WELCOME TO THE ARCHIVE (1994-2014) OF THE MAQUILA SOLIDARITY NETWORK. For current information on our ongoing work on the living wage, women's labour rights, freedom of association, corporate accountability and Bangladesh fire and safety, please visit our new website, launched in October, 2015: www.maquilasolidarity.org
Six months after the Rana Plaza building collapse, more than 2,500 injured workers and the families of more than 1,100 workers killed in the disaster are still waiting for compensation.
(photo: Laura Gutierrez)
The Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) mourns the loss of life in yet another factory fire in Bangladesh and is calling on the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), Loblaw and all other companies that have been using the factory to provide just compensation to the victims and work through the Accord on Fire and Building Safety program to ensure such tragedies do not happen in the future.
Please sign an online petition to HBC initiated by the campaign network SumOfUs .
The Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) mourns the loss of life in yet another factory fire in Bangladesh and is calling on the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), Loblaw and all other companies that have been using the factory to provide just compensation to the victims and work through the Accord on Fire and Building Safety program to ensure such tragedies do not happen in the future.
Please click here to sign an online petition to HBC initiated by the campaign network SumOfUs .
Thanks to international solidarity from trade union and labour rights organizations around the world, as well as pressure from the U.S Department of Labor, the NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh (NAB) has restored the legal status of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS).
Almost five months after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, only nine of the twenty-nine brands invited to discuss compensation for the victims showed up for a meeting convened by IndustriALL Global Union and chaired by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Walmart, Gap and the corporations that have chosen to join them are unwilling to commit to a program under which they actually have to keep the promises they make to workers and accept financial responsibility for ensuring that their factories are made safe. Instead, they offer a program that mimics the Bangladesh Accord rhetorically, but that omits the features that make an agreement meaningful.
Why have only one Canadian company and five US companies signed the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh so far? Let's tell the companies that have not yet joined the Accord that there is no other credible alternative to this Accord, and inaction is not an option.
It took the worst industrial disaster in the history of Bangladesh to move global apparel companies to take serious action, but some good may come out of the April 24 Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 workers and injured over 1,000 more. More than 50 international retailers and brands have signed the groundbreaking Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh with the Global Unions IndustriALL and UNI.
More than 40 of the world’s leading apparel retailers and brands have committed to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, accounting for more than 1,000 Bangladeshi garment factories. The legally binding program for fire and building safety includes independent inspections, worker-led health and safety committees and union access to factories, commitments to underwrite improvements in dangerous factories and resolve fire safety and structural problems.
The Maquila Solidarity Network welcomes the precedent-setting announcement by Loblaw Companies (owner of the Joe Fresh brand) that it has joined more than a dozen leading international apparel brands and retailers in signing the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh with the Global Unions IndustriALL and UNI and Bangladeshi unions.
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