Lives Held Cheap in Bangladesh Sweatshops
By Barry Bearak
Narsingdi, Bangladesh — The fire in the garment factory began on the fourth floor, where polo shirts, neatly folded in boxes, made a fine feast for the hungry flames. The 1,250 workers scampered for their lives, most of them hurrying to the stairway that led to the main exit. There, at the bottom, was a folding gate. It was locked.
In panic, the trapped people spun around, rushing back up the steps, colliding with those coming down. It was night. The lights had gone out. Some workers squeezed through windows, shimmying down an outside pipe or chancing a desperate leap.
The rest were caught in a human knot on the dark stairs, arms pushing, mouths screaming, hearts pounding. Some people fell and were trampled. That is how nearly all of the fire's 52 victims died, their final breaths stomped out of them on the hard concrete of the teeming steps. Most were young women. Ten were children.
What Bangladesh has to offer the global economy is some of the world's cheapest labor — and what this impoverished nation has received in return is the economic boost of a $4.3 billion apparel industry, the fuller pockets that come with 1.5 million jobs and the horrors that arise from 3,300 inadequately regulated garment factories, some of which are among the worst sweatshops ever to taunt the human conscience.
"We still suffer from the legacy of the colonial days," said one factory owner, Muhammad Saidur Rehman. "We consider the workers to be our slaves, and this belief is made all the easier by a supply of labor that is endlessly abundant."
[Full text: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/world/15BANG.html?pagewanted=1]
Carl
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