NYT: As Firms Line Up on Factories, Wal-Mart Plans Solo Effort

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/business/six-retailers-join-bangladesh-factory-pact.html?ref=stevengreenhouse&_r=0

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: May 14, 2013

As American retailers face mounting pressure to join a landmark plan to improve factory safety in Bangladesh, newly found documents indicate that apparel had been produced for Wal-Mart at one of the operations in the factory building that collapsed last month, killing more than 1,100 workers.

The Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity has provided The New York Times with photos of several documents not disputed by Wal-Mart that were recovered in the building’s rubble, showing that a Wal-Mart contractor from Canada had produced jeans last year at the Ether Tex factory, which had been situated on the fifth floor of the collapsed Rana Plaza building.


Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity
Photo of a production order for jeans to be sold at Walmart that the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity said it found in the rubble after the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh.


While both the contractor and Wal-Mart denied any knowledge of the production orders there, Wal-Mart on Tuesday announced that it would put in place new safety measures at the factories it was using in Bangladesh.

Saying it was unwilling to sign on to the broad safety plan embraced by more than a dozen European companies this week, Wal-Mart said its factory monitors would “conduct in-depth safety inspections at 100 percent” of the 279 factories it uses in Bangladesh and publicize the results on its Web site.


FULL story at link.

[formercia]

1. Crap Jeans too.

Fucking Wally World.

[mother earth]

2. Of course they aren't willing to "sign on" to broad safety measures, what would be next? Pesky

labor laws? No, no, better to keep those peasants in check, all hail the job creators, the bastions of trickle down aka peeing on the masses.

Wal-Mart is criminal to not adopt the broad safety measures, it's a pittance of what truly needs to happen globally. The USA shouldn't become third world, THE THIRD WORLDERS need to adopt mandatory safety and labor laws. We should ALL demand these things as human rights.

That's what this is a human rights issue.

SHAME ON WAL-MART & their ilk.

[mother earth]

3. 14 more than Wal-Mart, add Macy's JCPenney, Kohl's, Sears/Kmart, Nordstrom's, & more, huge USA FAIL!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/17/bangladesh-factory-safety-accord_n_3286430.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular#slide=more298005

(Follow link for full article, snippet follows.)

Major European retailers -- for example, Marks & Spencer and Carrefour -- have joined the agreement. Others who've signed on include companies recently involved with factory disasters in Bangladesh, such as Swedish retailer H&M and Italian fashion house Benetton. A 2010 factory fire at a facility that made cardigans for H&M killed 21 people, and Bennetton had a supplier in the Rana Plaza factory that collapsed last month, killing more than 1,100 people.

PVH, parent to Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, signed the accord, along with Abercrombie & Fitch, which agreed just hours before the deadline. That leaves plenty of U.S. retailers absent from the agreement, according to the Worker Rights Consortium, an international labor monitoring group. However, some retailers, like Walmart, claim they are working on separate initiatives to improve conditions and workplace safety in Bangladesh.

[mother earth]

4. It's worst than I thought, here's a real eye opener.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/16/u-s-retailers-arent-signing-a-new-safety-accord-for-bangladesh-heres-why/

Nearly all of the major U.S. clothing chains — including Wal-Mart, Target, Gap Inc., and J.C. Penney — declined to sign on to an international safety pact that would require them to pay for inspections and upgrades in Bangladeshi garment factories. The retailers worried that the agreement would give labor groups and others the ability to sue them in U.S. courts.