[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 62 (Monday, May 6, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H2407-H2408]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               BANGLADESH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. George Miller) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, over the past several 
years, more than a thousand workers have died from working in 
Bangladesh's garment industry.
  In the latest tragedy, an eight-story building called Rana Plaza 
collapsed. It housed five garment factories. It has killed more than 
650 workers so far, injured more than a thousand, with still more 
buried in the rubble. This staggering body count occurred just 5 months 
after the Tazreen factory fire that killed at least 112 workers. Forty 
more incidents, including explosions and fires, causing death and 
injury, have taken place since the Tazreen factory fire.
  I met with one of the Tazreen survivors when she visited Washington 
last month. She described the outrageous working conditions leading up 
to the fire. She toiled in a factory with bars on the windows and no 
place to run if a fire broke out. She told me how she jumped from the 
third floor of the burning factory to save her body from the fire so 
her family could recognize her in case of her death, and many of her 
coworkers jumped with her, but did not survive the fall. During our 
meeting, it became clear that it was only a matter of time before the 
next Tazreen would take place.
  Two weeks later, Rana Plaza collapsed.
  Unfortunately, these tragedies in Bangladesh are not isolated, and 
more of these tragedies, undoubtedly, will occur unless the major 
international corporations that keep these dangerous factories open 
decide to change their business practices. Clearly, there is a greater 
role for the U.S. and other governments to play, including the 
Bangladesh Government. However, the primary burden for action now lies 
with the major brands and retailers.
  Let's remember what is at stake here: the lives of thousands of young 
women and mothers trying to scrape together an existence by working 12-
hour shifts for pennies a garment.
  They produce clothing under contract with corporations we all know 
well: Walmart, J. C. Penney, Mango, Benetton, H&M, The Children's 
Place, GAP, and Dress Barn, among others. The clothes these women sew 
in Bangladesh we buy here in America. Unfortunately, these young women 
are caught working in a garment industry that pits supplier against 
supplier and country against country in a calculated race to the 
bottom.
  Often, the margin for these corporations is subsistence wages and the 
needless disregard for the safety of these young women. That is the 
subsidy they receive--low wages and unsafe working conditions for the 
workers who produce these garments. Four million Bangladeshi workers in 
5,000 factories provide clothing to Americans and to European brands 
while earning one of the lowest minimum wages in the world--about $37 a 
month.
  But they shouldn't have to risk their lives for the fashion 
industry's profits.
  These young women are forced to work in factories with overtaxed 
electrical circuits, unenforced building codes, and premises without 
firefighting equipment and adequate exits, and in most cases, the exits 
are chained closed. Americans who are the consumers of these products 
are increasingly worried that the label ``Made in Bangladesh'' actually 
means ``made in a death trap.''
  Why are the managers of these factories forcing these employees to 
work in these deplorable conditions? Because of fear--fear that the 
international brands and the retailers, which we know so well, will 
take their orders elsewhere because of a missed day of production, a 
late delivery, or a minuscule increase in production costs. The brands 
know this. That's why I believe they bear the ultimate responsibility 
for the horrendously unsafe working conditions in Bangladesh and 
elsewhere.
  Corporate leaders in the fashion industry have a moral imperative to 
ensure that these tragedies do not happen again. These retailers and 
brands need to sign on to an enforceable agreement that will improve 
safety, called the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement. It 
was developed by the Bangladeshi trade unions and nongovernmental 
organizations to prevent

[[Page H2408]]

these types of disasters from occurring by addressing the most urgent 
elements:
  One, public reporting of all fire and building audits conducted by 
independent safety experts;
  Two, mandates that factory owners make timely repairs;
  Three, an obligation for the brands to terminate a contract if a 
factory defies its responsibility to keep workers safe;
  Four, the right for workers to refuse unsafe work without 
retribution--to be able to refuse work without being fired, being 
penalized--and union access to factories, among other labor 
protections, so they can see for themselves what are the working 
conditions on any given day.
  To make this work, these commitments must be contained in an 
enforceable contract between the brands and worker representatives 
because it is the workers' lives that are on the line. The holding 
companies of Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Van Heusen, and IZOD have 
signed on to this agreement already, and a major German retailer has 
signed on as well. Others are now meeting in Europe to discuss its 
provisions.
  I applaud these efforts toward corporate responsibility. It is now 
time for the major U.S. corporations, like GAP, Walmart, and J.C. 
Penney, to join them, but we must also take note and call out any 
attempt to water down the key provisions of this agreement. Experts 
believe that this safety agreement will only cost a dime per garment 
over 5 years in order to make a real difference in the safety of these 
factories--a dime for the lives of these workers.
  The major global brands now face a choice. They can attempt to wait 
out the storm and go back to business as usual and continue their race 
to the bottom, or they can chart a different course that includes 
healthy profits, without a human death toll, by signing on to an 
enforceable safety agreement.
  I hope these American and international fashion brands sign on. In 
the meantime, the American consumer and those who follow the fashion 
industry are watching. We want to see which fashion brands will accept 
blood on their labels and which will not.

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