Occupational accidents or workplace accidents are sudden and unplanned sort of incidents that lead to cause death and injuries to a large number of workers. It can be happened either because of the collapse of a particular building; a sudden fire break; harmful gases; electric short circuits etc. (Alpaslan & Schenck, 2014). The present report aims at investigating the implications of the involvement of international trade unions, MNCs (for example through CSR policies) and intergovernmental bodies (such as the ILO) in regulating working conditions at the international level. It will also deal with the fact that what are the policy implications for nation states, employers, and workers in developing countries based on the case of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. The collapse of Rana Plaza is considered as one of the deadliest tragedies in the history of overall garment industry throughout the world (Diermeier, 2014).
Background
The building named as Rana Plaza was an eight-storey garment factory which was having more than 5000 employees along with several other shops and banks. The building was named after its owner, Sohel Rana. Varies international apparel brands for which this garment factory was producing apparel products include world-renowned brands such as Wal-Mart, Joe Fresh, Matalan, Monsoon etc. (Henniker, 2014).
On April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza containing five different factories collapsed which resulted in killing more than 1100 people and among them, more were young women who were working for the production of garments for their western retailers. This incident is considered as a worst case of the South Asian industrial history since the 1980s. The collapse of the Rana Plaza resulted is reigniting the debate on the role that must be played by corporate as well consumer responsibility as well as the ethical aspects of sweatshops. After the various pressure from the NGOs and the public, governments and MNCs vowed to clean up the garment industry. This incident also led to a reassessment of working conditions of factories in the context of Bangladesh and showed a historical turning point in this regard (Burke, 2013).
Implications of the involvement of international trade unions, MNCs (for example through CSR policies) and intergovernmental bodies (such as the ILO) in regulating working conditions at the international level.
According to the Ethical Trading Initiative, it is needed by the MNCs to follow and consider ethics important as well as the different rules and regulations within a specific organization both and at the same time outside the organization while dealing with suppliers and other stakeholders. Based on the views of Kabeer and Mahmud (2004), the MNCs are responsible for considering ethical issues regarding the garment factories. Another researcher, Alom (2012) also argued that the multinational companies like Wal-Mart, Matalan, Joe Fresh etc, all have suffered because of not giving importance to the ethical issues that the suppliers from Bangladesh being followed and trading with them.
According to the International Labour Organization, the people of any country are free to choose the type of employment of their choice. Moreover, no one can force them to be involved in any sort of employment in which they don’t want to be engaged. However, in the context of Rana Plaza, there was no such standards and rules to be followed for the betterment of the workers (Alpaslan and Schenck, 2014). The people working in that factory were considered as the bonded labour where people were not being paid well; neither were given with adequate time off from work including holidays and were bound to work for many hours. This was one of the most significant unethical practice being observed, however, never came to the notice of world's famous MNCs who are involved in trading with the factory. This was the reason that the owner of this factory never bothered about working condition and rules and that the employees were forced to be involved in work without giving importance to their choice. Furthermore, Duncan-Datson et al. (2013) suggested that before the collapse of Rana Plaza, the workers showed reluctance to enter in the building after seeing the cracks but they were being threatened and even beaten to make them enter the building. If the MNCs were really trying to follow ethics then the mishap most probably could have been avoided.
Another world famous MNCs which were being associated with the Rana Plaza took no attention initially towards the ethical standards, rules and regulations which were being adopted by the factory. According to Duncan-Daston et al. (2013), before the collapse of the building, ethical standards related to wages, long working hours and many other issues were totally being neglected or never being taken into account and at the same time, no MNC was interested in taking notice of the situation. The collapse of Rana Plaza resulted in a curtain raiser to such companies as it showed that how the employees were being manhandled as well as maltreated to work for minimum nominal benefits. Rana (2013) argued that after the collapse of the garment factory building, the MNCs such as Wal-Mart, Mango, ASDA etc. tried to do some contribution to the Donors Trust Fund of Rana Plaza however, there were many other companies such as Store 21, Cato Fashion, Yes Zee etc. which did not contribute in any manner. According to the views of Alpaslan and Schenck (2014), the different companies that were trading with Rana garment factory had to provide compensation for the remaining family members of the people who lost their lives during the incident as well as the victims of the collapse who faced different sort of injuries. However, it can be considered as the shortcoming from the end of MNCs that they even overlooked the critical condition of the factory where the poor workers were trying to earn their livelihood. Additionally, the employees and workers were also being maltreated and they were also being provided with the lower wages. After the collapse of Rana Plaza, the different MNCs were being able to be aware of the ethical considerations which are their responsibility to follow while trading.
After the incidents, various type of responses was being demonstrated by the different multinational companies. The European Union warned the Bangladeshi government to alter the General System of Preferences if they are not able to follow the international labour standards. An author Morad (2014) suggested that the collapse of Rana Plaza also resulted that almost 150 among the global apparel brands were agreed upon as well as signed an agreement which was based on Fire and Building Safety throughout Bangladesh which may allow the workers to quit their work whenever, they feel that their health is at risk if they have to continue working in the same condition. However, the two Australian companies were not agreed to the agreement and did not sign it which was actually associated with the crucial safety of the workers in Bangladesh. Additionally, it was being observed that Primak made a contribution with a huge amount of 640 thousand dollars to the 580 different people who were actually either the people who got injured and survived after facing the incident or the relatives of those who lost their lives in the incident. It is further suggested by Alpaslan and Schenck (2014) that the global labour group has criticized the international or global retailers as they had not fund enough to stop the crisis that is being faced by the workers in Bangladesh. Despite the different sort of flaws in this process, the MNCs somehow contributed as for the workers who lost their lives, the payments were made based on their age, the number of dependent family members as well as the potential earning. On the other hand, the workers who were being able to be survived after facing injuries received compensation based on their health condition.
One year after the collapse of Rana Plaza, the Bangladeshi government adopted a somehow slow and steady procedure to improve working condition of the workers being involved in the production of garments. One of such actions was taken by the government through the formulation of the safety policy. The government as a reaction to the critical incident of the collapse of Rana Plaza revised the National Tripartite Plan on Fire Safety shortly known as NTPA in order to bring improvement in the working conditions of the garment manufacturing workers. On the other hand, the MNCs signed an Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh during the month of May in 2013 which proved to be the basis of an improvement program for taking measures related to the building safety (Open Democracy, 2015). Thus, the Accord resulted in the establishment of norms for international as well as national level inspectors in order to make independent sort of inspections of more the fifteen hundred factories producing garments.
Furthermore, some North American brands have set another alternative action called an ‘Alliance for Bangladesh Workers' Safety' that also helped in providing regulations in terms of the voluntary type of loans as well as inspections to renovate more than 700 different factories. Another aspect of this action was that the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturer and Exporters Association showed concern regarding the fact that the Accord closed many factories by not providing funds for the purpose of renovation. This, as a result, led towards huge job loss in the garment industry of Bangladesh. Thus, here we can conclude that only formulation of policies without proper implementation strategies may not benefit the workers at all (The Guardian, 2014).
However, the Accord was successful in starting the construction of fire doors, supporting structures, locked gates, fire/emergency stairs, alarms etc. It further suggested that the owner of a particular factory must have to pay the workers for next 6 months by keeping in view of continuous renovation within the premises of the particular factory. On the other hand, the Accord also suggested laws to include the different training programs to be provided to the selected trade leaders in order to make them better representative of their trade unions. Furthermore, this system also planned to provide training on the different types of labour laws; issues associated with the employability; processes of collective bargaining; workplace health and safety related issues so that the workers may be able to fight for their own rights.
Just like changes on the other sides, the collapse of Rana Plaza was also resulted in bringing changes to the labour law in Bangladesh. One of the most positive change could be seen in the section 178 in its subsection (3) of the labor law which suggests that it is mandatory to make successful and compulsory registration of more than 146 labour unions throughout Bangladesh which is relevant to the arguments of Mohammadrezaei, et al. (2012) that the existence of active sort of labour union helps the workers of a particular company to raise their opinions, concerns as well as to provide them with an effective sort of collective bargaining power.
Another implication of the incident can be seen in the form of action taken by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO established Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund with the expectation of collecting more than 40 million dollars for providing a comprehensive sort of compensation to the survivors of the incident. However, it is also a fact that because of the presence of subcontracts with the multinational companies, the majority of the MNCs avoided contributing to the funding and thus, the compensation was not being sufficiently paid to the victims of the incident (The Guardian, 2014).
The operations of garments industry of Bangladesh is actually directly associated with the countries of European Union. According to Mohammadrezaei et al. (2012), an access which may be considered as duty-free offered by the countries of European Union, and the low wage rate of Bangladesh has made Bangladesh the largest provider or exporter of the garment products to the European countries. However, after the incident of the collapse of Rana Plaza, the European Union has declared to stringent the trade-related conditions with Bangladesh for reducing the demands for exports and reduce the unethical pressure on the workers in the garments industry.
Just like all of the other stakeholders, this incident also triggered a sense of urgency to take some action among the consumers on issues associated with the supply chain and thus, the “Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity” was targeted by the government of Bangladesh in order to operate on behalf of the workers working the garment sector (Hossain et al. 2013).
Media played a very strong role in all these activities being observed after the incident especially in assessing the contribution of the different brands for compensation of the victims of Rana Plaza. It was argued that the most of the MNCs took such actions just because of the pressure being faced by the media. Jia (2014) further suggested that the dramatic rise of the different news channels as well as the social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, it has become too much effective to make something viral even in minutes. The different groups of activists took help of the social networking sites in order to convey information to the general public about their protests against the big companies as well as the policies of the government.
The collapse of this building also sends the alarm to the Western brands as well as the different visuals of the collapsed building with the injured and killed victims of the incident created strong emotional effects on the consumers from the Western countries. People took the opportunity to post pictures of the incident on Facebook even on the home page of big brands such as Joe Fresh, Benetton and Mango. These actions, as a result, harmed the reputation of such brands thus, the sales were also declined because of the awareness being raised among the consumers who were unaware of the working conditions of the workers before the incident (Soltani and Maupetit, 2013). Thus, Jia (2014) added here that the media played a very important role adding fuel to the fire.
One of the areas of growing interest in this can be observed in the form of a shift in the labour regulations from the national level to the global level (Meardi and Marginson, 2014). In this system, the production may be distributed throughout the global supply chains (Gereffi, et al, 2005). Furthermore, the global supply chains may pose a specific challenge to the traditional sort of regulations related to labour which are mostly in favour of avoiding labour rules (Fransen, 2011).
The different national and global union federations or GUFs are playing a very significant role in an articulation of the demand and progress in the form of international rules and regulations like ILO's regulatory activities known as the Tripartite regulations to which they are considered as a party (Jarman, 2012). As the established sort of actors, labor unions may also hold access to the state and decision-making at the intergovernmental level like an observer and that can also articulate the demand and impact the policy-making at global level such as the clauses of the global trade agreement (Croucher and Cotton, 2009; Cotton and Gumbrell-McCormick, 2013). All of these forces somehow became active in the context of bringing improvement to the working conditions of the workers especially in Bangladesh which was being neglected before the incident.
Conclusion
This report has analyzed the implications of the case of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh which was collapsed in 2013. This incident resulted in killing more than 1100 people as well as caused injuries to more than 2000 workers. The building was factory to produce garments for the world famous MNCs such as Joe Fresh, Wal-Mart etc. Despite the fact that, the building was being used by many MNCs, there was no proper rules and regulations for workers who worked under hazardous situations. They were being treated like bonded labour for a very small amount of money by keeping them under waged. They were even forced to work in the cracked building of Rana Plaza. This incident resulted in too many implications for MNCs, for the consumers as well as most importantly the workers. After the incident, most of the MNCs took some actions, like, some of them contributed in terms of financial help to the families of people who lost their lives and to those who got injured in the incident. However, still few companies did not contribute towards such activities. It also brings implications in terms of changes in labour laws by the Bangladesh government. Furthermore, it also brought about the implications in terms of the awakening general public through media campaigns. The countries of European Union also took some actions and the ILO also formulated some regulations in the context of Bangladesh garment industry. Hence, after this deadliest incident in the history of Asian Garment industry, many things were changed including the laws, rules and regulations regarding workers of Bangladesh garments industry.