US president Barack Obama should revoke Bangladesh’s beneficial trade status if the country doesn’t comply with US benchmarks to improve labour and safety standards, congressman George Miller, who visited garment factories in Bangladesh recently, said on Friday.
Bangladesh participates in a US programme known as the Generalised System of Preferences, which allows zero or reduced tariffs on some products imported from developing countries.
If Bangladesh doesn’t improve worker conditions, ‘we have no choice’ but to revoke the country’s preferred trade status, he said. Miller said he will wait for the results of the Obama administration’s review before considering legislation, reports Bloomberg.
Concerns over labour standards had prompted the US to consider taking steps to raise tariffs on some Bangladeshi goods even before a garment factory collapsed in the Asian nation on April 24, killing more than 1,000 people.
US officials ‘should now use their leverage to get those changes and get those changes right away,’ said Miller, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which oversees labour issues.
In a January 8 notice in the Federal Register, the Office of the US Trade Representative said that ‘the lack of progress by the government of Bangladesh in addressing worker rights issues in the country warrants consideration of possible withdrawal, suspension or limitation Bangladesh’s trade benefits.’
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on labour conditions in Bangladesh on June 6.
Miller said Bangladesh should be given a few months to comply with benchmarks to improve labour conditions.
Miller also slated US clothing brands that had declined to sign on to a legally binding safety agreement for the country’s factories, says a Huffington Post report.
‘I’ve seen what this industry has driven, the abuses visited upon these workers all over the world,’ Miller told reporters. ‘If Walmart and Gap want to stand alongside collapsing factories and burning factories and women jumping out of buildings, I guess that’s their choice. But I don’t think they should be allowed to do business in Bangladesh.’
With US companies apparently worried about legal liabilities in the accord, Walmart and Gap jointly announced Thursday that they would be developing their own independent safety plan for factories in Bangladesh. The companies said they will spend the coming 30 days collaborating with other companies and trade groups to develop ‘a single, unified action plan’ to address the root causes of the workplace disasters that have drawn worldwide attention.
Miller, however, argued that non-binding self-enforcement by US firms has done little to curtail a string of factory catastrophes in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
‘They’re off on their own again,’ Miller said. ‘What good would this agreement be if it wasn’t binding?’ Miller added of the fire and safety agreement. ‘If it’s not enforceable, not binding, then it’s just what we have today: We have statements.’
Walmart spokesman Kevin Gardner said in response that the company has taken ‘a number of actions that meet or exceed other factory safety proposals.’
Bill Chandler, Gap’s vice-president of global corporate affairs, said in a statement Friday that the company hopes the programme it develops with Walmart and others will bring ‘long-lasting change for the garment industry in Bangladesh.’
-With New Age input
