JEFF HOLT/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Voices
to Turkey to Guatemala, they are
routinely coached on how to answer questions posed by inspectors
who arrive every so often, working
for accounting firms at the behest
of the brands. Bathrooms that are
ordinarily foul and denied to many
workers are suddenly pristine and
stocked with the necessary accoutrements. Managers who routinely
cheat workers of legally mandated
overtime and meal breaks speak of
the lawful policies in place.
So it goes in Bangladesh, now
the world’s second largest apparel
maker, as my colleagues Dave Jamieson and Emran Hossain revealed in an eye-opening report
PETER S.
GOODMAN
earlier this month. “What to say
to the auditors always comes from
the owners,” one worker in a factory in Bangladesh told them.
“The owners in most cases would
warn workers not to say negative
things about the factories.”
The global brands have built
a system designed to inoculate
themselves from liability to disaster, while effectively pushing the
dirty work further into the crevices of the underground economy.
They have built an apparatus that
enables them to say that they inspect the factories that make their
goods, while ensuring that dangers
persist by dint of the stuff they do
not talk about publicly: The prices
they pay for their products. Prices
that can only be met by someone
HUFFINGTON
05.19.13
Workers
sew plaid
shirts on the
production
line of the
Fashion
Enterprise
garment
factory
in Dhaka,
Bangladesh.