Outsourcing firms’social accountability

Last September 8, I wrote about the unrest and protest actions among the workers in Bangladesh’s $19-billion garments export industry, the world’s second largest next to China’s.

Their sordid working conditions, miserable wages, and struggles for redress replicate those of our own workers in the export-processing-zone factories of Mariveles and Cavite several years back.

Recently, tragedy waiting to happen struck the Bangladesh workers, which workers’ rights advocates hope will impel government and corporate actions toward improving the welfare of the industry’s three million workers. 

On November 24, 112 workers of Tazreen Fashions in Ashulia perished in a fire that razed a six-story building where the firm manufactured garments sold at the giant retail stores Walmart and Sears in the US and C&A in Europe.

Industry critics invoked the accountability of these retail-chain stores that, to cut costs, outsource the production of the apparel they sell globally. Walmart and Sears were quick in trying to evade accountability, claiming they had fired the suppliers that subcontracted work on their orders to Tazreen.

However, documents retrieved from the burned building reveal otherwise. Two US apparel makers supplying Walmart were using Tazreen at the time of the blaze. One had ordered women’s robes and nightgowns for “Walmart’s winter season,” the other, women’s nightwear for Sears. A production report shows plans for producing 117,000 pieces of such garments for Walmart starting September 13.

An interesting related incident: In mid-September a similar fire devastated Ali Enterprises, an apparel factory in Karachi, Pakistan. At least 262 workers died, their bodies were identified but 48 others remained unaccounted for.

The major issue raised was the grant to Ali Enterprises of a social accountability certificate, called SA8000, which states that the factory management had complied with “social-auditing” requirements in eight areas, including the health and safety of the workers.

After extensive investigation, accountability was determined, remedial steps were taken, and compensation for those who died has been paid by the Pakistani government and some private garment firms.

Both incidents were exhaustively reported, separately, by the International Herald Tribune between Dec. 8 and 12. The reportage vividly reconstructed the two fires, exposed the intricate system of contracting and subcontracting the production of clothes in Bangladesh, and in Pakistan, a parallel system of contracting and subcontracting the inspection and certification of garment factories for compliance with the standards set for the industry by international monitoring outfits.

In each incident, the fire started from the ground floor where tons of fabrics were stored improperly (in the Bangladesh factory “mounds of flammable yarn and fabrics were illegally stored… near electrical generators”). No ceiling water sprayers were installed; no fire exits on the outside walls in Tazreen, the fire exit was locked in Ali; the windows had iron grills.

The two fires were compared to the blaze that engulfed the Triangle shirtwaist factory in New York in 1911, “which led to sweeping reforms of US sweatshops.” The comparison speaks volumes about how backward (by a century!) and how poorly observed were the safeguards against fire in both cases.

Consequently, the workers were literally trapped in their workplaces and either burned or suffocated to death. The story of an 18-year-old Tazreen worker, Palash Mian, is particularly touching. He called his mother (a worker in another garment factory) through his cellphone, and sadly told her:

“Ma, I have no way to save my life. I cannot find any way to get out. I am in the bathroom of the fifth floor. I am wearing a black T-shirt… You will find me in the bathroom.”

The next day his mother found Palash’s body in a cadaver bag, garbed exactly as he described himself.

Outrage and grief spread fast among the people. Some 100,000 attended the burial of 53 workers whose identities couldn’t be determined through their charred remains.

Amidst calls for justice, apparel industry leaders have promised financial support to the workers who survived and to the families of those who died. And the Bangladesh government began inspecting the country’s 4,500 garment factories. Initial findings: of the hundreds so far inspected, one-third had violated the fire code.

As regards Walmart’s exposed lying, Scott Nova, executive director of the Workers Rights Consortium in Washington, remarked wryly:

“Walmart is limited to one of two options — (one) to say yes, ‘we know these suppliers were using the factory’; or, two, ‘we have no control over the supply chain that we’ve been building in Bangladesh for more than 20 years’.”

In Pakistan, Social Accountability International, reportedly the most prestigious among social-auditing firms, took immediate remedial steps. It disauthorized its affiliate, RINA, from issuing SA8000 certifications and ordered a special round of fire inspection of every Pakistani factory holding a SA8000.

It was found out that RINA granted Ali Enterprises a certification on August 20 without inspecting the factory. RINA assigned the inspection to its Pakistani affiliate, RI&CA. But the latter came under question for having issued 118 certificates in 2007-2012, an “unusually high rate” of approval.

In the Philippines’ business-process outsourcing industry the situation may be different. Nonetheless, shouldn’t social auditing be exercised in light of the working conditions that workers already complain about?

*      *      *

E-mail: [email protected]