The Rana Plaza disaster claimed 1,138 lives. It destroyed many more – and set off a process that could transform the garment industry. But brands like Wrangler, Ikea and Amazon are still refusing to put workers’ safety first.

This catastrophe was both predictable and preventable. Brands knew about the danger of the country’s multi-story buildings yet refused to take action. They also knew that the coercion implicit in poverty wages severely limited workers’ choices, and vitally, that the limitations on the fundamental rights to organise left workers exposed to serious risks.

Unions and labour rights groups had been raising these issues for over a decade and had developed a binding agreement for brands and unions to sign to make factories safer. Despite years of campaigning and dialogue with Bangladesh’s largest buying brands, only two brands signed this agreement before the collapse. Other brands continued to rely on the same social auditing system that had failed to prevent many previous disasters, and failed to recognise the risks at the Rana Plaza building. Making measures unavoidable, a mere three weeks after the disaster, a group of major brands signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

Safety is not optional. It is unconscionable that brands like Wrangler, Ikea and Amazon continue to deny the need to sign the legally binding Accord and prioritise the lives of their workers.

“The refusal of brands like Wrangler, Amazon and IKEA to sign the Accord means that they are willing to risk their workers’ lives for the production of their clothes and towels.  It is an absolute shame, just as it is absolutely shameful that there are about a dozen brands that made their products in the Rana Plaza factories and never paid any compensation to the families of the 1,138 workers who were killed and the over 2,500 workers who were injured. This is more than shameful, it is a double crime: they are guilty of death by negligence and of leaving the affected families without compensation.”

Amin Amirul Haque, President of the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF)