How Walmart and Other Huge Companies Support Horrific Conditions That Kill Workers

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http://www.alternet.org/labor/how-walmart-and-other-huge-companies-support-horrific-conditions-kill-workers


A worker at Tazreen Fashions displays a garment made there bearing Walmart's Faded Glory label.
Photo Credit: International Labor Rights Forum

A day after Walmart workers and their allies staged protests and rallies outside the company’s stores across the U.S., a fire erupted in a factory across the globe in Bangladesh, killing 112 workers who were trapped inside, where they sewed jeans and other apparel for the retail giant’s Faded Glory brand. Another 200 were injured in the fire. On Monday, the streets of Dhaka, the capital city, were filled with thousands of garment workers, who demanded justice.

The main doors of the factory were reportedly padlocked , according to the Christian Science Monitor , and many workers jumped to their deaths rather than be burned alive, according to the Associated Press, which also reported survivors saying that they were sent back to their sewing machines after the fire alarm went off. Others said the fire extinguishers didn’t work. A retired fire official told the New York Times that fire trucks were slow to arrive on the scene because there wasn’t a proper road for approaching the factory.

Your Job or Your Life

What do Walmart store “associates,” as the company likes to call its retail clerks, and Bangladeshi garment workers have in common? Both work in environments so hostile to labor unions that to undertake the work of organizing is a danger to one’s livelihood -- or in Bangladesh, one’s life.

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