Wal-Mart, Disney clothes found in Bangladesh fire

JULHAS ALAM

Asso­ci­ated Press

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A hooded Mickey Mouse sweat­shirt from Dis­ney. Children’s shorts with Wal-Mart’s Faded Glory label. Clothes with hip-hop star Sean Combs’ ENYCE tag.

The gar­ment fac­tory in Bangladesh where 112 peo­ple were killed in a fire over the week­end was used by a host of major U.S. and Euro­pean retail­ers, an Asso­ci­ated Press reporter dis­cov­ered Wednes­day from clothes and account books left amid the black­ened tables and melted sewing machines at Tazreen Fash­ions Ltd.

Wal-Mart had been aware of safety prob­lems at the fac­tory and said it had decided well before the blaze to stop doing busi­ness with it. But it said a sup­plier had con­tin­ued to use Tazreen with­out authorization.

Sears, like­wise, said its mer­chan­dise was being pro­duced there with­out its approval through a ven­dor, which has since been fired. The Walt Dis­ney Co. said its records indi­cate that none of its licensees have been per­mit­ted to make Disney-brand prod­ucts at the fac­tory for at least a year. Combs’ Sean Jean Enter­prises did not return calls for comment.

The tragedy at the begin­ning of the hol­i­day sea­son is putting a spot­light on dan­ger­ous work­place con­di­tions around the world, with no clear answers to how con­sumers should react or who is ulti­mately respon­si­ble, given the way many major retail­ers rely on a long and com­plex chain of man­u­fac­tur­ers and mid­dle­men to keep their shelves stocked.

Labor activists have long con­tended that retail­ers in the West bear a respon­si­bil­ity to make sure the over­seas fac­to­ries that man­u­fac­ture their prod­ucts are safe. They seized on the blaze — the dead­liest in Bangladesh’s nearly 35-year his­tory of export­ing cloth­ing — to argue that retail­ers must insist on more strin­gent fire standards.

Charles Ker­naghan, direc­tor of the Insti­tute for Global Labour and Human Rights, said noth­ing will change unless cloth­ing com­pa­nies pro­tect work­ers as vig­or­ously as they do their brands.

“The labels are legally pro­tected,” he said. “But there are no sim­i­lar laws to pro­tect rights of the worker.”

Bangladesh’s fast-growing gar­ment indus­try — sec­ond only to China’s in exports — has long pro­vided jobs and rev­enue for the des­per­ately poor coun­try, while turn­ing out the low-priced prod­ucts shop­pers in the U.S. and other coun­tries have come to enjoy.

But the indus­try has a ghastly safety record; more than 300 work­ers have died in gar­ment fac­tory fires in Bangladesh since 2006.

On Wednes­day, police arrested three fac­tory offi­cials sus­pected of lock­ing in the work­ers who died in Saturday’s blaze on the out­skirts of Dhaka. Police Chief Habibur Rah­man said the three will be ques­tioned. He said the fac­tory owner was not among those arrested.

About 1,400 peo­ple worked at the fac­tory, about 70 per­cent of them women. Sur­vivors said exit doors were locked, and a fire offi­cial said the death toll would have been much lower if the eight-story build­ing had had an emer­gency exit.

The fire broke out on the ground floor, where a fac­tory worker named Nasima said stacks of yarn and clothes blocked part of the stair­way. Nasima, who uses only one name, and other work­ers said that when they tried to flee, man­agers told them to go back to their work stations.

Thick smoke filled the stair­way, and when the lights went out the work­ers were left in total dark­ness. Another worker, Moham­mad Rajib, said some peo­ple used their cell­phones to light their way.

“Every­one was scream­ing for help,” Nasima said. “Total chaos, panic and scream­ing. Every­one was try­ing to escape and come out. I was pulling the shirt of a man. I fainted and when I woke up I found myself lying on the road out­side the fac­tory. I don’t know how I survived.”

Rajib said the fac­tory con­ducted a fire drill just three days before the tragedy.

Work­ers expressed sup­port for the fac­tory owner, Del­war Hos­sain. Rajib said he is “a gen­tle man” who heeded work­ers when they protested for more pay and against rough treat­ment by some managers.

“He took action and fired some of them,” he said. “He did not sack any worker. He told us: ‘You are my peo­ple. If you sur­vive, I will survive.’”

Most the fire’s dev­as­ta­tion took place on the sec­ond and third floors. Sewing and embroi­dery machines and tables burned to ashes and ceil­ing fans melted.

Night­gowns, children’s shorts, pants, jack­ets and sweat­shirts were strewn about, piled up in some places, boxed in oth­ers. Car­tons of kids’ hooded sweaters, off-white with red and black print, were marked “Dis­ney Pixar.” Among the Dis­ney gar­ments was a gray sweat­shirt embla­zoned with the image of Light­ning McQueen, the star of Pixar’s “Cars” movies.

A pair of blue ENYCE shorts was still on a sewing machine. There were also sweaters from the French com­pany Teddy Smith and the Scot­tish com­pany Edin­burgh Woollen Mill.

At least four reg­is­ter books listed such buy­ers as Wal-Mart, Dis­ney and Sears.

Josh Green, chief exec­u­tive of New York-based Pan­jiva, which tracks ship­ments for fac­to­ries out­side the U.S., said some com­pa­nies are more con­sci­en­tious than oth­ers in select­ing fac­to­ries. Some pick a man­u­fac­turer and do lit­tle or no inves­ti­ga­tion, he said, while oth­ers ana­lyze fac­to­ries’ past infrac­tions and pay monthly visits.

It is also hard for retail­ers to keep track of their sup­ply chain, Green said. While many retail­ers have con­tracts with sup­pli­ers that don’t allow them to sub­con­tract work with­out their approval, those pro­vi­sions are dif­fi­cult to enforce, he said.

More­over, “you have relent­less pres­sure that con­sumers put on retail­ers and that retail­ers put on their sup­pli­ers to deliver lower and lower prices,” Green said. “And that pres­sure is a key rea­son why you see fac­to­ries cut­ting corners.”

TV reports said about 3,000 gar­ment work­ers held protests Wednes­day over the fire, block­ing roads and throw­ing stones in the third straight day of demon­stra­tions. Police used batons to dis­perse the protesters.

Accord­ing to local tele­vi­sion, most fac­to­ries in the area closed because of the protests.

Posted by AP News on Nov 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.