SubScribe

Friday, 17 May 2013

Will safety accord help us to find ethical clothing?

Big brands sign up to try to prevent another disaster

Three weeks ago 1,127 people were killed when an eight-storey factory block collapsed in a Dhaka suburb. The victims were largely garment trade workers, most of them making clothes for the Western market.

This week 31 big-name Western clothing chains endorsed a fire and safety accord designed to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again. Between them, these chains buy from more than a thousand factories in Bangladesh. Campaigners were delighted with their haul and declared it a watershed, the dawn of a new era.

Wow, that was quick! You wouldn't have thought it possible. Well, it's without doubt an achievement, but it wasn't quite that quick and it is sadly unlikely to be a cure-all.

The idea for the accord grew not from the Rana Plaza disaster last month, but from a series of fatal fires culminating in one that killed more than a hundred workers at the Tazreen factory in the city last November.
In January this year, the Dhaka Government, garment manufacturers and workers' organisations agreed to work together to produce an action plan to improve fire safety at work across the country. A committee was formed and its recommended strategy was approved by the Government at the end of March.

That basically called on ministers, employers and workers to recognise and fulfil their responsibilities and for outside organisations - such as brands and international development agencies - to be encouraged to join the party. PHV, which is behind Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and the German company Tchibo signed up straight away.

The latest tragedy gave the campaign for action added impetus, and a deadline of midnight on Wednesday was set for retailers to sign up. The fact that so many household names did so in the final 48 hours, with H&M leading the charge, suggests that a tipping point may have been reached. Customers are demanding action and more information about the clothes they buy.

The accord aims to establish a new inspection regime that places makes the retailer as well as the factory owner and the Government take responsibility for workers' safety. Stores will be expected to put up to $500,000 a year into the project and to contribute towards work needed to bring factories up to standard.
If manufacturers fail to meet the required standards, the retailer will have to stop doing business with them.
The agreement also aims to give workers more muscle. They should be trained in fire safety practices and be allowed to refuse, without penalty, to work in a building if they fear that it is unsafe. Health and safety committees are to be set up at factories and workers should make up half the representatives.

So far, so good. Even better is the fact that implementation is intended to start immediately and that it should be well on the road by the end of next month. A steering committee is to be set up to get things moving, with its major task the appointment of an independent safety inspector 'with fire and building safety expertise and impeccable credentials'.

Workers and the exporters will have equal representation on the steering committee, whose chairman will come from the International Labour Organisation. The factory bosses are excluded from this area, although they will have seats on the advisory board that will discuss strategy and - with luck - build stronger relations between the various interested parties. They will also be represented on the committee that actually runs the show.

The Government has meanwhile promised new laws by the end of the month. The minimum wage is to be raised - at £25 per month, Bangladeshi clothing factory workers are the lowest paid in the world - and the ban on the unionisation of factories is to be loosened. It has also said that it will train 200 more safety inspectors by the end of the year - at the moment there are only 50 to cover 200,000 factories (or 18 to cover 100,000, depending on whose figures you use).

There are still many hurdles to be overcome, however. Many factories are in Export Processing Zones from which trade unions are banned. If the Government produces its promised legislation (which is by no means a given) workers will be able to form unions and enter into collective bargaining. Yet it will still not be illegal for employers to fire employees trying to organise workers. How is that going to work? Who is to determine whether people have got together in a reasonable manner or whether they have been suborned by a rabid firebrand?

And always at the back of people's minds will be the torture and murder last year of Aminul Islam, a local president of the garment workers' federation. His killer has not been brought to justice.

We are a long way from happy families here. Factory owners have a huge influence on the Government - both inside and outside of parliament. About half of the country's MPs have business links and a tenth own clothing factories. They are hostile to trade unions and will not like their central role in the new regime.

Nor are they too happy with their customers, the big-name buyers from the West who have been pushing them on prices. Costs have risen over recent years, even before the promised reforms, but prices have been kept low. 'The buyers have not given anything. They just say "increase your productivity",' one owner told Reuters.

Unions and anti-sweatshop campaigners such as War on Want and Labour Behind the Label are understandably impatient for change. But there is an aggressive tone amid the accord celebrations. The main targets for their venom are Walmart and Gap, who have declined to sign up.

Gap said it was ready to sign but was concerned about possible ramifications of the accord being legally binding. It fears - probably quite reasonably, as the New York Times pointed out - the potential cost should any dispute end up in an American court. Walmart, which owns Asda, said it had already acted by starting its own inspections, including using thermal circuit imaging to check electrical systems. It has also promised fire safety training for all workers and to publish a list of approved factories and their inspection results. It has not, however, committed any money towards repairs or improvements.

Such explanations, or excuses, cut no ice with campaigners. Paul Jennings, general secretary of UNI Global Union, said: 'Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is out of step. By not signing up, the Walmart brand sinks to a new low.' Tim Noonan of the International Trade Union Federation, accused Walmart of sticking with a system that had failed 'year after year...corporate-sponsored investigations that aren't investigations'.

Murray Worthy, a War on Want campaigner told the Independent that Gap's position was absolutely outrageous and that its objection was a smokescreen that would rip the heart out of the agreement. 'It's a straightforward statement that they don't care at all about the safety of their workers and aren't interested in taking action to put that right.' The Labour MP John McDonnell said people should boycott the shop and that British customers had a duty to force it into action.

Are such complaints justified? Bloomberg Business Week notes that JC Penney had also remained aloof, commenting: 'These companies are concerned about preventing the fires and collapses...but signing a legally binding agreement with built-in systems to resolve disputes that was created with labour unions? That’s too European.'

Photograph by Susie Taylor
The Atlantic

American companies will need a lot of persuading to join in this sort of initiative - and activists know it. On the day of the Rana Plaza disaster, the Atlantic website told the story of a Tazreen fire survivor who was in Washington to try to persuade big chains to act. "I've come to America to tell people that we deserve safe working place, that factories in Bangladesh are no safer for workers than before," Sumi Abedin told the site. Ms Abedin, above, is a powerful ambassador, as Jason Motlagh and Susie Taylor's report testifies:

When a fire engulfed the Tazreen Fashions garment factory in late November, Sumi Abedin was resigned to die. Defying orders from floor bosses to stay at her sewing machine after word got around that a blaze was spreading down below, she and her co-workers ran to the two "women's" exits, only to find them padlocked. Another "male" stairwell was choked with smoke and bodies, forcing her to retreat by the light of a cell phone.
Amid the screams and confusion, a ventilation shaft offered a way out: a three-story fall to the ground, one that could also be fatal. "I did not jump to save my life; I jumped to save my body," says the 24-year-old, hoping her family could identify her remains.

Will she be able to sway Walmart, which buys from 279 factories in Bangladesh and is the industry's second-biggest customer, spending $1bn a year in the country?

Shortly before the deadline for signing the safety accord on Wednesday, the company broke off relations with a supplier because documents in the Rana Plaza wreckage included an order dated May 2012 for more than 5,000 pairs of skinny jeans destined for its shops. Walmart had said after the disaster that it had no dealings with factories in the building.

The timing of the announcement and the detailed explanations are interesting. Walmart's supplier was the Canadian company Fame Jeans, which had apparently given an assurance that it had not dealt with Rana Plaza. Walmart said: 'Based upon our policy on unauthorised sub-contracting we are terminating this supplier.' Fame Jeans immediately put up its hands, with Alen Brandman the chief executive, saying: 'It's very clear that Walmart did not authorise me in any capacity to work within this factory.' A 'rogue employee' had placed the order without the knowledge of senior managers. Ah, those rogue employees. You just can't trust them.

Funnily enough, Walmart had severed links with another supplier after the Tazreen fire. Funnily enough documents surfaced showing that a supplier had been buying clothes from that factory. "A supplier subcontracted work to this factory without authorisation and in direct violation of our policies," the company said.

Scott Nova of the Workers Rights Consortium, which monitors workers' rights in factories producing goods for sale in the US, was unimpressed by the coincidence: 'One disaster after another at factories producing Walmart goods, but it's never Walmart's fault. They always have some story about a rogue supplier or sneaky subcontractor.'

Other order dockets found in the Rana Plaza rubble showed that the Spanish Mango chain and the Danish group PWT had both had dealings with the Phantom Tac factory based in the building. Mango said it had requested samples and the order would not have been confirmed until the factory had undergone a successful social audit.

Profit and loss

Retailers have been criticised for their big profit margins, so it is interesting to look at these a little more.

The Mango order was for 12,000 polo shirts at $4.45 (£2.92) each, which it would sell in its British shops for £26 - £30.

PWT had ordered long-sleeved checked shirts at $5.08 (£3.34) each, which would be be marketed under the Jack's label for 25 euros (£21).

Inditex, which owns Zara, operates on a gross margin of 58% - the bald relationship between the cost of the goods and the price for which they are sold. But when other costs - premises, staffing, taxes, shipping etc - are taken into account, this comes down to 16%. H&M's margins are 55% and 9%.

Activists say that the published figures show that they could afford to pay more to see workers' conditions improve without a big increase in the prices in their shops. The TUC was quoted in The Times on Saturday as saying that doubling Bangladeshi workers' pay would add only 2p to the cost of a T-shirt.

The BBC has also looked at margins, taking as its example a pair of $50 jeans for sale in Germany. Breaking down where the money goes, Philip Hampsheir says that 39% ($19.50) goes to the retailer, 16% ($8) in tax, 9% ($4.50) on shipping and 20% ($10) on the denim, buttons, zips etc.

That leaves 16% ($8) to go to the producer, who has to pay his rent, fuel and equipment bills and taxes as well as his workers before taking his share. The BBC puts the cost of manufacture at $6 and the profit at $2. Some will take this as proof of how Western retailers are squeezing their suppliers, others will question the way that final $8 is split.

Is any of this helpful for the shopper who merely wants to know whether their jeans or T shirt have been made in a sweatshop? Probably not.

And so we come back to the Little Red Sewing Machine and the need for a reliable guide to whether workers are properly paid and decently treated. Remember, the accord that brought whoops of joy this week relates only to safety. That is obviously vital to avoid another tragedy, but even if it brings real change - a big if - we are still a long way from making sure that women are not chained to their sewing machines for 12 hours at a time for a pittance.

And another thing: this accord applies only to Bangladesh. Three people died and dozens were injured or trapped when a factory roof collapsed in Cambodia on Thursday.

It was making trainers for the Western market.

Some facts
The retailers who signed up to the accord are:

Abercrombie & Fitch
Aldi
Arcadia (Top Shop, Top Man, Dorothy Perkins, Burton,
BhS, Miss Selfridge, Outfit, Wallis, Evans)
Benetton
Helly Hansen
H&M
Inditex (Zara)
John Lewis
Lidl
Loblaw (Joe Fresh)
Mango
Marks & Spencer
Mothercare
N. Brown Group (various plus-size labels, Figleaves,
Ambrose Wilson, Heather Valley)
New Look
Next
Primark
PVH (Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger)
Sainsbury's
Shop Direct (Littlewoods, isme)
Tesco

Carrefour (France)
C&A (Germany)
El Corte Ingles (Spain)
Esprit (Hong Kong)
G-Star (Netherlands)
Hesse Natur (Germany)
JBC (Belgium)
KiK (Germany)
Stockmann (Finland)
Switcher (Switzerland)
Tchibo (Germany)
WE Europe (Netherlands)

`

Friday, 10 May 2013

One Bangladesh 'miracle' is not enough

Let's celebrate the rescue of Reshma Akhter, but remember more than 1,000 have died to put cheap clothes on our backs

Reshma Akhter is carried from the wreckage with no broken bones.
Photograph: nbcnews.com

Great jubilation today over the rescue of a woman alive after 17 days in the rubble of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh.

Naturally tomorrow's papers will focus on this 'miracle'. Reshma Akhter, an 18-year-old seamstress, was pulled from what was once the second floor of the factory building, apparently uninjured. She was well enough to describe how she had hit the wreckage with sticks and rocks to draw attention, but was beginning to despair. 'I never thought I'd see daylight again' will doubtless be the headline in more than a few places.

Just as I am doing here, papers will give second billing to the dreadful fact that the Dhaka death toll has gone up by a hundred every day this week and is well past a thousand. Nor should we forget that a further eight workers died in another factory fire yesterday.

The Rana Plaza disaster is now the world's deadliest industrial catastrophe since the Bhopal gas leak in India killed nearly 4,000 people in 1984.

The collapse of the eight-storey building has captured media attention from the first moments, even when the death toll was 'only' 87. The disclosure that workers had been ordered to their machines, even though the building had been declared unsafe because of cracks discovered the day before, made it an even greater outrage than two previous disasters that had, at that point, claimed more lives.

Journalists are used to dealing with high body counts in Asia. Industrial conditions do not by any stretch of the imagination meet Western standards. We are appalled by Chinese mining disasters and Indian rail tragedies, yet we are inured by their frequency - and by the comfort of knowing 'it's nothing to do with us'.

We might pause for a moment on bonfire night to think of the children who have lost limbs in firework factory disasters - and then go and pour ourselves another glass or light the toddler's sparkler.

We were brought up short last year with the spate of suicides at the Foxconn factory in China; too many of us own Apple products not to realise this was rather too close to home to brush off. But do you remember how many people killed themselves and what the core problems were? No? It's too easy to forget.

Rana Plaza has made us think more carefully. It may be a five-minute burst of conscience, but something tells me this may be the moment that serious consideration of ethical shopping reaches beyond the realms of the bearded sandal-wearing veggie hippies and into the mainstream.

Shoppers want to support ethical traders, but everyone in the fashion industry says it is too complex, that it is almost impossible to follow the manufacturing chain. How can you unravel the spider's web woven by the factories where the clothes are made, the shippers, the farmers who grow the cotton, the people who make the buttons? It's not like checking that pigs are being fed decent swill or that chickens aren't penned up in batteries. Or so I've been told.

Well maybe it isn't simple, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. We have to find a way first to convince high street retailers - and not just the specialist cottage industry businesses - to make the effort to get fully involved in monitoring their suppliers.

Yes it's hard to check up on factories thousands of miles away in countries where bribery and corruption rules, where certification can't be trusted and where codes and signals thwart independent inspectors.

It seems that when the musack changes, overseers don white coats and goggles and take over on the production line from the children being ushered out of the back door. If the lighting suddenly become brighter, office staff dig out one of several sets of 'official' papers so that they have the 'right' audit for the 'right' buyer.

If you are making millions of pounds from your sales, if your profits are soaring by 20% year on year, you need to invest some of that money into bringing a halt to such ruses and taking action yourself and not rely on middle men.

Associated British Foods, which seems able to monitor suppliers in its food business, needs to get over to the sub-continent and start paying proper attention to the clothing side - Primark - that is the major source of its growing profits. And so do other retailers. There's no good going in with a big stick and threatening to source shirts and jeans elsewhere. They need to negotiate, to help the factory owners to understand how everyone could and would benefit if they cleaned up their act.

And they need to tell their customers what they are doing.

There's no use being coy. We are grown up enough to realise there's no instant solution, that conditions won't change overnight. There is a natural fear among brands that if they admit that they source goods from sweatshops or places where child labour is rife, they will be exposed on Panorama or by some intrepid print journalist and be ruined. So the media have to be responsible, too, and look for progress and what is good, not simply at wide-eyed children who make a good photograph - and who might starve if they were forbidden to work.

People in the West who care about the people who produce their food, clothes, toys, iPads must realise that boycotts will hurt only the workers at the bottom of the production line. That a little progress here and a bit more there is to be encouraged and not sniffed at as inadequate.

But the Government also needs to engage fully and bring pressure to bear on fellow governments, to offer incentives to drive out corruption. It's a tough task, especially when you consider that at least 10 per cent of Bangladesh's 300 MPs are factory owners and that many government officials also have a financial interest in an industry that is responsible for 80 per cent of the country's exports.

Dhaka clearly needs to put its own house in order and start by revamping the factory inspection regime. Human Rights Watch reported last year that there were just 18 government inspectors to keep tabs on more than 100,000 Dhaka factories.

SubScribe has written two articles on this subject in the past couple of weeks (you can bet there will be more). The first concerned the circumstances of the disaster, workers' conditions and the predicament shoppers find themselves in when trying to buy ethically. You can read it by clicking here.

I know that the little red sewing machine idea seems simplistic. I know that setting up a regulatory authority can be complicated. I know that it's hard to be certain that every element in the supply chain is squeaky clean. But does that mean it's not worth trying? It was encouraging to find support for the little red sewing machine from the likes of Livia Firth and Luella Bartley, and if more big names in the fashion world were to join the campaign, we could make it fly.

The second post fleshed out the little red sewing machine idea and you can read it here.

There is an argument that such labelling wouldn't have prevented the tragedy last month because it would concern only working conditions and sourcing, and not the structure of the building. ABF has not (as I write) signed up to a code of safety for buildings in spite of a petition signed by tens of thousands urging it to do so. The company says it is pursuing its own course of action. But if it wants customer support, it needs to be open and frank about its approach.

One know-nothing woman tapping away at a laptop can't save the world, but there are others out there who are thinking along similar lines. The pressure is growing and the issue is beginning to move out of the blogosphere and into mainstream media.

Events of the past two weeks may have created a momentum that will eventually require our high street chains to look to themselves and come up with real solutions rather than excuses.

There were people in the 19th century who said the world couldn't function without slaves. There were people in the 20th century who said apartheid in South Africa would never end. There were people in this century who never imagined you could have a computer the size of a paperback.

Given the evidence of humankind's ability to overcome hurdles and make huge social and technical strides when the will is there, how can we say today that there will never be a fully ethical fashion supply chain?

If you need convincing of the importance of this issue, look at the collection of pictures below taken since the disaster on April 24, and read this report from the Independent Europe Daily Express of a surviving factory worker's fears for the future.

Please back the campaign by spreading the word, putting forward ideas and tweeting using the hashtag #littleredsewingmachine.

@gameoldgirl

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Thursday, 9 May 2013

Going overboard for Fergie's farewell

Sir Alex is no saint and he's not dead, so why the brouhaha?

When everyone else thinks one thing and you think the complete opposite, chances are they are right and you're wrong.

Well, SubScribe is sorry, but this morning our entire national press was out of step.

Sir Alex Ferguson announced yesterday morning that he would be retiring as manager of Manchester United to take on a new role as director and club ambassador. This had been widely trailed, but the confirmation still generated 1.4 million tweets in the space of an hour, filling eight of the ten 'trending' spots.

It has been pointed out that Ferguson is the most successful British football manager so far, averaging more than one big trophy per season over his 26 years at Old Trafford. Well done, him.

But winning grotesque lumps of silver for a commercial enterprise - especially when you have a virtually bottomless purse to call on - has yet to become a route to beatification.

It certainly doesn't seem to be a more important matter than the Queen outlining a government programme ravaged by UKIP's performance in the local elections; nor, I would venture, does it match the death of Margaret Thatcher in historical significance.

Yet this morning the Ferguson retirement killed almost as many trees as the Iron Lady's death. Every daily newspaper, bar the Express, lost touch with reality in a race to be the most obsequious. And the surprise was that the tabloids were more restrained than the so-called serious papers.

The Mirror had a 'pull-out supplement', the Sun a 'souvenir edition'. The Mail gave over its 6-7 spread and a comment page in addition to its '12-page Sportsmail tribute'.

Moving on to the heavy guns, the Independent was quite restrained with two news spreads and nine pages in sport; the Telegraph ran a page 1 picture and a leader in addition to its '16-page souvenir special'. The Times confined itself to a puff and a leader at the front of the book, but then went all out with half a dozen pages in sport and a 12-page 'Man who changed the game' tribute. Finally, the Guardian had a front-page-picture, a puff, 2-3 spread and a 20-page 'Farewell to Fergie' supplement.

This is daft.

The Knight of the Hairdryer is one of the most successful people in the country and clearly has great leadership skills. He has a huge following of both admirers and detractors. But he is not the second Messiah, he is a football manager. He is 71 and he is retiring. He has not died - and even if he had, the national newspapers' response would still be over the top.

People have anecdotes about him to share. They can do that in the pub or in specialist magazines or on the web. Of course mobile phone jokes will spread like chickenpox and ad men will rush out their specials. Currys has offered a discount on hairdryers; Nando's and Kentucky Fried Chicken both had the idea of staying open five minutes longer than usual in tribute. That sort of thing is fun, appropriate. Twenty-page supplements of people saying they remembered this or that about him, intertwined with statistic after statistic are not.

Ah, I hear you say, but he has brought money into the country; Manchester United is the most successful and famous club in the world. That may be, but it is still a football club. And football is still a game.

Sir Terry Leahy retired as chief executive of Tesco two years ago. He was a Tesco man all his life, joined the board in 1992 and took the helm five years later. By the time he left the company after 30+ years, it had become Britain's biggest retailer with something like £1 in every £8 spent in this country going to his shops. Like Sir Alex, Sir Terry won hats full of awards and had brought millions, probably billions into the country. When he left, there were no editions.

But he wasn't a national treasure, was he?

Fair enough. What about 'Sir' Terry Wogan, who retired from his Radio 2 breakfast show in 2009? OK, so he didn't retire from broadcasting, but nor has Ferguson retired from football. Wogan is by far Britain's most successful and popular entertainer in a generation; he works for himself and he works for charity. He stuck with the Eurovision Song Contest for more than a decade - which is more than anyone should be expected to do - and has hosted Children in Need since its inception in 1980.

He has been a chat show host, a quiz show host, a pro-am golfer and a best-selling writer. When he retired from the Radio 2 show, the Times ran an Auden pastiche as its third leader: 'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone; Terry Wogan is abandoning his microphone'. But there was no pull-out tribute.

People do serve assorted enterprises and employers for a quarter-century or more, and they are rewarded with suitable mementoes from colleagues and admirers. Sir Alex deserved more than a gold watch and a speech from the chairman. The country as well as the club wanted to mark the end of an era. But today's sycophantic chorus was beyond anything.

Ferguson isn't even a hero. He's a foul-mouthed aggressive belligerent who bullies those who don't behave as he wishes - the boot aimed at Beckham's head, the dissing of referees, the gamesmanship in trying to prolong matches when the scoreline doesn't suit.

Most of the jolly 'I remember when Sir Alex...' stories today were of how he had been crossed and made his anger felt. To have suffered the hairdryer treatment was almost a badge of honour. There were few tales of kindness or generosity of spirit.

Pat Crerand, Sir Matt Busby and George Best of Manchester United
bringing the European Cup to England for the first time in 1968

Long service alone does not make an ambassador, as Manchester United should know better than most. Old Trafford has bred some true ambassadors for the club and the sport: Sir Matt Busby, Sir Bobby Charlton and that future knight of the game, David Beckham. Ferguson's achievements may have outstripped these three in terms of cups won and years served, but he has a way to go to match Sir Matt and Sir Bobby in terms of character, demeanour and fair play.

I'm not saying the papers should have played down Ferguson's announcement. It surely deserved several pages of coverage, commentary, analysis in every paper. He is a big player in public life and one of the most well-recognised names in the country.

But if you devote 12, 16 or 20 pages to the retirement of one man in a special section, where do you have to go when the really important stories break? Suppose there was another 9/11? What if a world leader were assassinated? What happens when Gorbachev or Mandela dies? The Mandela supplements are as well-prepared as those for Margaret Thatcher were. Would the death of such an international statesman be worth one, two or three Ferguson retirements?

This is why coverage today was bonkers.

Oh, and just in case you're thinking 'she's a woman, she doesn't understand football', SubScribe would like to point out that she was a Manchester United fan when Ferguson was still playing for Dunfermline and that the sport was the catalyst for a career in journalism.

That career may not have made SubScribe sweet or kind or generous or an ambassador for anything, but it did hone her common sense. And common sense says that today's press coverage was bonkers.

Even if the Sun's front was inspired.