Putting a price tag on human lives

As of September of this year, the Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund finally reached its target of $30 million. In the aftermath of what was one of the worst industrial disasters in human history, it took more than two years for the fund to reach its target of $30 million which was actually reduced from the original goal of $40 million due to lacklustre response from brands and retailers. Despite immense international pressure and demands by activists all around the world asking brands to do their part, as of April of this year, about a third of the 32 companies that campaigners claim had business dealings with the Rana Plaza complex hadn't paid a penny towards compensation. 

Walmart, the world's largest retailer raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue, gave just $3 million to BRAC USA, of which $1 million will go directly to the victims and their families. Benetton had paid $500,000 immediately after the collapse of Rana Plaza but the Italian apparel company that often produces adverts focusing on "social causes" announced it would contribute $1.1m more after its failure to pay into the trust fund was highlighted. Its contribution of $1.1m was way short of the $5m that activists had been demanding. Inditex, the biggest fashion group worldwide founded by Amancio Ortega, the third richest person in the world, contributed $1.6m to the fund... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that even the brands doing "their part" are not doing nearly as much as they could to compensate victims and their families. 

Although most of the Rana Plaza victims are said to have been compensated, the details of the payment scheme are hardly ever talked about, and media coverage is partly to blame for this. The question remains: are the victims and their families finally seeing the light of justice? Will these compensations suffice?

The Rana Plaza Arrangement was set up to provide medical care and compensate victims, their families and dependents. The claims system under the Arrangement designed for beneficiaries to claim compensation follows a general framework in accordance with ILO Convention No. 121 which deals with employment injury benefits. Its objective is to "provide lifetime benefits to Rana Plaza workers who are disabled as a result of the accident as well as to surviving dependents and family members of deceased workers". But the ILO Convention No. 121 is only partly followed since Bangladesh has not ratified this Convention. The claims system does not take into account things such as the deceased's or injured's children's future education, and the gravity of injuries. So while the average amount of compensation is approximately 20 lakh in this case, had the ILO Convention been fully enforced the compensation amount per worker would have likely doubled. 

In the case of the lesser talked about Tazreen fire that took place five months before the Rana Plaza incident, compensation for victims has been much poorer (averaging one to two lakh only including insurance) given that the Tazreen factory fire didn't garner nearly as much attention as Rana Plaza did. Many victims of the fire are yet to be compensated. Spanish department store El Corte Ingles, US brands Walmart, Disney, Sears, Dickies and Delta Apparel, Edinburgh Woollen Mill (UK), Karl Rieker (Germany), Piazza Italia (Italy), and Teddy Smith (France) have not paid a dime towards compensation. Now three years later, the Tazreen Claims Administration Trust (TCA) has finally been set up and will replicate the model of the Rana Plaza Arrangement which means that compensations handed out will be less than what they would have been if ILO Convention No. 121 were entirely followed. By and large, whatever compensation has been given out thus far to families of the affected of both industrial disasters has proved to be insufficient as confessed by these families themselves. 

Sadly, the complex case of compensating the families of missing victims of both Rana Plaza and Tazreen has stayed under the radar, and there are a couple of things to be noted. First, the reliability of the primary source of identification that is DNA profiling was questioned when DNA tests could not identify the "missing 16" in the Tazreen fire. Activists blamed poor forensics and procedural errors, and although the government denied accusations of mismanagement, it did admit that procedural errors may have been made. As a result, some families of missing victims were compensated disproportionately. Second, the lack of formal papers and IDs of workers made things even more challenging for these families. BGMEA has been accused of denying that some of the missing workers ever worked at the factory even though the latter's relatives produced IDs as proof. BGMEA's refusal to compensate is hardly surprising given its shameful role in enabling the systematic disappearance of garment workers (no digitalised records of workers, no legal documents).

Local factory owners often claim to be "sick and tired" of the stories of these industrial "accidents" constantly being told and retold. Businessmen, businesswomen and lobbyists tend to feel victimised by the international spotlight the RMG industry is under. Why should they pay the price for being part of an industry that's always under attack because of a "few bad apples," they ask. Aren't the media, writers and activists being a little too harsh? Doesn't this endless scrutiny serve to trivialise the leaps and bounds being made by the RMG industry and belittle "success stories" of women's empowerment and alleviation of poverty? 

But can we really talk about "success stories" whilst wishing away instances of corporate homicide and turning a blind eye towards the dismal state of enforcement of labour rights? Despite labour law reforms, trade unionists continue to be intimidated and threatened with physical violence. Although Bangladesh has ratified ILO Convention No. 98 which recognises workers' right to organise, only ten percent of factories have unions of which only a minority has collective bargaining rights. 

We have a long way to go before we can truly "celebrate". Tragically, industrial "accidents" have been reduced to a poster child for "corporate ethics" by money-hungry corporations tirelessly advertising their ethical products/supply chain. 

We would do well to remember that the pain and the suffering of the affected do not end with compensation; the obsession with cheap fashion inflicts wounds that money can't heal. The incessant glorification of the RMG industry in the name of economic growth and job creation must stop because "cheap" labour comes with a far greater price tag and it's just not worth it.

The writer is a member of the Editorial Team at The Daily Star.