Tax Dollars for Sweatshops

While feigning outrage at worker abuse in Bangladesh, the U.S. government has been quietly supporting the same sweatshop factories used by Wal-Mart and the Gap.

By Robert J.S. Ross, January 6, 2014

The world was shocked last April when over 1,100 workers were killed in a building collapse in a Bangladesh garment factory. Warnings had been issued the day before about cracks in the walls of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, but the workers were forced to enter the building on the morning of the collapse anyway. Illegal floors had been added to the structure, and the permitting process that had somehow allowed the modifications was redolent of shady political influence. Even now, over eight months later, the families of survivors and the hundreds of wounded workers have yet to receive full and just compensation for their losses.

The Rana Plaza collapse obliterated all previous records for deadly garment industry disasters, including New York’s Triangle Factory blaze in 1911, which claimed 146 lives; the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh in November 2012, which killed 112 workers; and the Ali Enterprises fire in Pakistan from September 2012, which killed 298 workers.