Labor groups urged massive clothing retailers including Gap and Wal-Mart to sign an international pact this week that would solidify safety standards and send a clear message that big brand names won’t allow another easily preventable tragedy like last month’s factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 people, to happen again. Naturally, most U.S. companies that produce in Bangladesh refused to sign it.
By Wednesday, more than a dozen European retailers had signed the pact introduced by IndustriALL (a global federation of unions), including Benetton, Topshop, Zara and H&M. But Abercrombie & Fitch and PVH Corporation, the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, were the only U.S. companies that got on board; others said the language could get them into trouble.
Which, duh: that’s exactly the point of an agreement that holds companies accountable. This five-year pact makes sure that retailers who source clothing from Bangladesh pay for independent inspections, mandatory building repairs/upgrades and training. It also requires companies to stop working with factories that refuse to comply with necessary upgrades, and ensures that workers and unions aren’t left out of the process. If these companies care about worker’s rights — as they so often claim they do — why won’t they sign?
“It’s a smokescreen,” Scott Nova, executive director of the Workers Rights Consortium, told the Washington Post. “The agreement doesn’t create any additional legal liability. Companies only have to meet the terms of the agreement.”
“You have major British companies like Marks & Spencer and Tesco signing up, respected companies from a legal system that isn’t all that different from our own,” said Janice Bellace, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not clear why the U.S. companies think it will be so different.”
The problem isn’t money, either; the agreement would probably cost companies about $3 billion over the next five years, Nova said, which is basically chump change for the companies refusing to commit. “In the context of the broader industry, that’s a relatively small amount,” Nova said. “Bangladesh will export hundreds of billion of dollars worth of apparel in the next five years.”
Here are the major companies that didn’t sign by Wednesday’s deadline:
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores was under immense and rightful pressure to sign the pact, given that it’s the largest retailer in the world and the second-largest clothing maker in Bangladesh after H&M; apparel had been produced for the company in the factory building that collapsed last month. But Wal-Mart refused to sign because the agreement “introduces requirements, including governance and dispute resolution mechanisms, on supply chain matters that are appropriately left to retailers, suppliers and government, and are unnecessary to achieve fire and safety goals.”