Josh Eidelson talking :
what we saw Thursday night and Friday was over 1000 protests, strikes in 100 cities, according to organizers. Those strikes, they say, included hundreds of workers. Organizers say theyre still counting the number, but, for perspective, in October, we saw 160 retailers go out on strike. So, if there were hundreds out, weve seen, not exponential growth, but likely steady increase in the number of workers who are out, and that comes after significant threats and captive audience meetings and other efforts by Wal-Mart to suppress the protests and make workers believe that there would be “consequences.”
captive audience meetings
Wal-Mart, a company that we know doesnt pay for anything they dont think they have to, paid workers to sit in meetings where they were told, that if they participated, it could hurt Wal-Mart sales, it could cut into their bonuses. Where they were told no comment in response to the question of whether they could be disciplined for participating. And so we see, at the same time that Wal-Mart has been publicly dismissive, privately, Wal-Mart has made an intensified effort over the past week leading up to Black Friday to make workers believe that they could suffer adverse consequences if they participate.
A clothing factory in Bangladesh that has ties to Wal-Mart suffered a massive fire Saturday that left at least 112 factory workers dead, scores injured. The building was a factory operated by Tazreen Fashions, a subsidiary of the Tuba Group which supplies Wal-Mart, Ikea and other major retailers in the U.S. and Europe. The factory made polo shirts, fleece jackets, t-shirts. Scott Nova is Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium which investigates conditions in factories around the world.
Scott Nova talking:
This is a large factory that caught fire early evening on Saturday. Workers working overtime, producing goods to be rushed out for the Christmas shopping season. The blaze spread quickly through the first two floors of the factory. The upper floors of this tall building filled with smoke. And because there are no fire escapes, because the only way out of the factory was through stairwells leading to the bottom floor, many workers were trapped on the upper floors. As you noted, at least 112 died, a number of them leaping off of the building to escape the smoke and flames.
Wal-Mart was using that factory to produce goods for its Faded Glory brand. Its important to note, Wal-Mart is the biggest buyer of apparel in Bangladesh, which is now the second largest apparel producer in the world, after China. And Bangladesh got to that position by giving companies like Wal-Mart exactly what they want, which is the cheapest labor costs in the world.
Wal-Mart itself discovered problems at the factory in 2011, problems that were unspecified in the report thats been published. But, apparently, Wal-Mart took no action to address those problems, and of course, we saw the results of that inaction on Saturday.
Aminul Islam, the Bangladeshi labor activist who helped to expose working conditions in Bangladeshs garment industry, who was brutally murdered. This April, his body found outside the city of Dhaka and showed signs of torture with his ankles and big toes having been smashed. Islam was arrested two years ago and tortured by police and intelligence services for protesting the garment industries low wages; a former factory worker himself.
somebody that we worked with over a number of years. A very courageous labor organizer who was helping workers organize themselves to try and address the sub-poverty wages and dangerous working conditions in that country. And of course, those conditions lead to mass protests on a regular basis. The government cannot acknowledge that the reason for those protests are low wages brutal conditions, so they scapegoat organizers like Aminul Islam, blame them for the unrest and target them.
another fire, in Bangladesh at a factory also producing for Wal-Mart, as well as Kmart and other major western retailers. So far, aid workers have been identified as having been injured. Unclear whether any died hopefully not. A similar fire spread through the first floor of the building, smoke throughout the building, some workers rescued off of the roof.
what we see is two sides of the same coin; brutal labor practices here by Wal-Mart in the U.S. and also brutal labor practices in its supply chain overseas. And you see workers mobilizing in Bangladesh around their working conditions, just as you see workers mobilizing here in the U.S.
– source democracynow.org
Scott Nova, Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium, which investigates working conditions in factories around the world.