13 April 2018

In 2018, Bangladeshi garment workers and their advocates have made inroads. A report released Tuesday by Mark Anner, director of the Center for Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State, says the accord has made more than 2.5 million laborers safer. On the same day, corporate and labor leaders met at the Ford Foundation in New York to review the predicament of Bangladesh’s garment workers today... Although working conditions have improved, wages are stagnant and overtime is the norm, due to fast fashion’s tight production deadlines. Now the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), which helped coordinate the Ford event, is urging apparel companies to show a deeper commitment to protecting workers’ rights. As a result of the accord, 97,000 of 132,000 hazards at factories in Bangladesh have been eliminated, Anner found. An additional 12,000 hazards have reportedly been addressed. They just await review by the accord’s independent group of inspectors... From 2014 to 2018, the number of factories in multipurpose buildings has dropped by 49 percent, from 155 factories to 79 factories... One reason the workers have seen improvements is that they’ve organized into unions... Unions can also train members to identify workplace hazards and report them... The minimum wage increased from $38 to $68 monthly, but it hasn’t risen in tandem with inflation. A 2016 report from the Global Living Wage Coalition suggested that the living wage in the country should be anywhere from $177 to $214 depending on the region.

[T]he accord is set to sunset next month. Last year, however, most of the companies that signed it decided to expand the agreement and its scope to May 2021. About 55 percent of the current accord members have agreed to do so, but some companies have yet to make the commitment. Abercrombie & Fitch is one of them, Foxvog says.