Exactly five years ago, in November 2012, afire in the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh killed at least 112 workers. Probably caused by a short circuit on the ground floor of the building, the fire rapidly spread up the nine floors where garment workers were trapped due to narrow or blocked fire escapes. Many died inside the building or while seeking an escape through the windows.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remains of the Tazreen Fashion Factory after the fire

 

Just five months later, the collapse of the Rana Plaza building killed 1,134 garment workers and injured hundreds of survivors. Rana Plaza was an eight-storey commercial building that housed garment units on its upper levels. The building that collapsed had already been evacuated the day before after cracks were identified, but the factory management had made workers return to work under the pressure of looming shipping deadlines. During the morning rush hour, the building collapsed in on itself like a house of cards.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rana Plaza Building Collapse

 

These two incidents and a string of other disasters in garment factories across South Asia exposed the brutal employment conditions in the garment industry, and the deadly cost of “fast fashion” to workers who produce clothes under strict deadlines for very low wages. In the ensuing years, a number of new initiatives have been set up to improve factory safety and compensate injured workers and the families of those killed.

 

The 2013 Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a safety pact signed by global unions and more than 200 brands, has taken important steps towards making global apparel companies accountable for the safety of factories in their supply chains. Measures taken include a series of building inspections, upgrades and closures where buildings are deemed structurally unsafe, as well as an attempt at making brands and retailers contractually liable for the safety of the factories where their garments are produced.

​

But five years on, not enough is being done to protect garment workers, and these new initiatives haven’t gone far enough to address the multiple attacks on workers’ everyday health and well-being. Codes of conduct, continually used by apparel companies to monitor the working conditions of their suppliers, narrowly focus on building safety and physical infrastructure with a bias towards what can be seen and audited. These codes are poorly implemented, allowing building fires and collapses to continue; they also ignore many things that threaten workers’ health and well-being on a day-to-day basis. The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh likewise focuses exclusively on physical infrastructure, leaving out a host of other issues that affect workers’ health on a daily basis and undermine their long-term well-being: long working hours, physical and bodily exhaustion, intense work rhythms, harassment, and the lack of any meaningful representation. All these problems and more are still too often invisible.

​

Everyday health threats in factories include, but not limited to everything from dust and smoke inhalation, noise, lack of ventilation, eyestrain, musculoskeletal pain, stress, and exposure to lights, electric wires, and chemical adhesives.