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
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.
(Photo: National Garment Workers Federation October, 2013)
Twenty-five human rights, faith, women's, teacher, student, community, overseas development and trade union organizations have signed an Open Letter calling on Canadian retailers and brands to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. To date, only one Canadian company, Loblaw (owner of Joe Fresh), has signed the Accord.
The companies to which the letter has been sent - Canadian Tire (owner of Mark's and Sport Chek), Giant Tiger, Hudson's Bay Company, Sears Canada, Walmart, YM Inc. (owner of Suzy Shier, Stitches, Bluenotes, Urban Planet, Sirens) - have so far refused to sign the legally-binding Accord. Instead, they have joined a voluntary, company-controlled initiative, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety.
Twenty-five human rights, faith, women's, teacher, student, community, overseas development and trade union organizations have signed an Open Letter calling on Canadian retailers and brands to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. To date, only one Canadian company, Loblaw (owner of Joe Fresh), has signed the Accord.
One year after the Tazreen factory fire and seven months after the Rana Plaza disaster the survivors and families of those who died are still waiting for justice.
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)
In this Update, we look at a number of issues concerning wages and compensation - the compensation owed to injured workers and the families of those killed in the Rana Plaza disaster, the starvation wages behind the mass faintings of workers in Cambodia's garment industry, the decline in real wages of garment workers in Central America and globally, and the failure of employers to pay the legal minimum wage in Haiti.
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).
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