Obviously, every sane person was horrified to hear news last week of a factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh. Tragically, more than 400 people were killed after a building, showing visual signs of stress, collapsed with garment workers still inside.
Apparently, the garment workers were labouring inside the factory, which was located in Savar, outside the capital city of Dakar. Reports have stated onlookers noticed the building, which housed garment-making facilities, was cracking open. Officials rushed to evacuate the building, and while some occupants fled, others were ordered to remain inside and stay at their jobs.
Reports state the building manager or owner ordered workers to stay; he subsequently fled after the disaster, but has since been captured. Bangladeshi officials noted the building itself was eight storeys high, but was only approved to be five storeys high.
Some of the garments were destined to be sold by Canadian retailers, and almost immediately special interest groups in this country, shockingly naÄŹve, devoid of logic and divorced from reality, blamed Ottawa for the collapse.
Canadian Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti said that dastardly Canadian government turns a blind eye to safety violations in Bangladesh. The federal government is “thus complicit in the recent tragic event,” Georgetti was quoted by the Canadian Press as saying.
Is the Canadian government actually responsible for the laws, regulations, inspections and violations of other nations?
Absolutely not.
But there’s an old saying: “persuasion is better than force.” Is there a way for those in Canada and other developed nations who are concerned about incidents like the Bangladesh collapse to influence in a more subtle fashion?
Yes.
They can speak with their pocketbooks. Retailers themselves have a responsibility to ensure the products they bring into this country are manufactured in a responsible manner, and that workers employed in the industry are treated in a fair and ethical fashion. These requirements could easily be included in contractual negotiations.
Also, consumers themselves can influence Canadian retail sectors with their shopping habits. When it’s brought to their attention that, for example, a foreign supplier is behaving in an unethical manner, any products related to that supplier could be boycotted.
Safety and responsibility should be simply good business choices.
But laying a heavy-handed, “You are all to blame for this mess” approach is wrong. Fundamentally, legitimate nations have their own cultural and economic factors governing how their societies function. Canada has no right or responsibility when it comes to criticizing the internal workings of any law-abiding, legitimate regime.
While the CLC’s true motivation at criticizing one of the major garment-producing nations in the world along with its own government can only be guessed at, the aftermath of the Bangladesh collapse means one thing: Bangladesh, and no other nation, must look long and hard at the way its citizens are treated in the garment industry.
