. He didn't want his workers sneaking out possibly.In addition, he had his workers packed in so tightly, when they tried to get out, some were caught by the fire, they were found still sitting at their machines.
In the second matter, family members worked at the factory.So when the fire struck, sisters perished as did mothers and daughters in some cases.There were also several men who died. Who were brothers from family members.So in several cases all the children died from families.
It was thus a whole section of a city that was struck down. So it was the common everyday person to wealthy who wore such garments, who were affected by these deaths, that became furious at the womens senseless deaths.
Hearings were held, investigations made into how it all came about and how to stop it from ever happening again. Eventually recommendations were suggested and then laws passed. Thus were changes made in the industry and regulations created so others would not be exposed to such hazardous fire conditions. That is the legacy of the Triangle Shirt Factory Fire. Some of the benefits gained were changes to the amount of people who could work in a given space, fire alarms and number of fire door exits. It also changed how external fire escapes were reinforced(the Triangle Shirt Factory one had buckled and collapsed under the weight of people using it), fire exit doors were maintained, sprinkler systems were kept up to date, among other things.
Go get your Koch-ie, Darryl--good paid troll! Very good paid troll!
Woof woof!...
Daryl, they're on to you. Time for a new name....again.
Very tragic!
These big corporations need to pay up. They use impoverished people as slave labor to make their clothes that we wear. They don't even think of the workers that work long hours slaving at machines to make a ridiculously small amount of money. This should not be happening. The companies should make sure safety standards are met to ensure the safety of the workers making these garments. The families of these deceased workers deserve cash payments. It won't replace their loved ones, but it will give them some money to get things in order. Rest in peace, this is terrible news.
This is the price the "For MEGA-PROFIT Corporations" have to pay for seeking low wage, NO REGULATION Sweat Shops. Raise the Import tax and force these Greedy Corporations to bring their Businesses back here. Prayers go out to everyone involved.
In this factory, most of the workers were women!
It's not up to you to dictate where I get my clothes from. Free trade is important.
Yeah, AB, and what are a few hundred lives compared to free trade?...
Conjuring Cat, I never said that foreign governments shouldn't be encouraged to regulate safety standards. Why don't we work with them to help them accomplish this goal? American companies with factories abroad can also be forced to set standards for safety that are comparable to American standards or better.
Of course Bangladesh is a Conservative's Nirvana.
Few Regulations; Low Taxes; No Labor unions
A place where the free market ensures that workers are well taken care of and the average factory worker makes $37 a MONTH
The republicans should all go live in this perfect society. They could erect statues of Ronald Regan and Anne Rand embracing. If the republicans got their way, this would have been 110 dead Americans and the company would be on the receiving end of a nice big insurance payment for lost worker inventory. They could call hiring their replacements "Job Creation". The bootstrap tugging would lift us to the moon.
It is not just the GOP who is at fault here..... I can bet quite a few liberal democrats shop at stores (Wal Mart, etc) who sell these sweatshop goods.... a lot of Americans are strapped for money, so they have little choice.
False equivalency fail, T. R. Democrats aren't advocating for the removal of OSHA and the elimination of all workplace safety regulations because the industries will self-regulate...
The biggest problem here? Companies that put employees as expendable assets. Which means the only people that matter are the employers. The ideology is the same as a king and disposable servants. It doesn't matter what happens to "them", as long as the king is in good health.
Now I understand that leadership plays a part in what benefits all. Just the part that only rich get richer is the problem with the equation. If I work for your company for 30 years, and everything I do made the company better than others, than why am I not congratulated in the same (ok, similar) manner as the CEO? The CEO didn't do my work, did she/he? But a CEO gets a bonus a ten thousand times my pay. In many cases, CEOs only last a few years. Hostess can testify to that. Think of what could have saved that company compared to upper-level management greed. It is been posted that union workers were only 30% of the company, yet the upper-level management made 2/3 that much and then some.
I know many of you out there really don't care about what happens to workers that try to keep a company solvent, to try to do the best they can, but like these people in this news article, these workers will die without any benefits. The ones that live, the same. They were slaves to the business they worked at. The upper crust will live out life as if nothing happened. The same as those in charge of Hostess. They win, you lose.
One more point I need to make is, CEOs get rich off of "saving" company money by cutting back wherever and whatever they can. So it doesn't matter how good an employee you are. If an offshore company competes with yours, now the standards have just dropped. Along with your wages, since the upper management won't cut theirs. Sad but true.
the fact of the matter is that yes the safety standards in america have stopped this kind of accident from happening, but in countries like Bangladesh safety standards are few and rarely enforced. Safety standards need to be international law and an international agency should enforce them across the globe.
@ Ernie Granger
While this is a horrible thing to happen in any country, and we are all culpable in buying the merchandise that the companies from the USA and other countries don't forget, it is beyond my comprehension why you would want to bring politics in this at all. It is not a conservative or liberal thing to be spouting about. Unions I will agree. They are the dregs of the earth, but I digress. What the companies that are locating their factories in other countries for the "bottom line" wages and cost need to do is demand that the conditions are up to the standards of our standards in the US regarding OSHA. Leave politics out of it... it has no place in this article.
This is 100% about politics. Governments have the power to create laws to prevent the lack of safety in the factories. The workers do not have the power to force changes on the factories because they are replaceable in the company's eyes. Unionizing is the only way they can create change, but it is illegal to unionize in Bangladesh. If you are anti-union and anti-regulations, then you are pro-worker abuse. If you can't see that, then you should move to Bangladesh in order to see it for yourself. Then decide if you want that here in the US.
Brilliant, MLS--except for the fact that corps outsource to these hellholes specifically BECAUSE they don't have to live up to workplace safety standards, and yes, it's political because the Republicans want to eliminate workplace safety regulations here and effectually make the US workplace into a Western version of Bangladesh...
Walmart and other companies do not want to be associated with such tragedies. Likely they will strengthen controls on foreign suppliers to make sure they comply with basic safety regulations in their factories. Poor countries need the work that comes in such factories, but they also need basic safety regulations and reasonable working conditions. Very likely this tragedy will be used to criticize the companies in America and Europe that were supplied by this factory.
Do you really believe that people like the Waltons (who are worth more than 15 Billion dollars each) give one thought about the people who work in their sweatshops 14 hours a day 7 days a week for a whopping .13 CENTS an hour?
Nothing is going to change unless the people in these countries unionize in order to demand better working conditions. Americans really don't care enough about the plight of the working poor in other countries. They only care about getting a good deal. There is very little clothing produced in the US, so consumers have little choice, anyway. And the stores who buy from these factories care even less.
And in other news, pigs were seen flying in formation over downtown Bentonville, Arkansas. Strengthen controls over the suppliers? Not on a bet! They'll back off particular suppliers for a short time until people forget the tragedy, then go right back to them. Gotta save that overhead, you know...
We certainly don't have to worry about this happening in our country, but that's mainly because unions have forced nearly all clothing manufacturing out of the U.S.
That's right!!! In a perfect world, this would have been 110 dead Americans, instead! It is worker protection laws, thanks to greedy unions, that made this OSHA nonsense. If Mitt won, he could roll back the costly worker protections and ensure that only Proud Americans get to die in sweatshop tragedies again. Triangle Shirtwaist was a time we could look back on as when America was great!!!! Say it with me, my Republican Brother... BOOTSTRAPS!!!! Praise Allah... I mean God!!!
"Damn those greedy unions not wanting workers to get burnt up on the job! Buncha commies!..."
People should hold fire drills, so they know what to do and how to get out. It also will bring to light any problems, like locked doors etc.
Safety is up to you.
Condolences to the victims families.
Fire drills take away from production time. Unlocked doors make product theft possible. Management can't allow such costly detriments to the bottom line and there is no law in Bangladesh for safety because it is a free country and they cannot allow their freedoms to be restricted by costly safety laws. Those sweatshop workers should have tugged their BOOTSTRAPS to safety on their OWN time! They were free to do whatever they wanted outside of their employers workplace. I can only hope that the CEO is thanked for this Job Creation, to replace the dead workers, with a big bonus!!
Fat effing lot of good fire drills do when the fire escape doors are locked! Oh well, I guess them-thur lazy moochers working at the factory should have built their own fire escape doors...
"But safety standards at the factories are poor and not enforced strictly, causing scores of accidents each year."
Which partially explains why garments from 3rd world countries are cheaper than ones that used to be made in the USA. Add in lack of environmental standards, unenforced child labor labor laws, starvation wages and you see why WalMart and nearly all other retailers source from these sweat shops. Greed...
Does this mean the cost of my shirts is going to go up?
"Yeah, who cares if a hundred-some brown people got burned to death--keep my prices low!..."
Nobody forced you to buy foreign made clothing. American companies that tried to compete couldn't and were forced to close. If you really care, perhaps you could gather up some investors and start your own garment company. Until then, live with the consequences you helped create.
It seems like you are unaware of the reason U.S. manufacturers were able to outsource their manufacturing operations. It wasn't because of the American consumers. Due to greed American manufacturers, via the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, bought the U.S. Congress lock, stock and barrel then took over the trade policies of the country. They came up with NAFTA, recognizing China as a Most Favored Nation the as a Permanent Normal Trade Relation nation that drastically lowered the import tariff rates from a high of 46% to 6%. I hope you are smart enough to know what the ramifications were for these actions, but just to be sure you know let me explain.
With very little import tax to pay U.S. manufacturers were able to take advantage of slave labor and non-regulatory environment in China and the Third World. They outsource what they used to manufacture in the U.S. then exported the finished goods to the U.S. Import Tariffs protected the American workers/middle-class from cheap/slave labor in China and the Third World in the past but not anymore now that the U.S. government is "of corporations, for corporations, by corporations".
When the clothing stores started to only carry goods from foreign countries, that DID force us to buy their products. The clothing manufacturers did it to increase THEIR bottom line, not to make clothes cheaper for consumers.
Go get your Koch-ie, wedgie! Good paid troll! Woof woof!...
...as the ONE firetruck the city had responded; all so we can buy shirts at target for $7. God Bless America.
So, I've read several comments that lay some of the blame for these workers deaths at the feet of those who buy the products they produced but...
Who invested the money, signed the contracts, exported the jobs, which serve to undercut the gains made by American workers over decades of struggles to help ensure a better future for their descendants?
People are so brainwashed by the hogwash they're fed that they actively work on behalf of corporate interests to roll back wages, benefits, safety and environmental regulations. They close their eyes to the many benefits workers around the world enjoy because people were brave enough to stand against sanctioned slavery! Many of those who fought and died for things our society takes for granted (like weekends - which are slowly going by the wayside) are now denigrated as "greedy". Does greed not extend upward? Why are people trying to make enough money to create a good life characterized as greedy yet those that stand atop the wasted bodies of millions of under-compensated workers celebrated as successful? To be truly successful a company should make enough money to fairly compensate their employees. Anything less than this should constitute failure and the CEO's of companies that invest in countries where workers are exploited, ought to be scorned, despised, ashamed, NOT celebrated, NOT highly compensated!
My heart aches for the working conditions of those around the world who are enslaved, not so much by the consumer looking for a bargain, but by the global capitalists who invest, sign contracts, export the jobs and then call American workers greedy.
If we don't turn this lop sided mess around somehow, we will find future generations locked in barracks, unable to freely come and go lest they be penalized by the company they serve! FOXCONN, is a dream come true for profiteers and a nightmare for those enslaved by it!
Remember, when you work against those that seek better wages, better benefits, better working conditions, safety regulations, environmental laws, you are fighting on the side of global capitalists who are only interested maximizing profit. You ARE a shill supporting conditions like those that exist in China, Bangladesh, India, Mexico... You are supporting environmental disasters like the one still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. You are actually in direct opposition to the very things that made this country a great place to live. IMHO YOU are ANTI-AMERICAN!
We can have a better future. America has always been a beacon of hope. That hope depends on American workers standing against unfair labor practices, against low wages, against no benefits, against working two, three, or four jobs and still having to go hungry or buy clothes from companies that import them from places where working conditions result in workers burning to death for lack of proper fire codes!
Instead of tearing down, rolling back, gutting, reducing, we ought to be working to help workers around the world rise up to the standards we have here. Perhaps it is time for a global labor force to organize and collectively work to hold the global capitalists who exploit them accountable for the horrific/inhumane conditions their blind/heartless drive to increase profits create.
If you think that, Doug, then you should spend some time in a 3rd world country... And look forward to that kind of abuse and poverty coming here. It's already on it's way here. Just look at Walmart's work force, who are not permitted to unionize.
Doug, I say this in all sincerity. Get the blazing hell out of my country and go set up in Somalia--just the anti-government paradise you seem to crave...
I hope this is a nudge to consumers to think about where your clothing is made and by whom and what working conditions exist in third world factories. I would bet that American "job creators" are involved in this somehow, turning a blind eye to conditions at factories that do not meet minimal standards and would never be allowed to operate in the USA. Oh....I guess that's why American "job creators" now invest only in the third world. And this is probably only the tip of the iceberg.
So, I've read several comments that lay some of the blame for these workers deaths at the feet of those who buy the products they produced but...
Who invested the money, signed the contracts, exported the jobs, which serve to undercut the gains made by American workers over decades of struggles to help ensure a better future for their descendants?
People are so brainwashed by the hogwash they're fed that they actively work on behalf of corporate interests to roll back wages, benefits, safety and environmental regulations. They close their eyes to the many benefits workers around the world enjoy because people were brave enough to stand against sanctioned slavery! Many of those who fought and died for things our society takes for granted (like weekends - which are slowly going by the wayside) are now denigrated as "greedy". Does greed not extend upward? Why are people trying to make enough money to create a good life characterized as greedy yet those that stand atop the wasted bodies of millions of under-compensated workers celebrated as successful? To be truly successful a company should make enough money to fairly compensate their employees. Anything less than this should constitute failure and the CEO's of companies that invest in countries where workers are exploited, ought to be scorned, despised, ashamed, NOT celebrated, NOT highly compensated!
My heart aches for the working conditions of those around the world who are enslaved, not so much by the consumer looking for a bargain, but by the global capitalists who invest, sign contracts, export the jobs and then call American workers greedy.
If we don't turn this lop sided mess around somehow, we will find future generations locked in barracks, unable to freely come and go lest they be penalized by the company they serve! FOXCONN, is a dream come true for profiteers and a nightmare for those enslaved by it!
Remember, when you work against those that seek better wages, better benefits, better working conditions, safety regulations, environmental laws, you are fighting on the side of global capitalists who are only interested maximizing profit. You ARE a shill supporting conditions like those that exist in China, Bangladesh, India, Mexico... You are supporting environmental disasters like the one still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. You are actually in direct opposition to the very things that made this country a great place to live. IMHO YOU are ANTI-AMERICAN!
We can have a better future. America has always been a beacon of hope. That hope depends on American workers standing against unfair labor practices, against low wages, against no benefits, against working two, three, or four jobs and still having to go hungry or buy clothes from companies that import them from places where working conditions result in workers burning to death for lack of proper fire codes!
Instead of tearing down, rolling back, gutting, reducing, we ought to be working to help workers around the world rise up to the standards we have here. Perhaps it is time for a global labor force to organize and collectively work to hold the global capitalists who exploit them accountable for the horrific/inhumane conditions their blind/heartless drive to increase profits create.
There may not be a global labor force as yet however, there is a national labor force that can be considered a "sleeping giant".
The contract / contingent work force.(CWF)
All that is needed is a few leaders and stoic resolve from it's members. If organized, a union of this size would have the power to not only affect one segment of industry but the entire country.
If one segment of these greedy corporations stepped out of line a union like this could not only cripple that specific company but every company that does business with them. I can only hope I live long enough to see it come to fruition on a world-wide basis.
CONTRACT / CONTINGENT WORKERS UNITE !!!!!
THE TIME IS NOW TO FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS !!!!!!!
"Bangladesh has around 4,500 garment factories that make clothes for such brands as Tesco, Wal-Mart, JC Penney, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Kohl's and Carrefour."
"Bangladesh is the world's biggest exporter of clothing after China, with garments making up 80 percent of its $24 billion annual exports." It's not unions doing this per say,it's the Greedy American Business Man! Wall Street and DC! What a tragedy. Condolences to all the family's involved.
As for the body count, everyone should know that in the 21st Century, as long as only one or two Israelis or Americans are killed, a huge death toll for "others" is no big deal. Okay, well, Brits count, too.
WALMART - Save Money, Live Better. Reason number 2,359 to boycott Walmart. You may say they had nothing to do with it, but when you buy products from factories that you know are ignoring modern safety practices, you are culpable on some level.
Not a Walmart fan, either.
The superstore in our small town has decimated most all the "little guys" and introduced a new low in terms of how workers are treated.
Hopefully they have peaked and are now in their cycle of decline.
Not until American consumers vote with their bucks, DC, and that's well-nigh impossible when most of them can't afford anything other than Wal-Mart and Dollar General clothing...
This better not slow the delivery of my printed shirts thats say "Buy American!"