By JIM YARDLEY
Months after the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in Bangladesh
exposed abuses in the garment industry, there is no consensus on what
responsibility global chains should bear for reform and compensation.
Clothing Brands Sidestep Blame for Safety Lapses
Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
A fashion designer at an
office of Mango in Barcelona, where the workplace is in contrast to
factories in places like Bangladesh.
Published: December 30, 2013
PARETS DEL VALLÈS, Spain — From a sleek gray distribution center near
Barcelona, the global fashion brand Mango ships 60 million garments in a
year. Automated conveyor belts whir through the building like subway
lines, sorting and organizing blouses, sweaters and other items to be
shipped around the world. Human hands barely touch the clothes.
Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
The Mango company last year shipped some 60 million garments from its Barcelona site to stores.
Five thousand miles away in Bangladesh, the Phantom Tac factory in the
industrial suburb of Savar was a hive of human hands. Hundreds of men
and women hunched over sewing machines to produce garments in an
assembly line system unchanged for years. Speed was also essential, but
that just meant people had to work faster.
Last spring, as it pushed forward with global expansion plans, Mango
turned to Phantom Tac to produce a sample order of polo shirts and other
items. Then, on April 24, the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed,
killing more than 1,100 people in the deadliest disaster in garment
industry history, and destroying Phantom Tac and other operations in the
building.
Now, eight months later, the question is what responsibility Mango and
other brands should bear toward the victims of Rana Plaza, a disaster
that exposed the murkiness and lack of accountability in the global
supply chain for clothes. Under intense international pressure, four
brands agreed last week to help finance
a landmark $40 million compensation fund for the victims.
But many other brands, including Mango, have so far refused to
contribute to the fund. Mango argues that it is not responsible because
it had not “formalized a commercial relationship” with Phantom Tac.
Company officials say that Mango was still conducting quality
inspections and factory audits of Phantom Tac, and that the factory had
not started producing samples for an order of 25,000 items.
But in interviews conducted over several months, supervisors and other
employees from Phantom Tac said work to make samples for Mango had
already begun when Rana Plaza collapsed. Fabric was being marked and
cut, and some workers say some sample shirts were already being
stitched.
“There was an urgency among the bosses,” said Mohammed Mosharuf Hossain,
28, who worked in a cutting section. “The managers told us to finish
the Mango products urgently. They said if we could finish this work
quickly, we might get more orders from Mango.”
For global brands and retailers, Rana Plaza has forced a reckoning over
how to reconcile the mismatched pieces in their supply chains.
Technology and investment are transforming the upper end of the
industry, enabling Mango and other brands to increase sales, manage
global inventories with pinpoint precision and introduce new clothes
faster than ever — all as consumers now expect to see new things every
time they visit a store.
But these brands depend on factories in developing countries like
Bangladesh, where wages are very low and the pressure to work faster and
cheaper has spawned familiar problems: unsafe buildings, substandard
work conditions and repeated wage and labor violations. Consumers know
little about these factories, even as global brands promise that their
clothes are made in safe environments.
Phantom Tac could be regarded as an unlikely attempt to prove that a
Bangladeshi factory could be socially responsible and make a profit. It
was partly owned by a Spaniard, David Mayor, who had won orders from
several Spanish brands. He had teamed up with a Vatican missionary in
rural Bangladesh to offer a training program for female workers. And he
had experimented with creating a website to allow consumers in the West
to connect virtually with the workers sewing their clothes.
But the pressures on Phantom Tac to meet deadlines and make money made
those social goals difficult to achieve. Employees said the factory was
busy but had suffered setbacks: Inditex, the global clothing giant that
owns Zara and Lefties, had canceled orders a year earlier after the
factory failed a social compliance audit. And several employees said
other problems had arisen after underage workers were discovered working
as helpers.
Now, Mr. Mayor has disappeared. He did not respond to email requests for
interviews, and his family in Spain declined to reveal his whereabouts.
His Bangladeshi business partner, Aminul Islam, is in jail in
connection with the collapse.
Factories like Phantom Tac in Bangladesh and the Mango operations in
Spain are part of the same supply chains, but might as well be from
different worlds.
In Spain, visitors to Mango’s design center, a short drive from the
distribution warehouse, are greeted in the lobby by an installation from
the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. A Picasso hangs in the office of
Mango’s chairman, Isak Andic. Employees eat in a light-filled cafeteria
or can relax in an upstairs area filled with ferns called “the
greenhouse.”
Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
A Mango store in Barcelona.
These state-of-the-art facilities are just the beginning: Mango already
operates other distribution centers in China, Hong Kong and Turkey, and
it has broken ground for a massive new complex in Spain. Last year,
Mango produced a total of 110 million garments and accessories; within a
decade, company officials say, the company hopes to produce 300 million
garments and roughly quintuple annual sales to 10 billion euros, or
about $14 billion.
This growth strategy comes after Mango responded to the global recession
by slashing prices, expanding offerings and opening stores in countries
like China and Russia. This increased sales but has placed a premium on
efficiency, cost and speed. In the past, Mango sent new items to stores
every four to six weeks; now it is every 15 days. Technology has
enabled Mango’s distribution center in Spain to track global sales, down
to a single item in a single store, and then ship out boxes of refill
orders within eight hours.
“The new facility will be faster, bigger and more efficient,” said Jordi Torra Marin, a project manager.
In Bangladesh, the business environment presents a sharp contrast.
Phantom Tac was on the fifth floor of Rana Plaza, which was named after
the family of the building’s owner, Sohel Rana. Mr. Rana, now in jail
awaiting charges in the collapse, was a local political strongman, with
close ties to elected officials in Savar and a reputation for criminal
activities. Workers inside Rana Plaza say that when Mr. Rana needed
people to stage a political march or a protest, he demanded that factory
bosses release some workers from each factory to participate.
Mr. Rana also extracted profits: He controlled food services that served
snacks to workers during overtime. Several workers complained about the
foul taste of the food. Mr. Rana also claimed the leftover remnants of
fabric produced by each factory and sold them into the lucrative local
recycling market. And, workers say, he took any garments that did not
meet quality standards and sold them in local markets.
“He was so powerful,” said Mohammad Liton, 25, a quality controller at
Phantom Tac. “He had his own gang. They used to operate businesses.”
David Mayor was a buyer when he met Aminul Islam, who was operating a
different factory in the center of Dhaka, the national capital. They
started Phantom Tac together, which seemed like a good fit, since Mr.
Mayor had connections with foreign brands, especially those in Spain.
Soon, Mr. Mayor was bringing in orders, workers said, or leading foreign
buyers on tours of the factory.
Mr. Mayor also had a social agenda. In 2007, Mr. Mayor joined with
Brother Massimo Cattaneo,
a Roman Catholic missionary, and financed a training program for young
girls from rural Bangladesh. He eventually hired about a dozen of the
graduates into his own factory.
He also wanted to give consumers a better understanding of how their
clothes were made. Ashley Wheaton, who had worked for a nonprofit group
in Dhaka, was hired to develop a website where consumers could type in a
code taken from the sales tag of an item and then learn about the
Bangladeshi women who made the garment they had bought. As an
experiment, Mr. Mayor opened a shop in Dhaka where the clothes were
marked with the codes.
“He had this idea about what he wanted to accomplish,” Ms. Wheaton said.
“He really did want to change the way things are done. But he was
pragmatic. He knew it had to make money and be sustainable.”
But money became a problem. Ms. Wheaton left after about seven months,
as the factory began tightening expenses. Eventually, Mr. Mayor also
stopped funding the training program, which Brother Massimo has kept
afloat through church money and donations.
Workers at Phantom Tac said deadline pressures were relentless. Margins
were so tight that several workers say midlevel managers used two sets
of accounting ledgers to hide excessive overtime or other wage
violations. Workers also said a problem with child labor arose in 2012
after a buyer discovered several teenagers working as helpers, the
lowest-level position in the factory.
By January 2013, Phantom Tac had corrected the child labor issue and was
trying to win new business, including from Mango. Mango had sent buyers
to the factory as well as inspectors to conduct an audit of working
conditions, workers say.
“We all knew about Mango’s audit team,” said Mr. Hossain, the man from
the cutting section. “There was an announcement on the loudspeaker. They
told everyone to work properly. They wanted to impress them.”
It worked. Labor activists searching the rubble of Rana Plaza found
order forms from Mango to Phantom Tac for adult polo shirts and some
children’s items. By April, but before the collapse, the fabric for the
Mango order had already arrived, several employees say. Work was
underway on samples to be sent to Mango for approval. One worker,
Mohammed Sohel, said some sample shirts had already been sent for
quality testing by Mango, only for Phantom Tac to be told of a flaw in
the collar.
“David came to the factory and explained how to correct the collar,” Mr. Sohel said.
Another employee, Mohammed Sumon Prodhan, who worked in quality control,
said seamstresses had been making samples of green polo shirts for
Mango the day before Rana Plaza collapsed.
In a recent interview at Mango’s design center in Spain, Jose Gomez,
vice president of international business development, cited Mango’s
involvement in a major consortium of brands that have agreed to help
finance safety upgrades to Bangladeshi factories as evidence of the
company’s commitment to improve conditions.
But on the separate issue of compensation for victims, Mr. Gomez denied
that Mango had started production at Phantom Tac because, he said, the
company’s auditing process was not complete.
Asked if he was certain no work was underway, Mr. Gomez said, “What I understand is what I told you.”
Eva Kreisler, a coordinator for the anti-sweatshop group Clean Clothes
Campaign in Spain, said that Mango’s explanation was unconvincing and
that the company had a moral obligation to help the victims of Rana
Plaza.
Another Spanish retailer, El Corte Inglés, is one of four brands that
have agreed to contribute to the $40 million fund. Officials say other
brands must come forward if full funding is to be achieved.
“Definitely, they should contribute to the fund,” Ms. Kreisler said of
Mango. “It is quite shameful that they still won’t contribute to bring
justice to the workers.”
On the day before Rana Plaza collapsed, cracks appeared in the third
floor of the building. It was temporarily closed, and an engineer, upon
inspecting the cracks, said the building should remain closed. But Mr.
Islam, the co-owner of Phantom Tac, called a longtime factory supervisor
and implored him and others to return to work, citing pressing
deadlines.
Mr. Islam even went to the building himself and made his ritual evening prayers.
“He called me,” said Mohammad Minhaj Uddin Nannu, the longtime
supervisor. “He said, ‘Why are you all scared? You shouldn’t be. I’m
here.’ ”
The next morning, Rana Plaza collapsed, before Mr. Islam arrived at his office.
copy http://www.nytimes.com/
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