[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 66 (Tuesday, April 24, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2382-S2383]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RANA PLAZA FACTORY COLLAPSE IN BANGLADESH
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, 5 years ago today, the Rana Plaza
building collapsed in Bangladesh, tragically killing more than 1,100
people and injuring thousands more. Rana Plaza, a bustling multistory
commercial building in Dhaka, had housed several ready-made garment
factories, as well as banks and other businesses. When cracks appeared
in the building facade the day prior to its collapse and some stores in
the building accordingly closed up shop, owners of the garment
factories inside Rana Plaza rather told their workers not to worry and
ordered them to return for work the next day, but this was not a time
for business as usual. Thousands of garment workers, the majority of
them enterprising young women achieving new levels of financial
independence for themselves and their families, filed back into the
building the next morning. Thousands of them never made it back out.
The world was rightly stunned and horrified by the images of the
lifeless bodies of hundreds of young women being pulled from the rubble
of this manmade disaster.
The Rana Plaza tragedy could have been avoided, and it demonstrated
that ``business as usual'' in Bangladesh's
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garment industry inordinately rewarded factory owners and managers,
while ignoring factory workers' safety and rights. In the dusty rubble
of the building collapse, it became crystal clear that the Bangladeshi
Government, factory owners and managers, and the global apparel brands
all had a grave responsibility to do more, and quickly, to secure the
labor rights of Bangladeshi workers. A simple fact remains, 5 years
later: Had the Rana Plaza workers been afforded the ability to organize
and protect their interests, the tragedy never would have happened.
With collective strength and action, they could have stood up to
employers to demand basic rights, and they could have refused to be
ordered back into the building without appropriate safety standards.
Five years later, it is also clear that a great deal of work remains to
secure these rights.
As the son of a seamstress who worked in the textile factories of
northern New Jersey, I knew from watching my mother how tiring and
strenuous such work could be, but it does not have to be fatal. The
United States' own Triangle Shirtwaist Fire more than a hundred years
before Rana Plaza, which killed nearly 150 people, galvanized a
necessary workers' movement and subsequent necessary reforms that to
this day help protect labor rights while ensuring that American
companies produce high-quality products. To this day, the AFL-CIO and
other American labor unions work tirelessly to expose the conditions
facing U.S. workers and to organize collective responses and inform
government decisions to promote worker protections. Last year, for
example, an AFL-CIO report revealed an alarming rate of workplace
deaths among Latinos and immigrants to the United States and provided
recommendations to the Department of Labor to address them. Along with
many of my Senate colleagues, I am pushing for our government to adopt
these recommendations. Put simply, the successes of American organized
labor are inextricable from the prosperity of the American economy and
have helped to boost the fortunes of countless American workers.
We know that countries and people are more secure and prosperous when
workers can operate in safety while pursuing economic success. The
proud legacy of the movement for American workers' rights demands that
we advocate for workers at risk around the globe. In the past 5 years
since the Rana Plaza disaster, we have so advocated. We have come
together in unprecedented ways to address the factors driving labor
abuses against workers in Bangladesh.
As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee at the time of the
Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, my first hearing explored the tragedy and
the consequences of a race to the bottom that had increased companies'
profit margins alongside risks to their workers. This was the first
SFRC hearing focused on labor rights in more than a dozen years. I
called another hearing early the following year to review progress in
addressing the labor rights emergency in Bangladesh and conducted
rigorous, bipartisan oversight to ensure that the U.S. Government was
doing all it could to spur change among brands, owners, and Bangladeshi
Government officials. This included a field visit and a November 2013
majority staff report that examined progress in advancing workers'
safety and labor rights since the Rana Plaza disaster and the Tazreen
factory fire. We also worked closely with our colleagues on the
Appropriations Committee to ensure that funds over 3 successive fiscal
years were designated to directly support the development and capacity-
building of truly independent labor unions in Bangladesh that could
safely and effectively advocate for worker rights.
Meanwhile, major American retailers who produced apparel in
Bangladesh, including Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters,
and Fruit of the Loom, joined the effort alongside other global brands,
governments, civil society, and labor unions to grapple with the acute
challenges facing Bangladeshi workers who produced their goods. The
risk of undermined consumer confidence and declines in brand quality
helped spur some corporations to join the Accord on Fire and Building
Safety in Bangladesh--a 5-year, legally binding compact to improve
safety in Bangladeshi ready-made garment factories through reasonable
steps to prevent future disasters. Most importantly, the accord
signatories included labor unions, who were rightly regarded as equal
and critical stakeholders in effecting needed change. Five years later,
accord brands have the opportunity to demonstrate a sustained
commitment to worker rights by signing on to the 2018 accord. This
iteration strengthens and expands the accord to cover freedom of
association. Other groups, such as the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker
Safety, have also helped to further galvanize American and
multinational brands to take greater responsibility for ensuring worker
safety in Bangladesh. In any such efforts, workers and their
representatives must have a truly equal seat at the table, for without
them we cannot make meaningful labor rights reforms.
Governments have a critical role to play as well. Following Rana
Plaza, the United States and other governments pressed Bangladesh to
take meaningful steps to improve respect for labor rights in the
country, including through removing Bangladesh from the generalized
system of preferences and conducting regular reviews of the Bangladeshi
Government's efforts to better adhere to international labor standards.
I believe the U.S. Government can and should do more to ensure that
developing countries with which our country trades are taking necessary
steps to respect labor and human rights. I was proud last year to
introduce the Labor Rights for Development Act with Senator Brown and
the Anti-Trafficking Trade Act with Senator Portman that together would
raise the labor and human rights standards countries must meet to gain
preferential access to the U.S. market.
Five years on, the progress made in Bangladesh is simply not enough.
Factories throughout the country have failed to meet their binding
commitments on workplace safety in the accord and the alliance, risking
the departure of some global retailers to other markets. Independent
unions in Bangladesh remain constrained and subject to increasing
harassment and attacks on labor rights activists, which often occur
with impunity. Amidst a growing climate of political tensions in
Bangladesh, the government too often views independent labor unions as
opposition dissenters to punish, rather than key partners that are
vital to the country's growth and prosperity.
In the 5 years since Rana Plaza, I have continued to believe that
what happens in Bangladesh to improve labor rights and workers' safety
can have a dramatic ripple effect on the global apparel industry and
that real change in working conditions there can help to change
conditions for workers everywhere in a race to the top, but similarly,
if not enough happens in Bangladesh, it sends the message that workers'
lives can still be systematically undervalued and that working to
advance labor rights is an endeavor not worth the risk. That is the
wrong message, and on this anniversary, we must recommit ourselves to
pushing stakeholders in Bangladesh--whether government, brands, or
owners--to continue a path of reform. To do any less harms not just the
workers, but also Bangladesh's economic potential, because no one will
want to wear clothes stained with the blood of workers.
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