Bangladesh Supply Chain

On April 24th 2013 tragedy struck the garment district in Bangladesh. An 8-story building called the Rana Plaza Building suddenly collapsed killing over a thousand and injuring more than 2,500. Weeks later when the last victim was pulled from the rubble the death toll stood at 1,129 killed. It is the largest disaster in Bangladesh’s history within the garment industry.

Many fingers can be pointed at who is to blame but a more pertinent question is why did this happen. There are many reasons why the building collapsed and the reasons pile onto one another. The initial construction of the building itself is the first reason. When constructing the building it “was constructed with substandard materials and in blatant disregard for building codes,” according to the New York Times. Adding to the already unstable building, the New York Times states that its owner “Mr. Rana illegally constructed upper floors to house garment factories.” Mr. Rana’s next course of action was adding generators due to an unstable electricity supply in the area. These generators whenever turned on “would shake the poorly constructed building.”

However, there are other angles to add into the “why” question. American and European retailers outsourced their labor to Bangladesh in an effort to keep their costs low and provide consumers with their constant need for low-cost fashion apparel. One could argue that it’s also these large corporations, seeking a high profit within consumer demand that should share part of the blame. Once the companies found a contractor essentially any oversight as to where the garments were made, the conditions, which they were made, were blatantly ignored. Due to some contractors issuing subcontracts, the large corporations lost any notion of even where their clothes were being manufactured. Furthermore, companies ordering their products from Bangladesh didn’t do independent audits for the safety of the workers, the general building safety, etc…

While it...