Today marks the four-year anniversary of a tragic incident in which 1,134 workers were killed, and thousands more injured, when an eight-story building housing multiple garment factories came crashing down in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital.
The Rana Plaza collapse attracted significant media attention toward popular apparel brands sourcing from the factories in the building for failing in their responsibility to protect the workers in their supply chains. This event and other similar disasters have generated increased awareness surrounding working conditions and workers’ rights in garment factories around the world.
Risks in the Apparel Industry
The apparel industry is particularly vulnerable to modern slavery. A main contributing factor is the length of globalized garment supply chains, over which buying companies have limited or indirect control. Additional factors which heighten the vulnerability of apparel companies to modern slavery include:
- Reliance on migrant labor, or labor recruited through agencies and brokers
- Highly cost-competitive work with low barriers to entry for workers (as in the textile industry)
- Multi-tiered supply chains which operate, in part, outside of a company’s immediate control
- Companies doing business across borders and in countries with weak regulatory frameworks on human rights and, therefore, minimal accountability mechanisms in place or even state-orchestrated systems of forced labor
In short, the outsourcing (both known and hidden) of clothing production makes it difficult for apparel companies to track all production steps, from raw material capture to finished product. This means forced, child and trafficked labor can occur at various tiers in the garment supply chain, in many cases remaining unnoticed by the buying company.
Want to learn more about the risks your company faces in the apparel sector and how you can mitigate them? Access our free webinar in partnership with the Fair Wear Foundation, here.
The Long Road to Justice
On the anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, there remains lingering questions over how much has been done to improve the structural safety of garment factories, as well as to secure the individual and collective rights of those working within them. Following the disaster, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the Bangladesh Accord on Building and Fire Safety were formed to complete of the kinds of building safety repairs and renovations that may have prevented the Rana Plaza collapse in the first place. Additionally, many global brands involved in the incident contributed to the Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund, which provided compensation to victims and their families.
While these measures continue to have an impact on victims, the Rana Plaza disaster was not an isolated incident. Significant work remains to tangibly improve the working conditions of garment workers worldwide.
Increasing Regulatory Requirements For Apparel Companies
In consideration of this reality, governments and other regulatory bodies have implemented a range of regulations requiring companies to conduct varying levels of human rights due diligence. These rules require companies to address the risks of forced and trafficked labor (all of which are forms of ‘modern slavery’) in their supply chains.
The major regulations apparel companies must comply with include:
- UK Modern Slavery Act
- California Transparency in Supply Chains Act
- U.S. Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act
- EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive
- French Corporate Duty of Vigilance Law
- Amended Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) on Combating Trafficking in Persons (52-555-50)
Similar regulations exist—or are being advanced—in various other countries including, but not limited to, Switzerland, Germany and Australia. For more information on these regulations and your company’s obligations, download Assent’s Anti-Human Trafficking eBook here.
Avoiding Risk and Achieving Regulatory Compliance
The rise of supply chain human rights issues in the media and the proliferation of regulatory compliance mechanisms have given apparel companies good reason to take action against forced and trafficked labor in their production cycles.The fallout of the Rana Plaza tragedy is one prominent example highlighting the importance of effective supply chain due diligence in the garment sector. Commitment to anti-human trafficking measures and fair labor standards have therefore emerged as a core focus of compliance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programming among global apparel companies.
For more information on how your company can mitigate the risks of modern slavery and comply with current regulations, download the Anti-Human Trafficking eBook here. Contact info@assentcompliance.com with any further questions.