I am highly skeptical of the real motives here, but I am glad Wal-Mart is publicly calling for improved worker safety in Bangladesh. That said, it’s pretty clear that a) Wal-Mart could play a far more active role in the conditions of the workers who make its goods than it actually does and b) this […]
Tag: bangladesh
There’s no question that one lesson from the fertilizer explosion in West, Texas is that we need much harsher fines and criminal statutes against corporations when workers die, as well as the re
I was on the Alternet Radio Hour with Joshua Holland on Saturday, talking Texas, Bangladesh, and my joyous past with right-wingers trying to get me fired. Turns out the more I do this kind of thing, t
M.T. Anderson has an excellent essay placing the tragedy in Bangladesh, now with over 400 dead, into its proper historical context Again and again we see the same pattern, which stretches back to the original hiring of rural New England girls to operate the first spinning and weaving machines. The girls were delighted, for the […]
Turns out that Bangladeshi workers do make choices for themselves outside of theoretical “choices” about working dangerous jobs. In fact, they choose to engage in massive protests after ov
Matt Yglesias had an odd response to my post yesterday calling for American corporations to be held to American labor standards no matter where in the world they site their plants or whether they subc
We don’t hear too many stories anymore like last week’s fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, where the death toll has now risen to 15. This is because we have outsourced our industrial risk to Asia and Latin America. An 8-story building containing a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh has collapsed, killing at least 87 […]
Within American labor history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire is a touchstone moment. That tragedy led directly to a spate of workplace safety laws and building regulations. In the longer term, it helpe