Press play to listen to this article
Voiced by artificial intelligence.
BRUSSELS — When Rana Plaza, a shoddily built eight-story complex on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital, tumbled to the ground on April 24, 2013, more than 1,100 garment workers were killed. Most had stitched clothes bound for Europe for brands like Benetton, Mango and Primark.
A decade on, the European Union is finally drafting rules to force companies to police their supply chains and ensure that the workers making their clothes are doing so safely.
But will they work?
The Rana Plaza disaster sent shockwaves around the world after revelations that workers had warned of cracks in the building the day before the collapse, but were told to go back in or face the sack. Three years later, the plaza’s owner Sohel Rana was one of dozens of people, including factory executives, charged with murder. The trial, which resumed last year, has still not been concluded.
Wild grass has since overgrown the rubble on the site, in an industrial suburb of Dhaka, which is now a dumping ground for household waste. Yet, even as the trial drags on, the event has profoundly shifted the conversation in Bangladesh and further afield about workers’ rights and responsible business.
Bangladesh’s garment industry has seen major improvements, largely thanks to the legally binding International Accord for Health and Safety, said Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garment Workers Federation. Nearly 200 international brands have signed up, covering 1,500 factories in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Labor safety has improved and the number of lethal workplace accidents has fallen.
Crucially, however, not all Bangladeshi factories are covered. Smaller factories, which often subcontract work, still need to be “cleaned up,” he said — leaving millions of workers still trapped in unsafe conditions.
Mandatory due diligence
To address human rights breaches and labor rights on a more global scale, Brussels is working on rules that would compel EU-based businesses to police their global value chains for risks of environmental or human rights violations. The future law bears potentially huge consequences for European businesses, as they could be held liable in cases where they didn’t act responsibly and would have to remedy victims of corporate wrongdoing.
Of the European retailers whose products were found in the rubble, Benetton and Mango did not respond to requests for comment. A Primark spokesperson pointed to financial support the company had given to victims and said that the firm supported the proposed EU-wide due diligence rules.
The European Parliament’s legal affairs committee is set to vote on its due diligence stance this Tuesday, paving the way for the lawmakers to finalize their negotiating position by May. Talks between EU countries and parliamentarians can then start around the summer, leaving just about enough time to pass legislation before the 2024 Parliamentary election and the next European Commission term.
But while the planned law has been broadly welcomed, it is far from flawless.
Amin, for one, said lawmakers have so far failed to heed the voice of workers from countries like Bangladesh.
“They should have included [workers’ voice] in the first step of formulating the law,” he said. “’How will this law be implemented in the Global South and what will be the monitoring system and what will be the role of trade unions in the Global South? How can we be involved in the whole process? How can our workers be involved in the process?’ These are questions that need answering.”
An EU diplomat agreed that Europe needed to “have serious discussions with the Global South.”
“We haven’t been very open to them,” they said. “We have just had online consultations and just assume that everyone knows we have them.”
Preventing tragedy
Still, businesses, lawmakers and non-governmental organizations are hopeful that, despite their shortcomings, the due diligence rules could prevent the repetition of a tragedy on the scale of Rana Plaza.
The obligation to proactively look for risks and to address them could — had they been in force — “have gone a long way [in] preventing this,” said Lara Wolters, the lead European lawmaker on the file.
Aruna Kashyap, associate director in the Economic Justice and Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, said the proposed due diligence law “will help close the gap between companies that take appropriate measures to respect human rights and the environment, and those that either don’t care or don’t want to invest money in appropriate measures recommended by rights holders.”
But not everyone is convinced.
The current rules as the European Commission and EU countries envisage them wouldn’t go nearly far enough to hold companies accountable, said Clean Clothes Campaign advocacy officer Muriel Treibich.
“Ten years ago workers and activists had to dig through rubble to identify brands’ labels and hold them accountable; and yet under the [due diligence rules] opacity will remain as companies will still not be required to disclose who their suppliers are,” she said.
The rules also rely too much on auditing and certification bodies, which are for-profit entities that might not conduct safety checks as diligently as they should, she said.
And for the EU diplomat, the core of the issue isn’t whether or not the EU introduces due diligence laws — a much broader shift in thinking is needed after decades of international businesses relocating production to wherever is cheapest.
“We are asking [for] a really, really big cultural change in their mindset, and it’s not going to happen overnight,” they said. “And I think it would be idealistic to say that ‘here is legislation — now the world is going to change’.”
Camille Gijs contributed reporting.
