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Article

7 Dec 2012

Author:
Declan Walsh & Steven Greenhouse, New York Times

The human Price: Certified Safe, a Factory in Karachi Still Quickly Burned [Pakistan]

…[F]or Arshad and Shahid Bhaila, the industrialist brothers whose factory burned to the ground in September, killing at least 262 workers, there are some comforts…As Category B prisoners…Despite survivors’ accounts of locked emergency exits and barred windows that prevented workers from leaping to safety, the Bhailas’ lawyer says their SA8000 certificate, issued [by] Social Accountability International…proves they were running a model business…But after the Karachi fire and the more recent factory inferno in Bangladesh that killed 112 people, that contention raises a crucial question: Does industry-backed “social auditing,” which purports to safeguard the lives and working conditions of some of the world’s poorest workers, really work?