By Karen Judd

At Thursday’s breakfast forum, Decent Wages and Accountability to Workers in the Garment Global Supply Chain, former New York Times Labor Journalist Steven Greenhouse, whose coverage of the Rana Plaza disaster put global sweatshops again on the front page, said: “Overseas sweatshops are the logical result of globalization and the race to the bottom.” He noted that it is shocking that, 114 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, workers – predominantly women — are working in the same incredibly bad conditions, with no fire escapes or sprinklers, with infrequent inspections and with absolutely no voice for workers, concluding: “Things will not improve unless there is greater pressure from consumers and the media.”

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Greenhouse was joined by labor and human rights activists who work tirelessly to make name brands accountable to workers and to compensate survivors, including many young children.

Judy Gearhart, Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Forum, who focuses on getting legally binding mechanisms for worker safety, said the challenge is to get workers and their organizations engaged in the process. Despite the huge improvements brought about by the two agreements, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, workers asked if they felt safer told her, “No, they don’t listen to me.”

Sarah Labowitz, Co-Director of the Center for Business & Human Rights at NYU Stern School, praised both agreements but said the main challenge is to get to small factories, which are overlooked by inspections. Jack Mahoney, Assistant Director of Global Strategies at Workers United-SEIU, said the real advantage of the Accord over the Alliance is that there is a role for unions, who are on the scene on a daily basis. Atish Saha, a photojournalist based in Dhaka who was on the scene shortly after the Rana Plaza disaster, detailed some statistics on workers’ pay and conditions and spoke about the lives of the survivors he interviewed. See Atish’s work at his personal website.

 

Karen Judd is Associate Editor of the New Labor Forum.