"The same individuals who own the garment factories also hold positions in the parliament and cabinet. There is no representative of the workers in the parliament. The rulers are exploiting us."
Five years ago, he multistory Rana Plaza building, which housed garment factories outside Dhaka in Bangladesh, pancaked from structural defects that had been identified the day before. 1,134 garment workers were killed and thousands more injured in Bangladesh.
A new report goes beyond the sanitized inspection regimes to hear from the workers themselves.
Tula Connell draws insights from the award winning Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert (2014) to understand the events at Rana Plaza and the role of cotton empire today. She also updates us on the efforts of workers to gain rights, and what is blocking it..the empire of cotton.
Two-years of campaigning, with over one million people participating, has succeeded in securing $30 million in compensation for the garment worker victims of the Rana Plaza building collapse.
The campaign for the Bangladesh Safety Accord, coordinated by United Students Against Sweatshops, that included two Bangladeshi worker tours, six sit-ins and countless direct actions across the country, 23 universities, including Penn State, UW-Madison, and NYU, have required their brands to sign the Accord, and 17 college-logo brands, including Adidas and Fruit of the Loom, have signed the agreement since September.
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