24/04/2020
7 years ago today, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed and took the lives of more than 1,100 people and injured another ~2,500. Most of the victims were young women and they were making clothes for some of the biggest fashion brands in the world.
In the days and hours that preceded this tragedy, cracks appeared in the building walls and workers expressed their fears. Management told the workers to return to work, even when the retail shops and banks on the ground floor of the complex closed. It wasn’t just managers, but lurking order deadlines and production quotas from powerful corporations that lead to these workers being sent back inside. It was the insatiable fashion industry that forced these garment workers to keep working. And it was the lack of union representation that left these workers powerless to defy orders.
These workers, some 5,000 of them, worked in fear. And the clothes they made in fear were shipped around the world, to major retailers and fashion brands, and they were bought by us. Though we’ll never know for sure if we bought and wore the products of their fear, we know that even one t-shirt, pair of jeans or dress made in fear is one too many.
There were 29 brands identified in the rubble. It would take years for some of them to pay compensation. For some families, providing DNA evidence to claim that compensation would never be possible. To this day many of the survivors are unemployed and suffer from severe trauma.
Fashion Revolution exists to ensure that no tragedy of this magnitude will ever take place again, and we won’t stop until every garment is made in conditions where workers are safe, fairly treated and free from gender-based violence or harassment. Today we think of the true cost of our clothing. We reflect on the tragedy and we use this momentum to forge ahead and create change. Today we encourage you to ask , and demand answers.
Photo by rijans via flickr