Last month 112 garment factory workers died in a fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh. An investigation showed that huge piles of cloth and yarn had been stored on the floor around the workers in violation of Bang-ladesh law and common sense. Numerous other violations were cited, including orders to the women by supervisors to keep working after a fire alarm had sounded.
Perhaps a women’s blouse or men’s shirt an Iolan will give as a Christmas present this year came from that plant, or from one of the 4,500 other garment plants that hire more than 4 million workers there, many of whom are young women who are paid $37 a month for their hours of grinding labor.
It is up to Bangladesh to remedy the situation. Only local officials can write the regulations and do the inspections required.
Those who buy the clothing also have a responsibility, however. Because the labor is so cheap, the clothing can be sold at rock bottom prices and still produce big profits. Much of it is purchased by Walmart, Target, Sears and other U.S. mass merchandisers.
Because it is the right thing to do, U.S. stores should do their own inspecting and stop buying from plants that exploit their workers so cruelly and subject them to such inexcusable risks. If such moral action results in higher prices to U.S. consumers, so be it. Americans should be willing to pay enough for the merchandise they buy so that the plant owners in whatever country can pay decent wages, offer reasonable benefits and operate safe plants.
The fact is, of course, that the manufacture of clothing has moved from the U.S. to low-wage nations. H. L. Miller and Son, one of Iola’s oldest and most successful industries, was the victim of that part of globalization.
It is probably true that those jobs are lost forever to Iola and the U.S. But that doesn’t relieve U.S. merchandisers from the responsibility to take action on the behalf of workers in countries such as Bangladesh. It is obvious that those countries are not taking care of their own as they should. The rich world should make up for that grievous shortcoming.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
