H&M lag in safety compliance: report

Swedish fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) has failed to ensure its apparel suppliers in Bangladesh make their factories safe as committed in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza disaster, an evaluation report said. 

H&M failed to ensure worker safety even at its most valued supplier factories, yet continues to do business with all of them, said four international labour rights groups in the report.

The groups are Clean Clothes Campaign, International Labour Rights Forum, Maquila Solidarity Network, and Worker Rights Consortium.

The evaluation report highlights that the efforts to guarantee Bangladesh factory buildings are structurally sound and meet fire safety standards, but are lagging far behind schedule.

The report evaluates publicly available information about the level of progress H&M has achieved in addressing safety hazards in its factories in Bangladesh.

The data is derived from factory inspection reports and Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) publicly disclosed by the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

After the Rana Plaza building collapse killed more than 1,100 workers, H&M and roughly 200 other mostly European brands and retailers made binding commitments to improve safety conditions at the garment factories they source goods from.

“Based on the Accord's public disclosure of remediation progress, we must conclude that H&M has failed to honour those commitments,” the report said.

The evaluation report focused on H&M suppliers for several reasons: the Swedish retailer is the largest apparel buyer in Bangladesh and its decisions and actions affect the greatest number of workers.

H&M is also highly influential in the industry, both with factories and with other brands. Through its leadership, H&M can help increase compliance with the terms of the Accord, according to the report.

H&M has 229 suppliers in Bangladesh. Of those, 56 are graded by H&M as Platinum or Gold, meaning that they are H&M's strategic partners and preferred suppliers– the factories with which H&M has the closest relations.

H&M's Platinum and Gold suppliers in Bangladesh make about 60 percent of the company's products sourced from here. 

Of the group of 56 factories, 36 have Accord CAPs, 17 have CAPs from the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, and three have no CAP at all.

The review focused on 32 factories with Accord CAPs where inspections were completed over 12 months ago, as these are the factories where H&M has had the longest time to ensure completion of recommended renovations.

H&M, which claims to be a leader in social responsibility, was the first to sign on to the Accord.

The safety inspections conducted by Accord engineers in 32 H&M Platinum and Gold factories uncovered 518 violations of structural safety requirements, 836 fire safety violations, and 650 electrical safety violations, all requiring correction, an average of 62 safety violations per factory.

Of all required corrective actions at H&M's Gold and Platinum factories, 52 percent are behind schedule. Structural renovations are most often behind schedule (71.6 percent), followed by fire safety repairs (50.1 percent), and then electrical repairs (37.8 percent).

Of the outstanding renovations, 47.1 percent are at least six months past deadline and 9.8 percent of corrections are overdue by a full year.

“These findings are particularly concerning because these are the suppliers that H&M itself describes as its most important, closest and most ethical business partners–yet not a single factory has completed the required renovations on schedule and most are far behind on numerous vital safety repairs.”

“H&M should instead be leading the way in ensuring its suppliers become safe, in accordance with the schedules established by the Accord–before there is another Garib & Garib, Tazreen Fashions or Rana Plaza,” said the report.

Ben Vanpeperstraete, supply chain co-ordinator of IndustriALL Global Union, which represents workers' interests as part of the Accord, told the Financial Times that the pace of remediation is too slow, and “we are committed to ensure that it gains speed.”

“We want to make sure the brands live up to their commitments.”

The FT report stated H&M as saying that it has taken rectifying safety hazards at factories “very seriously”, but admitted progress had been delayed by difficulties importing equipment, such as fire doors and sprinklers, and a shortage of requisite professional expertise in Bangladesh.