Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, will conduct its own safety inspections at its Bangladesh factories instead of joining an accord with other retailers.
More than 1,100 people died when the nine-storey Rana Plaza building in
Bangladesh collapsed on 24 April.Labour groups have since drawn up an industry-wide pact to improve fire and building safety conditions. But Walmart, along with several other US retailers, said it would not participate.
Walmart plans to perform its own inspections at its 279 factories, saying that will yield faster results.
The company also said every worker would be provided with fire safety training.
More than a dozen European companies, including discount clothing company Primark and UK supermarket chain Tesco, have signed up to the legally binding “Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh”.
European non-governmental organisations IndustriALL and UNI Global Union, which had drafted the agreement, had set a deadline of 15 May.
Global response
The response comes after Western companies were criticised for not doing enough to protect low-paid workers following several safety incidents in Bangladesh.
This includes a fatal factory fire last November at the Tazreen Fashions plant, which supplied goods for Walmart and other Western retailers.
The incident, which killed more than 110 people and triggered large protests in the capital Dhaka, led Walmart to cut ties with the supplier and initiate its own inspections.
The International Labour Organization, meanwhile, has welcomed the new accord, saying in a statement that it “stands ready to provide appropriate support to this initiative in response to the requests of the signatory parties, to help ensure effective implementation and coordination with national organizations”, noting the “critical need to reform the country’s labour law to bring it in line with international norms”.
Bangladesh’s government has also moved to reassure Western buyers, given garments make up 80% of the country’s exports. BBC Online
On Monday, they announced steps aimed at improving conditions, such as raising the minimum wage for workers in the industry and making it easier for them to form unions.
Bangladesh’s minimum wage for garment workers is currently $38 (£25) a month, the lowest in the world.
Meanwhile, The head of Swedish clothing retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), Karl-Johan Persson, urged Bangladesh on Wednesday to allow raises to its minimum wage, the Financial Times said, amid worker unrest following the world’s worst single garment industry disaster, which killed more than 1,100 people.
“I want the salaries to be revised yearly, as in most other countries. So we’re definitely willing to pay more but we have to find a good, sustainable way for the workers and for the country as well,” Persson told the FT in an interview.
The chief executive of the world’s second biggest clothing retailer added: “I would happily sit around a table and talk to all the other big buyers from Bangladesh.”
The minimum wage in Bangladesh has remained below $40 per month since 2010, while inflation has been running at more than 8.0 percent per year, and H&M said in its annual report in March that it had been working on the minimum wage issue with officials in Dhaka for several years. On Sunday, the government said it had set up a commission to raise the level.
H&M was one of the clothing giants which said on Monday that it would sign up to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety following the disaster at a garment factory that supplied Western retailers.
The agreement, which is due to be formally signed in the coming days, commits retailers to paying for factory repairs and ensuring an efficient system for building and fire safety inspection.
Bangladesh is the world’s second biggest exporter of clothing. Conditions in the country have come under intense scrutiny since a nine-storey building outside the capital collapsed on April 24, killing 1,127 people, most of them garment workers.
-with The Independent input
