The Dhaka Fire, Designer Clothes and Workers Rights

Yesterday's lethal fire in a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, highlights the culture of death inherent in the outsourcing of labour in the age of globalisation.

The fire caused the deaths of over one hundred workers at the Tazreen Fashion factory in the Ashulia district on the outskirts of the capital. The details of the incident make harrowing reading:

• an electrical short circuit may have caused the disaster
• all three building exits were on the ground floor - where the fire broke out
• many victims were trapped inside the burning building and bodies were found on different floors of the factory
• some people died after jumping from the building to escape the flames
• the factory had no fire exits on the outside of the building
• the nine-storey factory is located down a narrow lane which made access difficult for the fire services 
• the district is home to hundreds of similar clothes factories, mostly supplying clothes to western markets

Although the exact final destination of the clothes made in this particular factory at the time are currently unknown, records show that the company Tazreen Fashion exports over 90% of its products to the western, north American and middle eastern markets. Clients include Lord Daniel Sportswear in Florida, who sell to JC Penney, Kohls and Sears via the brands Palmland, Cotton Traders, La Moda, and Courtside Classics. Lord Daniel also own the Fairway Golf & Resort and Astra labels in the United States.

Tazreen Fashion also has very close relations and supplies products to other leading clothing exporters in Bangladesh, including NASSA Group, Palmal Group and Givensy, who in turn supply such western outlets as Levi's, Buffalo, and Wal-Mart in North America, and C & A and H & M in Europe.

  

The outsourcing of cheap labour to Asian factories, many with poor safety records, is an integral aspect of the process of economic globalisation. There are approximately 4,500 garment factories in Bangladesh, employing more than two million people. Clothing production accounts for up to 80% of Bangladesh's £15bn ($24 bn) annual exports. Attempts at organised boycotts of such companies by western activists protesting poor working conditions have often resulted in job losses and increased suffering for such workers. At the same time, voluntary codes of conduct within the western retail and clothing sector have proved ineffective and are easily avoidable on the ground.

Earlier this month, Bangladeshi civil rights campaigner Khorshed Alam wrote an open letter to Bob Geldof ahead of his meeting with UK Development Secretary Justine Greening. The UK government is increasingly seeking to carry out its overseas development aims through partnerships with the private sector. Describing this move as "a mistake", Alam informs Geldof that: 

"UK aid money is being used to set up ‘special economic zones’ in Bangladesh. In zones that already exist, multinational companies pay workers less than £1 a day, trade unions are not allowed to function properly, and police crush protests with rubber bullets.

This kind of ‘aid’ is not helping the poor. It is only helping the multinational companies.

Special economic zones in Bangladesh are established to attract foreign companies, especially those from the garment industry. They are like mini tax havens, giving companies ten year tax breaks and subsidised land as an incentive to invest.

Companies like Nike, Reebok, Adidas, H&M and Gap all have factories in existing zones in my country. They provide jobs for local people, but at a cost of sweatshop-style working conditions."

In the UK, War on Want believe that an effective strategy for improving working conditions among Bangladesh's garment workers is through legislation that requires UK businesses to ensure that overseas workers are guaranteed a living wage, decent working conditions and the right to join a trade union in their home countries. War on Want's campaign in pursuit of this legislative change is called Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops.  

Update: 26/11/12

AP are reporting that in response to the recent fire, workers in the capital Dhaka have taken to the streets in protest over poor safety standards in the country's garment factories. The protesters have blocked roads and forced the closure of around 200 clothing factories. A major highway has been blockaded and factories have stones thrown at them. 

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What Next for the Student Movement?

Reproduced with permission under a creative commons licence from Our Kingdom. Written by Guy Aitchison.

The volcanic eruption of student anger and militancy in Britain over the last few months has blown the political space wide open, making a broad-based movement against austerity thinkable where previously there was only rumbling discontent. It has certainly been an exhilarating experience to be part of, but whether future historians look back on the heady period leading up to the parliamentary vote on tuition fees as the beginning of the fightback against the neoliberal juggernaut or the last desperate gasp of social democracy, will depend on the next steps the movement takes.

An extraordinary opportunity has been presented to us. Len McCluskey, general secretary of the biggest trade union, Unite, has called for an alliance between trade unions and the "magnificent students’ movement". This call, from the leader of the country’s biggest trade union, which echoes the countless personal messages of support delivered by unionists at the university occupations, is without parallel in the history of social activism in this country. 

With over seven million members, the labour movement represents by far the largest organised force in this country, and through the power of co-ordinated action, from strikes to occupations, to political mobilisation and education, is capable of putting serious pressure on the legitimacy and functioning of the state. 

The key question now is how to turn rhetorical expressions of solidarity into concrete relationships of support and co-operation, not only with trade unions, but with the full diversity of campaign groups that are springing up at a local and national level to fight the cuts. 

One important theoretical debate concerns whether the movement should strive to retain its hitherto organic and decentralised nature or whether this is merely a temporary phase before the inevitable discipline of central organisation and leadership. I hope to set out elsewhere the creative potential of networked organisation and the dangers of over-reliance on traditional hierarchies. Here I will confine myself to ten practical suggestions on the way forward. They are in no particular order of priority and come from a student perspective:

1. Convene nationwide meetings of the occupations, and then broaden these out to other groups. 

We need forums to strategise on the way ahead. Online networks have proven their efficacy, but the occupations also demonstrated the importance of a shared space and face-to-face interactions in fostering the strong bonds needed for concerted political campaigning and direct action. One of the most impressive political meetings I’ve taken part in was the Cambridge University occupation general assembly - a genuine "big society" get together of over 300 people from all backgrounds and walks of life, brought together to discuss how to oppose the cuts. There is no reason why these kinds of meetings can’t become a regular occurrence.

2. Educate each other, disseminate skills. 

The occupations served as fast-track apprenticeships in political activism. Thanks to them, hundreds of young people now have the skills and confidence to run democratic meetings, deal with the press, engage in non-violent resistance to bailiffs, and so on. We need to disseminate these skills further through workshops and informal instruction, across sectors as well as within them. At UCL occupation we were given a lesson in the community organising techniques of "power mapping" by a unionist from the TSSA. Students, in return, could offer their own knowledge and skills, such as how to organise through social media.

3. Build and strengthen links with school students. 

They have been the most radical and militant, leading from the front at the days of action. University students need to be forging links with students at local schools, giving talks to their societies, and encouraging them to get involved in activism. They are the ones who will suffer the brunt of cuts to EMA and university funding and many are keen to get involved. I expected ten pupils at a talk I gave to Camden School for Girls, with Jo Casserly, on the eve of their occupation – instead there were at least 100.

4. Keep it adventurous and creative. 

Think flashmobs, culture jamming, political art, the techniques of the Yes Men and the Situationist International. A group of Goldsmith’s graduates have formed the University for Strategic Optimism, a nomadic institution which pitches up and holds lectures in capitalist spaces such as Lloyds TSB and Tesco. As we saw in Parliament Square, even a calculated technique of state repression, such as the kettle, can be subverted and turned into a mini festival. We need more of this; anything satirical and subversive the authorities find difficult to handle.

5. Convince the wider student body. 

When you’re caught up in deliberative enclaves of the like-minded it can be easy to ignore the opinions of the wider student body. This is a mistake. Their support, even if only passive, is critical. Public talks, workshops, and informal persuasion can help bring them in. This is an attractive moment of political persuasion by example, but also argument; it needs to face outwards not be totally absorbed by itself.

6. Call for co-ordinated strike action. 

This will be a vital tool in defeating the government’s austerity programmes. Students should be making the political case for strikes in defence of jobs and the welfare state, as well as providing support for workers who withdraw their labour. At UCL occupation we organised delegations to attend the pickets of striking tube workers – this should become a regular activity.

7. Improve legal knowledge and anti-surveillance practices. 

We can expect a furious backlash from the police and the wider political and judicial establishment. The repression of student activists has already begun with police raids on suspected leaders. The Met are demanding ever more draconian powers and tools to deal with protesters, whilst Lib Dem politicians urge intrusive "intelligence" gathering operations designed to suppress legitimate dissent. We need more people trained in legal observation attending demos, and wider awareness of the techniques needed to foil police intelligence gathering, both online and off.

8. Beware sectarianism. 

As a political theory Phd student, I enjoy robust theoretical debate as much as the next activist, but one of the wonderful things about the occupations (at least the ones I witnessed) was how they prioritised practice over ideology. It would be a great shame to now descend into ideological fetishism or for different factions to move in and try and appropriate the anger and energy to grow themselves at the expense of the wider movement. This movement's openness and pluralism is a political strength; without it, it won't succeed in bringing in the larger public.

9. Become a networked participant. 

There has been something of a backlash against "clicktivism" of late (largely from those with little experience of digital activism) but it’s no coincidence that the most successful anti-cuts actions to date – the student protests and UK Uncut - are those that have harnessed the power of online networks. Join Twitter, join Flickr, work Facebook, set up a blog – and use online platforms such as False Economy to link up with other campaigners in your area and pool knowledge and resources. Start open mixed group websites for exchanging information, ideas and video reports and images. Participate in non-partisan websites such as OurKingdom or start your own.  

Ultimately, activists should consider moving their online operations from private social media conglomerates, inherently vulnerable to corporate and governmental pressure, to self-hosted, open source networks. The scandal of corporate connivance in the attack on Wikileaks and the recent "disappearance" of UK Uncut’s Facebook group underlines the urgency of such a switch.

10. Support the motion of No confidence in Aaron Porter, but don’t let it distract from the core task of building the movement. 

It would be nice to have a combative NUS President prepared to mobilise the organisation’s resources on behalf of students, but the real lesson of the last few weeks has been how ineffectual "leaders", desperate to appear responsible and safeguard their own careers, can be bypassed by taking autonomous action.

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