The Canada federal government has kicked in funding for an international
effort to boost worker safety in Bangladesh clothing factories, which
manufacture products for many Canadian retailers, reports
theglobeandmail.com.
Canada’s $8-million over four years, announced
on Thursday, will help the International Labour Organisation offer
technical support to Bangladesh’s government to inspect its factories in
response to the collapse of Rana Plaza earlier this year, in which
1,131 people, mostly garment workers, died.
The funding is for the
Improving Working Conditions in the Ready-Made Garment Sector programme,
which the ILO announced on October 22. The $25-million programme will
help Bangladeshi authorities develop safety standards and working
conditions for factories, and conduct inspections.
The funding is
coming from Canada, the UK and the Netherlands. Ottawa said in a
statement on Thursday that improving working conditions in Bangladesh is
an ‘imperative,’ although one with ‘complex and serious challenges.’
Who will pay for any needed improvements at many of the factories is unclear.
Canadian
retailers continue to be divided on a response to calls for higher
safety standards. Loblaw has signed on to the Accord on Fire and
Building Safety in Bangladesh, developed by Bangladeshi and
international labour groups, which some watchdogs say is the most
stringent effort to improve conditions. The accord includes transparent
reporting of inspections and a requirement that retailers help pay to
keep factories safe.
Other chains, including the Hudson’s Bay
Corporation, Canadian Tire, Walmart Canada and Giant Tiger, have joined
the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, put together by an
international coalition retailers. Critics say that is the weaker
agreement.
One critic says Canada should force its companies to sign
the accord rather than funding an inspection regime with no clarity on
who will make repairs.
‘The best thing the government could do today
is say, ‘If you want to bring in clothes from Bangladesh, sign the
[accord],’ Jim Sinclair, president of the BC Federation of Labour, said
on Thursday. ‘...It is the most comprehensive thing that’s been done,
and Canadian companies, with the exception of one, have refused to
sign.’
In a statement, the Canadian government said it favours
neither the accord nor the alliance, and stopped short of calling on
companies to adopt either. Canada ‘encourages and expects Canadian
companies working abroad to respect all applicable laws and
international standards,’ the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
department said.
Many factories, however, are not part of the accord
or the alliance — and the ILO and the Bangladesh government have
signalled that this group will be the focus of initial inspections, said
Scott Nova, executive director of the Washington-based Worker Rights
Consortium, an independent labour rights monitoring group.
Many of
those factories produce ‘for less well-known brands, who may be brands
that therefore feel less public pressure, which might mean some of those
factories might be particularly high-risk,’ he said. And there is no
indication who will finance renovations in
those other factories.
‘Unlike
with the accord, it’s entirely unclear who is going to pay for those
repairs, renovations and retrofitting, to the extent that the factories
cannot afford it – as will be the case in many instances,’ Nova said.
Since
the Rana Plaza collapse earlier this year, many inspections have been
done, but the results are rarely made public, Nova said. Those are his
top two concerns: a lack of public information about which factories
need repairs, and figuring out who will pay for the repairs.
He said Canada’s funding commitment is positive, but the government could do more.
‘If
the Canadian government will push the Bangladeshis to provide real
transparency in this programme, and push Canadian companies to provide
the financial resources necessary for the covered factories – that are
producing for those Canadian companies – to actually afford to become
safe, that would be an approach that would be effective,’ he said.
Canada
is an ILO member, and contributed $14.7-million in funding last year to
the organisation. Thursday’s announcement is on top of that, and Canada
has also been one of the ILO’s top-10 sources of extra donations —
another $45.9-million between 2008 and 2012. (source)