Contractors Saying No to Apparel Companies Helps Apparel Companies

The European companies seeking to improve factory conditions in Bangladesh are facing resistance from the factory owners who are heavily invested in the current system, politically powerful, and don’t care about dead workers. We might read this resistance as a sign that there’s really nothing rich world corporations can do about working conditions in nations like Bangladesh. But in fact, these contractors resisting very much helps the multinational corporations. If there’s “nothing they can do” then they can do nothing. Of course there is much they can do. They can refuse to do business with contractors who don’t live up to certain standards. They can also *gasp* run their own factories! I know, this is an unheard of idea in the history of industrial production. But in fact, clothing companies have the ability to directly run an apparel factory. Stopping the current outsourcing system is not without its challenges because the companies have empowered local elites to exploit workers as intensively as possible, but that does not in fact get them off the hook.