garment industry

The Human Cost of Unsafe Working Conditions
The legacy of worker deaths in the garment industry in Bangladesh is a long one. For the last ten years, hundreds
of workers have died due to negligence on the part of the factory operators. In April 2005, the Spectrum garment
factory collapsed after additional floors were illegally added to the factory building and the supports buckled
because it could no longer hold the additional weight. Located 30 kilometers outside of Dhaka, the collapsed
factory resulted in the death of 64 people with another 80 workers being injured (CBC News, 2013).In February
2006, 54 garment workers died and over 150 were injured in a fire in a textile factory in Chittagong. The factory,
which had approximately 1,000 workers inside when the fire started, had only one main exit for the workers to
move through a narrow stairway in order to escape. A majority of the victims were women who died either from
burns or suffocation. Many workers jumped out the windows in the factory in order to escape the fire
(Anonymous, 2006). On December 3, 2010, an explosion of a boiler in a Eurotex garment factory in Dhaka
resulted in an exit stampede which killed 2 workers. (CBC News, 2013). Less than two weeks later, on December
14, 2010, a garment factory north of Dhaka caught fired and killed at least 24 people. Since the fire had started on
the ninth floor, management was hoping to re-open the first eight floors since they did not appear to be damaged
(Manik and Bajaj, 2010). On November 24, 2012, 112 people died in the Tazreen Fashion factory fire. The
factory produces clothes for retailers including Walmart and Sears.
Walmart and Sears claimed they were not aware that their clothing was being manufactured in the factory. It was
alleged that the factory owner and nine middle managers/supervisors at the factory did not allow the employees to
initially evacuate the building after the fire alarm sounded. The fire had started in an area of the factory where
flammable fabric and yarn were illegally stored. The storage area did not have fireproofed walls, which are a
requirement of Bangladeshi law. In addition, there were no sprinkler systems in the factory, nor was there an
outdoor fire escape. Furthermore, the managers had closed the collapsible gate which blocked the workers from
using the staircases in order to escape and it appeared that none of the fire extinguishers had be used during the
fire (Manik and Yardley, 2012). On January 27, 2013, seven workers were killed from a fire causing smoke
inhalation at the Smart Export garment factory located in a suburb of Dhaka. Workers who were able to escape
claimed that the emergency exit was locked and they had to break windows in order to leave the building. By the
time the exit had been unlocked, the factory floor was covered with smoke. A senior official from the fire service
stated that he did not see any firefighting equipment at the factory which was located on the second floor of a two
story building. In addition, there was no evidence that the factory had received a fire license so it should not have
been able to receive the factory license needed to operate (Al-Mahmood and Bjork, 2013).