Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh extended

The global union federations IndustriALL and UNI announced here that the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh will be extended with a new agreement. To date, 13 brands and retailers have signed and 8 more committed to sign the new agreement, with many more likely to follow in the weeks ahead.

The Rana Plaza collapse in April 2013 claimed the lives of more than 1,100 workers, injuring 2,500 more. Six weeks later, unions, non-governmental organizations and brands announced the Úrst Bangladesh Accord. Currently, the Accord covers more than 2.5 million workers. The Accord is a groundbreaking building safety agreement based on binding commitments by apparel brands to ensure that hazards in their factories are identified and corrected. The Accord has overseen factory renovations – from installation of fire doors to strengthening of dangerously weak structural columns – that have improved safety for millions of garment workers. The current Accord expires in May 2018.
The new Accord, which takes effect in May of 2018 when the current Accord expires, extends the program for an additional three years. The purpose of the extension is to ensure that the progress achieved under the first Accord is maintained and that workers in more factories are brought under the Accord’s umbrella of protection, as signatory brands and retailers add more factories to their supply chains.  The new Accord also aims to support improvements to Bangladesh’s public regulatory regime. The purpose of renewing the Accord for three more years is not to give factories currently engaged in safety renovations additional time to complete this work. All covered factories have existing corrective action plans with deadlines, all of which expire well before the end of the first Accord in May of 2018. The Accord inspectorate will hold factories to these deadlines.

IndustriALL Global Union, UNI Global Union, together with brand representatives from C&A and LC Waikiki, will announce the new agreement at today’s OECD Global Forum on Responsible Business Conduct in Paris. The agreement has so far been signed by Kmart Australia, Target Australia, Primark, H&M, Inditex (Zara), C&A, Otto, KiK, Aldi South, Aldi North, Lidl,
Tchibo, LC Waikiki, Helly Hansen, Loblaw and PVH. Further brands: Esprit, Hüren, Bestseller, Wibra, Schmidt Group, N Brown Group, Specialty Fashion Group Australia and Carrefour have committed to signing. It means that over a thousand Bangladeshi garment factories supplying
signatory brands will already be covered under the new Accord. This number will grow as more brands sign.

The new Accord contains notable improvements to the original:

• Freedom of association in the context of safety issues protected.
• Severance will have to be paid if a factory has to relocate because of the Accord.
• There are improvements in the dispute resolution system – Accord staff will do its own investigation.
• The possibility of exploring the expansion of the scope of the Accord to textile and spinning mills is mentioned
• There is no longer a division in tiers, so it is more difficult for brands to say they are not responsible for tier 3 factories.

 This new Agreement expires in May 31, 2021. After that, the work will be handed over to a national regulatory body, supported by the ILO. The Agreement can be extended for 12 more months, if the Accord Steering Committee determines that no such body is ready.

Amin Amirul Haque, president of NGWF, partner of WSM in Bangladesh, is member of the Accord Steering Committee and said:"I am glad that we have reached agreement to extend the Accord. The IndustriALL Bangladesh Council of trade unions has zero tolerance of unsafe workplaces that threaten workers’ lives. The Accord is extremely important to workers who now know about the safety issues in their factory and can do something about them." In Belgium, WSM will work with Belgian brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh to sign this agreement.