Conduct research on the Bangladesh garment factory fire and answer the following questions.
What actions did the corporate community and the Bangladeshi and other governments take following the disaster at Rana Plaza in 2013?
Since the incident happened three years ago, companies like H&M, Mango, Primark, Gap, Wal-Mart have donated over $21M to the Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund to compensate families for their losses. This was all done voluntarily as the organization/fund is entirely voluntary.
2. How did this case change Bangladesh employment law?
This case was a wake-up call for the officials in Bangladesh and the employment law. The incident happened because the industry grew quicker than the factories could respond thus many things were disregarded including security checks. Which today is no longer the case, 75% of the approximately 3,500 factories in Bangladesh are being monitored including 35 factories, that have been shut down after failing the safety regulations and poor structure integrity. The owners can no longer put the workers’ safety at risk and disregard mandatory renovations.
3. In your opinion, has enough been done to protect worker
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Companies use private contractors or sub-contractors to protect themselves from a legal standpoint but are well aware that children are working in the factories. In fact, child labour is what allows them to produce at such a low cost and maintain their margins high. Currently there is 200 million children working in factories that are either financially or physically obligated to do so. A full-time adult factory worker in China makes about $118 a month, there has been little to no data leaked about the salary of an average child worker since 1990 where it was 6 cents an hour. Yes, it may be costly to purchase locally made products but keep in mind that this will help the country’s
Child labor is a serious problem that affects children from third-world countries all over the world. These children are exploited by multinational corporations ,for their cheap labor all over the world. People, then buy products that come at a cheaper price, from these multinational corporations.These children are often overworked and treated unfairly. People need to stop buying items from countries that endorse child labor.
Finally this tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers. The owners Blanck and Harris were to blame, since they neglected their workers safety and concerns in order to be the fastest and the best factory around. Due to their negligence the youngest factory worker at the age of 14 lost her life in the fire. Both Harris and Blanck were indicted on seven counts of manslaughter in the first and second degree, but after paying bail and hiring the best lawyer around they were acquitted of all charges. They paid no time for their crimes and walked away with insurance policies leaving the dead behind and the rest of the workers and their families with
“The main cause for children doing work is poverty,” says Nadira Faulmuller in “This Company is Employing Children”. People should buy products made with child labor. Buying these products will support the many families of the working children, since the reason children are working is poverty. Not buying the products can create more problems for the children working. Even though some say that working children are robbed of their education, individuals should buy products made with the use of child labor because hard labor has the ability to motivate children to get an education.
Business owners never thought that children should have a good education than work at these factories because these factories are actually making them deformed. Proof from document seven says that Elizabeth Bentley’s health changed since she had worked at the factory. “Yes, I was . . . a little [healthy] girl [before I started working at the factory]” (Document #7). This is the downside for working at these places. Even though the factory was producing a lot of product, but at the same time they are turning perfectly normal people into mentally retarded people. Furthermore, this isn’t the only cons about these factories. These factories are making these people work more than an average person would work in the twenty-first century. “[They would work] [f]rom six in the morning till 7 at night” (Document #7). These children are working fourteen hours. A normal person would only work eight hours today. Not only that they get worked to death, they weren’t given much breaks. “Forty minutes at noon [time was given for a break]” (Document #7). Working this long these children should be rewarded with a longer break. See the people who believe that getting short breaks is good; well they are wrong because if you do the same thing over and over it gets boring. Also, your brain will get fried. Case in point, child labor is a torturing practice that needs to get abolished because the working
What’s important to examine is that before the Triangle Factory Fire is that that casualties from unsafe conditions were reported and expressed as a concern before. Where was the outrage that pushed for safer working conditions? The answer to that is that there were many times that people were upset with such conditions.
Frances Perkins came from a wealthy family in Maine. From her mother, she inherited the propensity to be stingy with money, earnest, and brutally honest. In 1902, she attended Mount Holyoke College, where she used her glibness to barely get by. Instead of focusing on improving her strengths, Frances’ professors sought to improve her weaknesses; Especially her moral ones. This was done with the idea in mind that if she were to overcome her shortcomings, she would be able to conquer anything life threw at her. After graduation, Frances struggled to find something meaningful to do with her life; That is the tragedy of The
In today’s time, it is almost impossible to to find a building that does not have exit signs or fire extinguishers here in America. Fire drills are regularly practiced in schools and workplaces to ensure the tiniest amount of fatality would not occur. However, it wasn’t like that in the 1900’s. Neither safety issues nor regulations were taken into thought. “The waist industry was flourishing in New York: there were more than five hundred blouse factories, employing upward of forty thousand workers.” In this time of history, the Triangle Waist Company was the largest manufacturer of women’s shirtwaist in the entire country! On March 25, 1911, one hundred and forty six individuals lost their life to what was one of the biggest events in history
Billows of smoke rose into the dark clouds. Searing flames whipped and teared, growing by the second. It was chaos, and there was virtually no escape. The doors were locked, the elevators were broken, and the fire escape was collapsed. It seemed the only option was to jump. It is hard to imagine this fearful scene in real life, but this was the fate of the 146 workers who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Though this was a truly awful event, it brought to light the much-needed change to create safer work environments for workers at that time. This accident sparked strikes and rallies against the garment industry from within both the New York Community, as well as the nation. With the help of unions fighting for this cause,
The article in NY Times deals with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which happened in Lower Manhattan in 1911 and killed 145 workers, mainly immigrants who worked long hours and were trapped in the building when the disaster happened. The article depicts people who used to work long hours at the factory and who were looking forward to start their one day off before the fire changed their life. The article gives details about the tragic incident. It tells the reader that the flames were first seen on the 8th floor, that the workers were trying to fight the fire and that the fire spread so quickly that the within 30 minutes it devastated three floors of the building. The articles talks about the impact the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
On the 25th of March in the year 1911 in the city of New York City, a tragic event took place. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory caught on fire inside of the work areas. The factory was located in the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building on the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street on the island of Manhattan. This workplace was a real “sweatshop”. Its main employers were young immigrant women, who rarely spoke English. They worked 12 hours a day, everyday and only made a total of about $12 a week. The rules were said to be very strict and one was that cigarettes were not allowed but many say that they were often sneaked in and that is rumored to what have started the fire in the excess rag bin. Many believe it was from a cigarette butt that had not been properly disposed of but
”Chicago received about $5 million in contributions.” (A Look Back: The Great Chicago Fire Of 1871). Because of the fire many cities and countries sent donations of money, books, clothing and food. Chicago received a donation of $450,000 from New York City and $300,000 from St. Louis. Even the Common council of London made a donation of 7,000 pounds which is equivalent to about $9,378. “ the city established a temporary relief committee that distributed food, supplies and money” (A Look Back: The Great Chicago Fire Of 1871). Not only were cities donating money and other needed stuff, Milwaukee and other nearby cities sent firefighters and fire fighting equipment to
In Pakistan, children as young as six are "sold and resold like furniture, branded, beaten, blinded as punishment for wanting to go home, rendered speechless by the trauma of their enslavement. " For pennies an hour, these children work in dank sheds, stitching soccer balls with the familiar Nike swoosh and logos of other transnational athletic equipment companies (Bigelow). The labor standards in emerging countries should become more enforced. Child labor should not be involved in production and children should not be able to work at extended
The next time when you are out on your shopping trip, chances you may have support a business that exploits children. It is very disturbing and heartbreaking to learn many children are chained to looms for 12 hours a day because families need to have their child bringing home a small amount of moneys. Child labor has always been a difficult subject to address, the topic have become much more complicated and prolific.
In the United States, child labor and sweatshops are illegal, and society frowns upon any business that exploits children in the production of goods. Though most would say that they would not support a company that uses child labor to produce its goods, almost everyone has, in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, supported these businesses in one way or another. Children are involved in the production of many of the everyday goods we import from overseas, including the manufacturing of clothes, shoes, toys, and sporting equipment, the farming of cocoa, cotton, sugarcane, and bananas, and the mining of coal, diamonds, and gold (The U.S. Dept. of Labor). Often, we are blinded to this fact.
Thewire.com also references a report from China Labor Watch. China Labor Watch has said that these workers also work in exhausting conditions, being forced to stand for 11 or 12-hour shifts. Workers are also forced to work without pay, as they are forced to make early morning off-the-clock meetings. Many workers were also forced to take vacation time, instead of pay. China Labor Watch also alleges that at least three factories (TSMD, SEHZ and SSKMT) have hired underage workers, and compensate them the same as adults, 206 U.S. dollars. Chinalaborwatch.org has said that if a worker is absent from one day of work without applying for leave, two days pay will be deducted from their monthly salary. The China Labor Watch has discovered that many children laborers are working in Samsung factories without labor contracts, and many workers are working 11 hour shifts, but only being paid for 10 hours. China Labor Watch’s investigation into Shinyang revealed 15 labor violations. One such violation had to do with child labor, with these children being paid less. Wantchinatimes.com even alleges that some children would work these 11-hour shifts, six days a week. These child laborers were also paid only 70% of what their adult counterparts were paid. “These children, without a labor contract, do the same work for the same long night-shift hours and at the same intensity as adult workers but are paid one-third less.” The Shinyang factory also