March 7, 2014

On Feb 24th, in Dhaka, 11 major garment trade unions affiliated with IndustriALL joined with orphans of those killed in the Rana Plaza collapse to form a human chain and call on all brands to pay up!

On February 24, 10 months after the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh killed over 1,100 garment workers and injured over 2,000 more, 70 trade unions and other civil society organizations released a joint statement calling on all companies whose products are made in Bangladesh to Pay Up by contributing to the Donor Trust Fund for the Rana Plaza victims.

Signatories to the joint statement include 22 Canadian organizations, 30 Bangladeshi groups, the Global Unions IndustriALL and UNI, and organizations from across Asia, Europe and in the United States.

To date, only seven companies, including Canada’s Loblaw, have publicly committed financial contributions to the Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund. The amounts of those contributions have not yet been made public. Between now and April 24th, the one-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy, MSN and our counterparts around the world will be campaigning to ensure that the target of $40 million needed by the victims will be reached.

The Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund is the product of long and difficult negotiations that involved the Bangladeshi Ministry of Labour, the national industry associations, international brands, the Global Unions, and national and international non-governmental organizations. Those negotiations resulted in the signing of the “Arrangement,” a comprehensive and independent framework to ensure that the Rana Plaza victims will be compensated fully for medical costs and lost income. The Fund will be overseen by the International Labour Organization (ILO). For more information on the Pay Up campaign click here. To read the joint statement click here