Bangladesh's Factories Are Safer and Greener Since Rana Plaza. But Are They Ethical?
Mostafiz Uddin and Elizabeth L. Cline
This week marks the seventh anniversary of Rana Plaza, a 2013 factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed and injured thousands of garment workers and awakened a global movement to reform the fashion industry. Seven years is a lot of time to make change. That’s a stretch of history that should yield serious transformation, especially considering how many companies and consumers claim to care about the ethics and sustainability of what they wear. Twenty-nineteen was the movement’s breakout year.
In the years since Rana Plaza, Bangladesh has emerged as a banner place to do business; a country where sustainable and safe factories are the norm. In fact, I was supposed to be in Bangladesh this month to document the industry’s grand media relations plan to “rebrand Bangladesh” as an ethical and sustainable manufacturing hub. But coronavirus changed everything. Now, our conscious fashion movement (which I am of course a part of), and our progress are rightly being called into question this week, after major and brands and retailers refused to pay for $3 billion worth of completed orders in their supplier factories in Bangladesh, leaving garment workers without a safety net and in some cases their last month’s pay. Around the world, stories of garment workers protesting for lost wages, going hungry, or manufacturing PPE without their own safety equipment fill the news.
Before coronavirus, the conversation about conscious fashion had a decidedly different timbre. Now, a new reality has emerged, or is it the same old reality? The fact is that, once again, it’s the garment workers who are bearing the brunt of this economic collapse. As we ponder whether we’ve made progress, we also need to realize that the definition of progress changes based on our vantage point. Brands, consumers, and factory owners have arguably made great strides in recent years to shop differently and make commitments to the environment. Factory workers have not shared equally in those gains.
“This will be much, much worse than Rana Plaza,” says Mustafiz Uddin, a prominent Bangladeshi factory owner and the country’s sole factory owner who is publicly critical of the cancellations [others are critical but are communicating off the record]. Here, we talk about the state of the fashion industry, what’s changed in seven years, and where activists, consumers and the clothing industry should go from here. How can we reconcile the sustainability movement and the movement for fair pay and living wages? Right now, we’re failing.
Elizabeth L. Cline: How did things change in Bangladesh after Rana Plaza and prior to coronavirus and brands cancelling orders?
Mustafiz Uddin: After Rana Plaza, Bangladesh became one of the safest countries in all of the world in terms of the production. If you look at the Accord and Alliance reports [the two organizations set up to improve factories following the Rana Plaza collapse], 90% of the factories had been remediated. Remediated means like if the factory had a problem after the Accord and Alliance inspections, then the factory owners had done the work to solve the problem.
“We are spending billions of dollars on remediation, on the Accord, the Alliance, sustainability, the environment. But what changes have these workers seen? Nothing. ”
EC: I was supposed to come to Bangladesh in April to document everything that’s changed for the better. But I’ve also read that the prices paid to factories by brands and retailers for clothing has actually gone down since Rana Plaza. Is that true?
MU: That’s true.
EC: How can that be?
MU: Because buyers already squeeze the price, and then there is overcapacity, so everybody just accepts the orders. There are way too many factories.
EC: Bangladesh also has invested heavily into sustainable production. Last April, the US Green Building Council gave platinum (the highest) ratings to 24 of the country’s factories, the highest concentration anywhere. When did those changes start and what prompted them?
MU: Only after Rana Plaza did that start. [The sustainability investments] just started out of our own sense of responsibility [to the environment]. My factory is one of the most modern for sustainability. We have a water recycling plant, eco equipment. We also follow the climate change action procedure. We have a lot of renewable energy, and green buildings in Bangladesh.
EC: Do you think brands will start paying more for orders moving forward since you’ve made these investments into sustainability?
MU: I think [brands and retailers] will be reducing their prices [paid to factories] more now [because of coronavirus]. They will still come to us and say we need a better price, we need more of a discount. I'm sure the next two years, they will say this. If they have a loss in the first quarter of the year, they try to make up that money in the second quarter of the year.
EC: Let's talk about the buyer cancellations, where brands refused to pay for completed goods. I do feel like there's still some consumers in the West who don't understand why that is such a problem.
MU: Consumers are thinking that we are asking buyers for future orders. So whenever I am posting about [the cancellations], I get messages saying buyers are in trouble, people are not in the shops, people aren't going out of their homes. How can you ask them for more orders? We are not asking them to take responsibility for next three months. What we are asking them is to take responsibility for what we already produced for them.
The second thing is that some brands are getting government bailouts. Like one of my buyers, Arcadia group [which is owned by billionaire Philip Green and is the parent company that owns Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge], he's not paying my money for cancelled orders, but he's getting money from his government. His retail workers are getting 80% salary [the UK government is paying 80% of the salaries of workers furloughed due to the pandemic, but this isn’t the case in all countries]. His rent is free [the UK government has put in place a rent freeze for retailers, but this isn’t the case in all countries]. Then why is he still not paying the money? I really don't understand this one. We are not asking any charity from them. We just want them to keep the commitment for what they asked us to produce.
“We are not asking any charity from [brands]. We just want them to keep the commitment for what they asked us to produce.”
EC: Do you think that the #PayUp campaign, which is a coalition of labor groups and activists who are calling out brands who aren’t paying for completed work, is helping?
MU: Of course it is helping. Because of the campaign only, we are getting a lot of money.
EC: What else can consumers do to help?
Consumers must not only just buy green, sustainable, and environment-friendly garments, they should also understand the people behind the garments who made it. Don’t just think about climate action change and about less water. The consumers need to understand that the poor people who are producing their garments, they should be as equally important as the environment. Because sustainability means people, planet, and profit. Sustainability doesn't only mean the planet.
And consumers need to believe in their own power. They have to understand what they can do. By saying that they cannot do anything, I think they are just escaping their responsibility. They should use their power and say, no to these unethical brands who are not paying their workers.
“By saying that they cannot do anything, I think [consumers] are just escaping their responsibility. They should use their power and say no to these unethical brands who are not paying their workers. ”
EC: What needs to change on a structural level to make the fashion industry ethical after coronavirus?
MU: [Uddin says that the financial instruments and contracts arranged between buyers and factories should be changed]. We should have a body to monitor these buyers and their activities, and whether they are paying ethically or not. Like the Accord and Alliance; we need the same thing but for the buyers. There is no regulatory body for the buyers. They need some accountability; at the moment they have no accountability.
EC: Today is the anniversary of Rana Plaza. What is this day like for you?
MU: To be honest, nothing has changed. I spent the whole day thinking where I was seven years before. What changes have happened? In Rana Plaza, the workers had to suffer. Today, the workers are also suffering, so what changes have we brought? And whose luck had been changed? That is my question to you. We are spending billions of dollars in remediation, on the Accord, the Alliance, sustainability, the environment. But what changes have these workers seen? Nothing. Who is having to worry about the food, about their job, about their children? The worker. Not me and not the buyer and not the consumer. The worker is the most vulnerable in the whole supply chain.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.