Retailers controlled by Canada’s Weston family are moving to ‘compensate’ victims of a deadly building collapse in Bangladesh as reactions to the tragedy goad companies to take greater responsibility for far-flung global supply chains, reports Glob and Mail.
Toronto-based grocer Loblaw, which makes the high-profile Joe Fresh fashion line, and British-based Primark said on Monday they would spend an unspecified amount to help those tied to the 380 or more who lost their lives, many of them employed in factories making garments for export. Primark also called on other merchants to come forward and offer compensation.
The Retail Council of Canada held an urgent meeting on Monday with Loblaw, discounter Wal-Mart Canada Corp and other major players to discuss their next steps.
Liana Foxvog, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based International Labour Rights Forum, praised the move by Primark and Loblaw to offer compensation, noting that other Western retailers involved in similar incidents in the past in Bangladeshi factories have only made such moves after pressure from activists.
‘Now we’re waiting for the US brands and all the other European brands to follow suit,’ she said.
Meanwhile, Forbes says that it remains to be seen what exactly Joe Fresh will accomplish in Bangladesh.
The company faces rampant corruption at every level of government, trickling down to the garment factories, policed by thugs who threaten workers with docked wages if they don’t work brutal 13- or 14-hour shifts, often seven days a week, a Forbes report said.
‘How did they not know these factories were illegally made, with three extra floors shoddily added?’ asked Charles Kernaghan, director at the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.
‘Nobody going into Bangladesh is naive. The only reason they’re there is so they can pay almost nothing. It was a death trap.’
Kernaghan added that Joe Fresh and other retailers with links to the Bangladesh tragedy will face ‘enormous pressure’ to overhaul their supply chains and investigate the rights of workers in the Third World factories they employ to manufacture their clothes on the cheap.
The deadly collapse has renewed concerns about the conditions of workers who make clothing for some of the biggest brands in the world.
-With New Age input
