Major US retailers, including Gap Inc, declined to endorse an accord on Bangladesh building and fire safety backed by Europe’s two biggest fashion chains H&M and Inditex, a trans-Atlantic divide that may dilute garment industry reform efforts, reports Reuters.
On Monday, clothiers such as H&M, Primark, Inditex and C&A put their names on a five-year pledge that requires them to conduct safety inspections, be more transparent about work conditions and promise to pay for regular repairs and maintenance at Bangladeshi factories that supply them with garments, says CBC News.
Designers such as Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein have also joined the movement, which is being spearheaded by international labour lobby group IndustriALL Global Union.
The deadline to join the agreement has been set on May 15 (today), but as of late Monday US time, the only well-known US company to announce it had signed on was PVH, which owns brands including Calvin Klein.
Gap said it was ready to join ‘today’ but first wanted a change in the way disputes are resolved in the courts.
‘With this single change, this global, historic agreement can move forward with a group of all retailers, not just those based in Europe,’ Eva Sage-Gavin, an executive in Gap’s global human resources and corporate affairs department, said in a statement.
Walmart did not say whether it planned to sign the accord. But on Monday it released an unusually blunt and detailed public statement, asking the government to halt production at Stitch Tone Apparels in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and to inspect Nassa Group’s Liz Apparels Ltd factory complex in Dhaka.
Meanwhile, Steve Hoch, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has said that the cost of doing nothing could be severe for retailers.
‘Most brands are smart enough to embrace the issue at hand and signal to the consumers they’re doing something about it,’ Hoch said in a May 9 phone interview with Bloomberg. ‘If it does tarnish the brand, it’s going to really cost them in the long run.’
An Inditex spokesman told AFP the safety agreement would be formally signed at a future date to be set by IndustriALL.
‘IndustriALL will publish the details of the agreement in the days to come,’ the Inditex statement said.
-With New Age input
