President Barack Obama’s administration is pressing Bangladesh to do more to strengthen worker-safety standards as a condition for restoring U.S. trade preferences that were suspended after a deadly garment factory collapse in April.
The U.S. government Friday made public the steps it wants the Bangladeshi government to take to win restoration of benefits on trade goods worth $34.7 million from the Asian nation. Measures called for by the United States include increasing the number of labor, fire and building inspectors and creating hotlines for workers to anonymously report safety and rights violations.
“The administration is making this action plan public as a means to reinforce and support the efforts of all international stakeholders to promote improved worker rights and worker safety in Bangladesh,” said a joint statement from the State and Labor departments and the U.S. Trade Representative.
On June 27, Obama’s administration announced that it would halt the trade benefits, citing concerns that Bangladesh failed to adequately safeguard worker rights. The United States’ response resulted from the April 24 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory, the worst industrial accident in Bangladeshi history, which killed more than 1,110 workers and prompted increased scrutiny of the country’s labor conditions,as well as the November 2012 Tazreen Fashions factory fire in which 112 workers died.
The measures recommended by the United States were submitted to Bangladesh at the time the preferences were halted. The steps also include creation of a database on garment factories with the results of fire, labor and building inspections, including violations reported and sanctions levied. The United States also called for improved training for inspectors in the Asian country.
Bangladesh participates in a U.S. program known as the Generalized System of Preferences, which allows zero or reduced tariffs on some products imported from developing countries. The trade preferences exclude imports of Bangladesh’s apparel, which the U.S. Commerce Department said represented 91 percent of the $4.9 billion in U.S. imports from the nation last year.
Seventeen North American retailers, including GapInc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., announced a five-year plan earlier this month aimed at improving factory safety in Bangladesh. The pact requires factories to be inspected within a year and results to be made public, and it includes setting up a $42 million fund to help its implementation, according to a July 10 statement from the companies.
The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety said it will set safety standards by October and refuse to buy from factories deemed unsafe. The U.S. retailers’ pacthas been criticized by worker rights groups as falling short of a comparable agreement reached by mostly European retailers, which obligates companies to ensure their factories have the capital to make necessary repairs.
Under the North American pact, individual retailers can voluntarily pledge capital beyond the $42 million so factories can make safety renovations.
Information for this report was contributed by Brian Wingfield and Lindsey Rupp of Bloomberg News.
Business, Pages 19 on 07/23/2013