The plight of the garment workers of Rana Plaza : Australian responsibility : lots of links for information & aid

24/09 2015
Following the ABCTV Four Corners program last night, I am re-publishing a former post on the fire at Rana Plaza and the garment workers' plight. The original post has quite a collection of links, particularly to labour rights organisations. I have now added a further myriad of links from the ABC Four Corners site. The post has now become quite encyclopaedic with regard to the links. There is no excuse now for being uninformed; for not writing that letter; for not donating or not attending that benefit. Most of all there is no excuse for not encouraging people - in whatever industry - to join their union. Labour rights on the factory floor and humane intervention by governments is what prevents such events as the garment factory fire which has killed, maimed, and defrauded so many. Please act now!

We have all heard about the Bangladesh factory fire of 24 April, 2013 which killed 400 people.  This is nothing new. Bangladesh (and those international retailers who commission goods from factories there) have form.  The picture above is from a 2012 fire which killed 112 people.  For information about the prosecution of the factory owner, please go here.

Michele O'Neil of the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia reports:

Kmart, Target, Big W and Cotton On have all not signed on to the global agreement and those companies have no excuse not to be part of this. This is an effective way of actually dealing with a huge tragedy.

It is clear that only consumer activism, complaints, and demands for retailers to supply clear labelling and listing of supply chains will change anything and keep our retailing corporations honest, active and responsive to human rights. I have linked below contact forms and pages for the three major retailers mentioned on The World Today by Michele O'Neil.

Kmart contact form
BigW contact page
Cotton On contact form

Bangladesh has the lowest minimum wage in the world at $38 month.  Cambodia has the second lowest minimum wage in the world at $66 a month, so reports CorpWatch.  And, Australian consumers, if you are tempted to say that costs of living are cheaper in both countries then that doesn't wash.  These are people whose incomes barely put food in their mouths.  Their incomes don't buy four bedroom houses with bathroom, ensuite and plasma TV.  

The fact is that Australian greed, First World greed, 

is exploiting Third World need.

As Alecia Simmonds says - 

Western consumers must take some responsibility 

for the Bangladesh factory deaths.

One thing you can do that is only a Like away:

Facebook site for

The Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity

I have written to-day to Kelvin Thomson, Parliamentary Secretary for Trade as follows:

Dear Kelvin Thomson,

I write to express my concerns about the recent Bangladesh factory fire which has horrified the world.

It is clear that watchfulness on the part of the consuming public is the only way to keep governments, manufacturers and retailers open and honest about their supply chains and the way workers are treated and how and how much they are paid.

I write to ask you, as Minister for Trade, what the Australian Government - and in particular the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade - is doing to assist in:

1. Making Australian businesses compile supply chain details in relation to the products they sell and supply them on request to their customers.
2. Advising Australian businesses in relation to their responsibilities in relation to human rights when sourcing goods and products from countries with low-wage, non-unionised sweatshops and deathshops.
3. Keeping watch on countries with low-wage, non-unionised sweatshops and deathshops.
4. Keeping watch on governments of countries with low-wage, non-unionised sweatshops and deathshops.
5. Developing Australian Government responses to countries and governments which allow low-wage, non-unionised sweatshops and deathshops.

I plan to follow up to-day by writing to the following retailing organisations:

Australian Retailers Association

Australian National Retailers Association

Council of Small Business Australia

Below, more links are provided to expand your knowledge on this topic.

Firstly, previous posts on The Network on the 2013 Bangladesh factory fire at Rana Plaza:

Will things really change or merely salve western middle-class consciences?

Free trade comes first in Australian politics.

Supply chains enchaining low cost labour. Consumers need to question.

###

Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity

International Labor Rights Forum - Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity

Walmart creates its own Bangladesh factory safety program

Clean Clothes Campaign

Clean Clothes site

Clean Clothes Campaign - Facebook site

Fairwear Australia
Asia Floor Wage
Living Wage as a fundamental right of Cambodian Garment Workers
Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh

ADDED - Tuesday 25 June 2013
Wondering what you can do after last night's 4 Corners program
Lots of stuff below - from writing letters, to giving money, to action
and all based on great information

AID, ADVOCACY, RESOURCES

ActionAid: The Rana Plaza

Benefit for Bangladesh | Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia

The Clean Clothes Campaign | Oxfam UK

Ethical Clothing Australia

Fair Wear

Garment Workers' Appeal | ActionAid Australia | @ActionAid_aus

International Labor Rights Forum

Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights

Oxfam Australia Campaign: Support The Bangladesh Factory Workers

Sweatshops in Bangladesh | War on Want

The Worker Rights Consortium

Australian retailers Rivers, Coles, Target, Kmart linked to Bangladesh factory worker abuse

Fashion victims with Background Information

The above link provides links under the following headings

Email addresses you can write to about their unethical behaviour:

amardirossian@ woolworths.com.au

jcoates@bigw.com.au

q@rivaus.com.au

customerservice@btr.com.au

just group@jjh.com.au

Clothing retailers respond

The following retailers respond: Coles, Forever New, KMart Australia, Big W, Mango Clothing, Cotton On, Benetton, Mango

Reports and Company Audits

How sustainable are Australian retailers' new sourcing strategies? | AMP | Jul 2012 

See Nothing, Know Nothing, Do Nothing | Inst. for Global Labour and Human Rights | May 2012 -

Chinese Sweatshop in Bangladesh | Inst. for Global Labour and Human Rights | 8 Mar 2012 

Bangladesh's ready-made garments landscape | McKinsey & Co | 2011

2011 Sustainability Report | MANGO

Ethical Code of Conduct | Forever New Clothing Pty Ltd

Labour Practices in our global supply chain | Woolworths Limited

The Cotton On Group Vendor Code of Conduct 

World News Coverage

Dreams of Bangladesh garment workers often go unrealized, or become nightmares for families | Star Tribune | Jun 2013 

LISTEN: Fashion's Victims: An Artist's Focus On Garment Workers | NPR | 19 Jun 2013

Bangladesh Factories' Safety Issues Run Deep: Survey | The Irrawaddy | 17 Jun 2013

Most US Retailers Choose Not to Sign Bangladesh Factory Accord | Voice of America | 17 Jun 2013

Uncertain future for Rana Plaza survivors | Dhaka Tribune | 11 Jun 2013

'Rana deserves life term' | The Bangladesh Chronicle | 22 May 2013

The Cost of Making Factories in Bangladesh Safer: Ten Cents | The New Yorker | 16 May 2013

LISTEN: Australian retailers snub Bangladesh factory safety accord | ABC PM | 16 May 2013

Death Mill | Foreign Policy | 9 May 2013 - How the ready-made garment industry captured the Bangladeshi state.

Bangladesh: Tragedy Shows Urgency of Worker Protections | HRW | 25 Apr 2013 

Information on Ethical Garment Manufacturing

Accredited Brands | Ethical Clothing Australia

The Culprits - Who is to Blame? | FairWear Australia

Find Ethical Australian Products | Ethical Clothing Australia 

Retailers | Ethical Clothing Australia

Supply Chains in the Clothing Industry | FairWear Australia

The Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Accord | International Labor Rights Forum | May 2012 

Videos

The full story of the Rana Plaza Factory Disaster

Counting the cost - Bangladesh: the cost of fashion - Al Jazeera

Would you still buy that dress after watching this?

The deadly cost of fashion - New York Times

Made in Bangladesh - the fifth estate

Glenda Jackson's 'tribute' speech for Margaret Thatcher - a marvellous book-end for Gillard's 'misogyny' speech

Looking for a book-end to Julia Gillard's 'Misogyny' speech?  I consider the speech given yesterday by Glenda Jackson in the House of Commons in London as part of the 'tribute' session for Margaret Thatcher to be an appropriate book-end.  Gillard's speech was delivered in response to the words and deeds of a man. Jackson's was delivered in response to the words and deeds of a woman.

Thank you, Glenda Jackson,

for another stunning performance.

Lest we forget

The Story of Broke - a critique

I have written to-day, in the post below,  on this blog about the Story of Broke and, over at Miss Eagle's Garage Sale there is this post and this post.  My blogging friend, Leanne, from across The Ditch who writes at Hazeltree Farm has left a comment here.  Leanne's comment is a brief critique of the Story of Broke and the shortcomings Leanne sees in it.  Annie Leonard's work is brilliant - in its own context.  When applying its concepts outside its home country of the United States of America, we must consider our own individual contexts for the kernel of Annie's stories to have impact internationally.  The Story of Stuff ran well across the globe because so many of us in developed economies are consumers busily consuming.  The Story of Broke is about economics - and everywhere is not identical to the USA.  Certainly, I believe I can confidently say that Australia, Canada and New Zealand are not.  So here are Leanne's points.....

Leanne Daharja Veitch

As much as I liked the Story of Stuff, I couldn't help but see that the Story of Broke was full of holes. It didn't even cover the whole bubble economy that has occurred on a lesser level since the 1940s and spiralled since the 1980s, and completely failed to mention, for example, that US citizens (even ordinary ones) pay much lower rates of tax than pretty much any other developed country.   

It did, accurately, mention the issue of military spending, unbalanced taxation, lobbying etc., but from what I can see, focusing on only half the story isn't really accurate reporting. The ordinary Joes and Janes of the US (just like here and in Australia) also bought up big, went into debt, and supported the bubble we're now seeing crash all over.  

We can't entirely blame the wealthiest 1%, even though that seems like a convenient thing to do. We've all been asleep at the wheel - or most of us have - and now is payment time.  

I think this was just a nice, glossy, "let's blame the system" presentation. It's nice to blame others, and "the system", but at some point we also have to point the finger at ourselves too.

Pulling our weight, corporate welfare and The Story of Broke

What Annie Leonard outlines below is the American experience.  Many of the subsidies the USA provides that Annie mentions in The Story of Broke don't occur in Australia.  There are instances when Australians and Australian business are disadvantaged by American corporate subsidies. That is not to say that there is no corporate welfare in Australia.  There is.  And the corporates don't want to be weaned off their welfare unless there are trade-offs.  

The classic example in Australia is the unedifying public debate over the Resource Super Profits Tax. This led to the downfall of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with Australia's major metalliferous mining union, the Australian Workers Union, leading the charge against him, supporting Julia Gillard, putting her in the job, and then organising discussions with three major, major international miners - Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and XStrata (two Australian and one Swiss) and sorting out a much modified form of the tax. Twiggy Forest and Gina Rinehart have not stopped complaining. And they have extended their complaints to the carbon price as well.

It can be very difficult to touch the corporates.  

They bite back with vengeance and money. 
Let's fight back with the facts.

However, let Annie's work in The Story of Broke inspire us to take a hard and detailed look at the Australian experience and get a handle on how we can bring corporate welfare under the spotlight here.  We all need to pull our weight: rich or poor; big or small business; corporates and individuals; in the cities and in the bush.  It is when we all contribute according to our means that we become a more equitable, just and involved society.  At this point in time, we are in danger of establishing a society where the greedy just get greedier and the gap between rich and poor widens and people who once didn't consider themselves poor suddenly find that they are.

Further reading:

It may be a two-speed economy but we all share the dividends

Keynes, Stiglitz and what is the real waste: not the stimulus package

Thank you, John Maynard Keynes

Picture from here.

Brick bats to those who brought us neo-liberalism,  Greed is Good

and who believe there is no such thing as society.

Milton Friedman being interviewed by Phil Donahue in 1979

It was back in the time of power of Reagan and Thatcher that Milton Friedman reached the height of his influence - socially, politically, economically.  You see, Networkers, you vote every day - with your dollar.  Every dollar spent is a vote cast for what the dollar is spent on.  You can vote for socially and economically constructive political parties at the ballot box but your spending choices can and, more often than not, belie your expressed beliefs.  If you want a world that is not dominated by the politics of self-interested consumption and then spend your dollars on plasma television, nic-nax and jewellery, then guess what...? The powers that be in our society will use for political fodder - your actions, not your words.

There is an old saying that You might forget your actions but your actions don't forget you.  Or, as Ingersoll once said: In nature there is no such thing as punishment or reward - only consequences.

Seventy-four years ago, the seminal work of John Maynard Keynes - The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - was published. This new way of economics came into a world wracked with the economic pain of The Great Depression.  The world was only nineteen years out from the Versailles Treaty which allegedly brought to conclusion The Great War.  Stalin was in power in the USSR.  Hitler was in power in German and preparing for the summer Olympics.  A few weeks after the publication of The General Theory, Hitler made a major "peace" speech.  Few realised that the world was on its way to war once more.

Two factors were paramount in the conclusion of The Great Depression:  The General Theory and the Second World War.

Here in Australia, a not-yet-famous H.C. "Nuggett" Coombs was employed as an economist in the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. In his autobiography, Trial Balance - issues of my working life, Coombs wrote:

The publication in 1936 of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was for me and for many of my generation the most seminal intellectual event of our time.  It was not an easy book.  Many of the ideas on which it was based were then unfamiliar, and the book itself showed evidence of haste in composition so that its structure did not emerge sharply from initial reading.  Nevertheless, it did not fail to generate excitement from first contact, and soon I had become convinced that in the Keynesian analysis lay the key to comprehension of the economic system.

In 1943, with Australia feeling the humiliation of defeat because of the fall of Singapore and Australia's defeated troops there becoming prisoners of war of the Japanese in Changi, the Burma Railway or Japan itself; and Australians having been through the horror and anxiety of the Kokoda campaign, the Department of Post-War Reconstruction was established.

In the midst of the greatest and most horrific drama of war and the threat of invasion, Australia under Curtin established a policy making body under Ben Chifley which spoke of hope and a future for Australians.

Coombs became Director-General of a department bursting with intellectual talent.  The work of this department - in spite of being axed by an incoming Liberal government when Menzies came to power in 1949 - undergirded so much of  Australia's development and economic history in the years to come (see White paper on full employment in Australia).

Its work and its economics - in spite of the drift during the Hawke-Keating years to neo-liberalism - has been intertwined with the Australian Labor Party ever since.

Why this potted history, Networkers?  Because I am a firm Keynesian.  I believe it is the only system of economics that has runs on the board when it really counts.  The inevitable conclusion of Friedman/Hayek economics is seen is its corruption of morals that accounts for what has happened in the subprime mortgage crisis and the world-wide depression it has brought about.  

Australia - even the international experts say - has weathered the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) well, in fact probably best.  And, in this election year of 2010, the Liberals are again decrying Keynesian principles and seeking - in the face of world-wide praise for Australia which Australians usually love - to diminish and dismantle all the good work that has been done - just as Menzies destroyed the Dept of Post-War Reconstruction!

Please look and listen to what Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz has told the world about what happened in Australia.  Tony Abbott and his Liberal cohort keep trumpetting waste.  Check out what Stiglitz says about waste - and the real waste of the Global Financial Crisis.  

Come off it MisteRRabbit!  

Own up to be being a Friedmanite 

and that you detest anything 

remotely resembling Keynesian influence!  

Even when it gets our nation out of trouble 

in a way that no other nation has managed!

And if you want to hear a similar assessment made in plain Australian English - please check out what Ross Gittins has to say today.

So cut the cackle, Tony.  

Labor did what you never-ever would - 

and Australia is on a solid footing for what comes next.

Related reading:

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

John Maynard Keynes

The End of Laissez-Faire: The Economic Consequences of the Peace

The Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, And John Maynard Keynes

Keynes: The Return of the Master

Related articles by Zemanta

• Essay: Hayek: The Back Story (nytimes.com)
• My hero John Maynard Keynes, by Joan Bakewell (guardian.co.uk)
• Milton Friedman got it wrong on profit being the only aim, HSBC chief Green argues (telegraph.co.uk)
• Keynes and Social Democracy Today (3quarksdaily.com)

Sheryle Moon, Tobacco Corporates and the Corridors of Infamy

The death-mongers are at it again.  Nothing must go unchallenged when it comes to cigarette smoking, it seems.  British American Tobacco Australia and Philip Morris Australia are hiding behind the skirts of a woman, namely one Sheryle Moon, in a trumped-up tricked-out organisation called the Alliance of Australian Retailers.  Now, I will bet this brand new organisation is not a registered organisation of employers as other retailers organisations tend to be.  Perhaps this one should be registered as a political party - and is it on the Federal Government's list of lobbyists?

For information on tobacco companies operating in Australia, please go here

Whenever I think of British American Tobacco Australia, I think of the drawn, ill face of Rolah McCabe and the images of her children in all that followed and flowed from that dreadful court case.  

Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider

And when one thinks of corporate creeps, who can forget The Insider starring Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand.  Go to this link (pdf format) to read the May 1996 Vanity Fair article (original VF format with ads, etc) that was the basis for the movie.  Or...better still go to Jeffrey Wigand's own site where you will see that the campaign goes on still.

Lastly, a few words for Sheryle Moon.  You too will enter the Hall of Fame - or should I say the Corridors of Infamy.  You will be remembered as the woman who could not respect Rolah McCabe.  You will be remembered as someone who followed in the footsteps of Clayton Utz and the shredded documents.  You will be seen as someone who respects only money and your own fifteen minutes of whatever and who disrepects life.  You have made your bed, courtesy of a free society, with the purveyors of death and destruction.  You have nailed your colours and the colours of a fake organisation in a civil society to your mast.  What a legacy, Sheryle!

Related Reading:

Merchants of Death: The American Tobacco Industry

Related articles by Zemanta

• Libs distance party from tobacco ads (news.theage.com.au)
• No-frills packaging to prompt all-frills ciggies? (theage.com.au)
• Cosby Textor denies tobacco ad link (news.theage.com.au)
• No butts on tobacco scare campaign (news.theage.com.au)
• Tobacco ads aimed at plain packaging (theage.com.au)

Is the disastrous BP oil spill coming to and end? Is the cap successful?

A group of baby brown pelicans, completely covered in oil, wait in a holding pen to be treated as part of the cleaning process at the Fort Jackson International Bird Rescue Research Center in Buras, Louisiana on June 20, 2010. Members of the Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research team work to clean birds covered in oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. The BP leased Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded on April 20 and sank after burning. Photo by © Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace.

IS IT ALL OVER YET?

WHEN CAN WE CLEAN UP

AND GO HOME

SEEING BP HAS CAPPED THE STUFF?

AUSTRALIA AND OIL RIGS - Are we gung ho, care-less, or unable to say no to the resource buccaneers?

It seems time - or even past time - 

when Australians should become alarmed, very alarmed!

How much do we have to wreck before we stop!

But then when we have wrecked so much, we can't stop -

even if we wished.

It's like being into the loan shark or having a gambling addiction,

the time to say no or change course is in the beginning.

If not done in the beginning, 

the carnage and destruction is guaranteed.

Look at the video above.

Did the USA learn?
So many of those rusting old oil rigs are still in situ.

How and when did the BP Deepwater disaster become inevitable?

My best guess is - Long ago.

Hat Tip to Fire Earth for the photo -

and if you go here you will see more..

including a graphic of large areas of exploration.

The Montara oil spill off the West Australian coast

does not seem to have impacted the Australian consciousness

to any great degree.

And this week we have news that 

the Federal Government has given the green light 

for oil companies to start drilling off 

one of Australia’s most pristine and popular coastlines -

namely the Margaret River region.

Now I am no environmental lawyer or decision-maker,

but it has always seemed to me 

- correct me if I am wrong, Networkers -

that there is no transparent process

at state or national level

whereby true resource assessment including values

is investigated for our land, water, air and sea use.

In short, Margarete River in Western Australia

already carries a huge investment in relation 

to the tourism and wine industries

as well as a specific cultural heritage.

What assessment has been made 

of the impact of oil and gas exploration and development

on these industries,
on that culture.

Hat Tip to Commentary by Val

One can't look for special treatments
by saying  it is all happening

off shore and won't interfere
with what exists on shore.

Not while people are scraping oily sand off the beaches

on America's Gulf Coast

Mmmm..........think about Margaret River.

Think of Shane Gould  in all that muck

and the surfers who love clean waters & clean beaches.

And think that perhaps hearts and spirits

desecrated by greed and hubris

don't think twice about spreading that greed and hubris

into our beautiful environment.

And go here to see what they do it with.