Rana Pla za was a nondescri pt ei ght -stor y building in a modest suburb of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Owned by Sohel Rana, a politically well-connected figure, it housed a bank and a few shops on its lower floors, but most of Rana Plaza was given over to five garment factories. They employed around 5,000 people making clothes for companies in North America and Europe. In April 2013, cracks appeared in the building’s structure. Building inspectors ordered Rana Plaza to be evacuated, after which the bank and the shops immediately closed—but not the garment factories. They ordered their employees to return to work the following day. On that fateful day—April 24, 2013—at around 9:00 a.m., Rana Plaza collapsed.

1,129 garment workers were killed, and around 2,500 were injured. It was the deadliest garment factory disaster ever, and probably the most lethal accidental collapse of a building in modern history.66 In the aftermath, Sohel Rana and the owners of the five garment factories were arrested along with an engineer who was accused of having helped Rana to add three illegal stories to the building. The Bangladesh High Court ordered the property seized and the assets of the factory owners frozen to ensure that the workers’ salaries were paid.

The Bangladesh government suspended the local mayor and several inspectors who were accused of negligence in renewing the licenses of the garment factories. Families of the victims received some short-term assistance from the government, but workers who are too seriously injured to work are desperate, and in many families, children have had to go to work because their mothers are dead.

Since the disaster, there has been some soul searching in the West. Documents and remnants of apparel link the......

Discussion Questions 1. Are workers in overseas garment factories exploited?
What are the moral pros and cons of outsourcing garment manufacturing to countries where workers are paid so little?
2. Is outsourcing an inevitable feature of globalized capitalism? Are sweatshops? Do Americans gain more from sweatshops (in terms of cheaper products) than they lose (in terms of jobs)?
3. American Apparel is a clothing manufacturer, distributor, and retailer that does not outsource. It pays its workers, on average, over $12 an hour. Could other U.S. clothing companies do the same thing?
4. Do companies have a responsibility to monitor the conduct of the companies that they do business with either directly (suppliers, contractors) or indirectly (subcontractors)?
Do clothing companies have a responsibility to see that the people who ultimately make their clothes do so in safe working conditions?
Do they have a responsibility to see that those people are paid a decent wage?
5. Do companies whose clothing was being made in Rana Plaza have an obligation to help the victims or their families? What about companies who have had clothing made there in the past, but not at the time of the collapse? Dan Rees suggests that even garment companies with no association with Rana Plaza should contribute out of solidarity with the industry. Explain why you agree or disagree with this.
6. In your view, are Western companies sincere about trying to improve factory safety, or is it just a publicrelations effort?
7. Do American consumers who wear clothing produced in countries like Bangladesh bear some responsibility for the wages and conditions of workers there?
Do they bear some responsibility for the Rana Plaza collapse? Many consumers know or at least suspect that the clothes they wear are made in third-world sweatshops. Does this affect their moral responsibilities?
8. Many American consumers say that they don’t like having their clothes made by poor and exploited foreign workers. Would you pay more for clothing that is made in factories that meet American safety standards? If so, how much more?
9. What, if anything, should consumers do to make foreign factories safer? Can consumer pressure get American companies to improve the pay and working conditions of foreign factory workers?