In his blog last week, Alan Roberts, executive director international operations at the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, outlined the progress made by the Accord so far, reports theguardian Monday.
More than 175 primarily European brands and retailers joined the Accord, while 26 US and Canadian companies joined a second group, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Both initiatives are bringing companies together in an unprecedented collaboration to address common challenges of worker safety in the Bangladesh garment sector following the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh last year.
The Accord has invested considerable resources into inspecting factories that are the principal suppliers to its members. The Alliance has undertaken a parallel exercise and the two initiatives have now completed inspections of nearly 1,700 factories.
The breadth, scope, and speed of these inspections represent a significant accomplishment. In the absence of effective government oversight, brands and retailers are taking greater responsibility for fire and building safety. Roberts highlights that the Accord's inspections have identified more than 80,000 safety hazards.
In 33 factories, safety issues are so serious that the Accord and the Alliance have recommended that production be suspended because of the risk to workers. This is a sobering reflection of the state of factory safety in Bangladesh.
Inspections are an important first step in making factories and workers safe, but they are not enough. Eighteen months after Rana Plaza, there are two major unanswered questions pertaining to factory safety in Bangladesh: 1) how big is the total universe of factories and facilities producing for the export market, and 2) how will factories actually be fixed?
There is no authoritative figure for the number of factories producing for the export market. Between them, the Accord and the Alliance have acknowledged responsibility for about 1,800 factories. But a study (pdf) published earlier this year by the NYU Stern Centre for Business and Human Rights estimated that the total number is closer to 5,000 - 6,000 factories and facilities.
The study also highlighted the essential role of indirect sourcing - subcontracting with limited control, visibility, or oversight - in meeting demand for high volumes of low cost garments. Indirect sourcing is not necessarily a bad practice, but keeping it in the shadows is and makes hundreds of thousands of workers less safe in Bangladesh.
While the Accord and the Alliance both have textual commitments to inspect subcontracting facilities, there is little evidence that this is happening in practice. Factories that fall outside these two initiatives are the responsibility of the government, which lacks the capacity to inspect - much less fix - unsafe factories.
