Category Archives: Rana Plaza

Best&Less accused of putting profit before Bangladesh workers by failing to sign safety accord

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Company says its own code of conduct goes further than the global accord prompted by the Rana Plaza disaster 10 years ago

Major clothing retailer Best&Less has been accused of putting company profit ahead of the safety of Bangladeshi garment workers by declining to sign a key international accord on worker safety and labour rights.

The Rana Plaza disaster, 10 years ago on Monday, prompted outrage at the abysmal safety standards in the Bangladesh factories supplying major clothing brands and retailers, leading to the establishment of a cross-border agreement known as the international accord.

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‘Give workers an equal seat’: pressure builds for Levi’s to protect factory employees

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Activists say that the company’s own audits have been ineffective and workers receive inadequate safety protections

Workers and activists have been campaigning to push Levi’s, one of the world’s largest clothing brands, to sign on to an international accord for workers’ health and safety in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed five garment clothing factories, collapsed, killing 1,134 people and injuring approximately 2,500, in the deadliest disaster in the garment industry’s history.

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How the Bangladeshi women who make our clothes are edging towards a better life | Fiona Weber-Steinhaus

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The country has undergone an economic miracle in recent years, albeit at huge cost to its garment workers. But things are finally starting to improve for them

Tasnia Akter has come home. It’s a public holiday in Bangladesh, the one time of year the 25-year-old can leave the mayhem of the city behind and see her family: her mother, her aunt.

And her daughter.

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Bangladesh could take over workplace safety despite ‘shocking unreadiness’

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Exclusive: government’s own data shows no factory it inspects has eliminated high-risk safety hazards

Bangladesh’s government could assume responsibility for safety in workplaces producing clothing for major western brands this week despite demonstrating a “shocking level of unreadiness” to do so, according to an analysis of the state’s own data.

The country’s supreme court is scheduled to decide on Sunday whether to kick out the Bangladesh accord on building and fire safety, an international initiative to remove life-threatening hazards from factories that was put in place after the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in which more 1,100 people died.

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