Rana Plaza industrial disaster, Bangladesh (2013)

JERÓNIMO MONTERO BRESSÁN

Geography in the 21st Century: Defining moments that shaped society

Bloomsbury Academic

Año: 2024; p. 1 - 12

On April 24, 2013, an eight-story building near Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed,leading to the worst industrial massacre in history. About 5,000 garmentworkers were sewing and assembling clothes for foreign markets when itcollapsed, killing 1,134 workers and injuring over 2,500. The building wascalled Rana Plaza and was located in Savar, 12 miles north of Dhaka. The daybefore the collapse, cracks had appeared in the walls and workers had been senthome. However, on April 24 they were phoned by their bosses and forced to go towork under threats of being fired or not being paid as orders from Westernbrands and retailers had to be finished. Bangladesh has been the world’s fastest-growing destination for garmentproduction, receiving orders by western brands and retailers, in the last fifteenyears. Since 2013 it has been the largest world exporter of clothing afterChina. The country of Bangladesh has the highest population density in theworld, and it provides large-scale production capacities with some of thelowest worker salaries across Asia at 8,000 takas (around US$93) a month as of April2022. The country is largely dependent on the clothing industry, which accountsfor over 80 percent of its total exports. Consequently, local garmentmanufacturers have become very powerful political actors in the country’s mainpolitical parties. The combination between rife market demand and lack of politicalcontrol has led to a situation in which many factories have been set up inrecord times, without proper authorization and often failing to comply tominimum fire, electrical and structural standards. Rana Plaza was in fact thedeadliest in a number of other factory incidents in the country since 2005.The Rana Plaza collapse is linked to the worldwide search for cheaplabor by Western clothing brands and retailers. Since the late 1970s, a seriesof economic and political conditions, especially rising labor costs andworkers’ organization, led to the massive relocation of clothing manufacturing outof the US, Germany, Japan and other industrialized countries, to poorercountries. Technological advances, especially in the communications and in theshipping and other transport industries facilitated the moving of products and theorganization of production and supply chains across the world. In the clothingindustry, it is usual to see ‘Made in China’ fabrics being sent to Bangladeshwhere they are cut, stitched together, and sewn, dyed, packed and sent to marketsaround the world. All of this happens under the technical specifications andthe strict control of Western brands and retailers and/or their Asianintermediaries. Since the 1970s the main clothing firms have moved their core businessesaway from production to marketing, branding and commercialization, thus takingadvantage of Neoliberal globalization in subcontracting production domesticallyand abroad, be it in their macro-regional peripheries (e.g., Mexico and DominicanRepublic for US companies, or Morocco, Turkey and Poland for European ones) or todistant places like China and South Korea. Growing labor and energy costs havemore recently led apparel multinational corporations to search for cheaperlabor costs in countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Ethiopia.The boom in exports in these countries in such a short period of time resultedin production that often takes place in unsafe factories where wages are wellbelow living wages.Geography thus matters in better understanding the Rana Plaza disaster. Theconsolidation of global supply chains and production networks has enabledstrong connections between distant places, with major impacts on thedevelopment of cities, regions and countries as well as the lives of workers. Thesearch for cheap labor triggered countries and workers across the Global South toengage in competition for the jobs linked to multinational brands. The spatialreorganization of the industry enabled multinationals the ability toincorporate workers in almost any corner of the world, giving them power overthe wages of workers. While the salaries for workers in garment factories like Rana Plaza havebeen deemed comparatively high, such pro-globalization arguments in favor of foreigninvestments by Western companies in countries like Bangladesh have lostlegitimacy as protests across Asia, along with several fires in factories(especially in Bangladesh) and the renowned case of worker suicides in China infactories run by Foxconn – the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics – haveshown that working conditions and salaries are unacceptable. The factorycollapse at Rana Plaza signaled a challenge to the voluntary corporate socialresponsibility schemes of Western companies. Changes after the Rana Plaza disaster have notbeen significant. While thousands of factory inspections have taken place,leading to safer factories, workers continue to face violence when they protest,and in some instances their working conditions have gotten worse as clothingcompanies face increasing competition, slow market demand, and squeezingprofits. Eight years on from the worst industrial disaster in history, sweatshopsare still a common feature of the global clothing industry.