This is not to say Bangladesh's garment industry has been incident-free. The International Labor Organization reported that, between Rana Plaza's collapse and 2018, at least 35 further accidents in clothing factories had resulted in 27 deaths. Among them was a boiler explosion thatTo date, however, over 30,000 factory inspections have taken place under the agreement, with over 400 facilities completing what organizers call"initial remediation.
"It's very difficult to quantify how many lives the Accord has saved, because you can never know," she added."But it is definitely thousands."The Accord is not without its shortcomings. For one, the relative absence of North American labels among signatories was conspicuous, with many seemingly concerned about financial commitments and the risk that legally binding commitments might lead to costly lawsuits.
"Any brand that doesn't sign the Accord does not respect the workers and does not believe in freedom of association," she said, adding:"Without mandatory human rights due diligence, there is no accountability, no transparency and no penalty or punishment for brands like Rana Plaza." "We've seen progress in one very specific area that's very much connected to what happened at Rana Plaza — building safety — but not in these other areas," she added."If workers had a union, they might have resisted entering together. If they had wages that sustained them, then maybe the threat of losing a month's wages .... wouldn't have sounded so terrible."