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7.3 Case 3 – The Global Garment Trade 7.3.1 Background

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George works for a US‐based corporation that owns a half‐dozen major clothing brands sourcing from many parts of the world, including South Asia. The company's suppliers include factories in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. All three countries are notorious for unsafe working conditions, including fatal factory fires and collapses of high‐rise buildings converted from commercial to industrial use. His company has a CSR program and relies on third‐party monitors to determine compliance with the company's program. George is concerned about the effectiveness of this approach since recent (2012–2013) industrial disasters – the Ali Enterprise factory fire in Pakistan (289 dead), the Tazreen Fashion factory fire in Bangladesh (112 dead), and the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh (1134 dead) – all occurred in factories that had been repeatedly audited by brands and their third‐party monitors prior to the disasters.

George occasionally conducts his own audits at the company's supplier factories and frequently finds significant health and safety hazards as well as violations of national labor laws. Factory management often acknowledge the uncorrected hazards but contend they lack the resources to address the issues because of the sourcing practices of his company. These policies continuously reduce the per‐unit price paid to the factory for clothing in every new contract, frequently generate last‐minute changes in spite of tight delivery deadlines, and provide only short‐term contracts that do not allow the certainty of future work needed for the factory to invest in physical plant upgrades and development of plant‐level health and safety programs.

Patty's Industrial Hygiene, Hazard Recognition

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