horrendous disasters that have taken the lives of almost 2,000 workers in bangladesh, the cost will be less than 10 cents per garment to these brands and retailers. and you know, i understand consumers seek low prices, i don t think any consumer has ever called up gap or walmart and said i d like you to shave ten cents off the cost of a shirt and i don t care if you have to kill people to do it. it s ten cents, you spent ten more cents on a piece of clothing in bangladesh. you could prevent disasters like the ones that just happened. the retailers have weathered over the years, these sort of protests against places like walmart and gap over working conditions overseas. light up and then i think they feel you know what, you wait a little while and go away. i m curious why you think this one s going to be different. why they won t be able to wait you out this time. that s why this agreement is so important. you re keying on exactly the crucial dynamic. normally companies make promi
what makes stouffer s meatloaf best of all? that moment you enjoy it at home. stouffer s. made with care, for you or your family. this morning, garment factories reopened in the capital city of bangladesh after three days of protests over working conditions and wages. last month, more than 1,000 workers died when a factory building collapsed, burying them in rubble. joining us from washington is executive director of the workers rights consortium, scott nova. scott, thanks for joining us. happy to be here. scott, what, let s talk first about this agreement around factory safety that a lot of companies have signed on, international companies. is it going to be effective? the critical thing to understand about this agreement, is it is not the usual promises from corporations. that they can easily break. as soon as the media focus shifts elsewhere. this is a binding contract. between major global apparel
a day before the collapse, an inspection team asked the owner to keep the building closed after they aidentified cracks on the wall. despite this, workers were told to come their factories the next morning. hours later, the building collapsed. the search to find the bodies amid the rubble took nearly three weeks and the scene was so deadly, that the stench of decomposing bodies forced workers to conduct the search with masks and air fresheners, the garment work done in ranna plaza in bangladesh puts low-priced clothes on lots of americans backs. it has the lowest minimum wage in the world. $37 a month. the new yorker s james zarwicki argues that western companies and consumers are the ones with blood on their hands, writing the problem isn t so much evil factory owners, is a system that s great at getting western consumers what they want, but leaves developing world workers toilg in misery. this time instead of going on with business as usual, the
world s leading apparel companies are signing on to a pact. h & m and zahra have committed money to help enforce safety standards and enforce factory inspections. but according to the washington post nearly all u.s. clothing chains citing the fear of litigation, declined to sign an international pact, potentially weakening what had been hailed as the best hope for bringing major reforms in low-wage factories in bangladesh. the gap, walmart, target and jcpenney have been pressured by labor groups, but have yet to sign. giving new meaning to american exceptionalism. american companies may want to increase profits and american citizens may enjoy your cheap t-shirts but when your labels have been found amid bodies that have been crushed to death we should save room in the profit margin for safety. we ll discuss more when scott nova from the workers rights
united states. they re not worried about litigation. zara, the world s largest fashion retailer, they re not worried about litigation. the bottom line is gap and walmart don t want to make a meaningful commitment to pay what it takes to stop workers from dying in their factories in bangladesh and what s going to change that is tremendous grassroots pressure and i think that s exactly what these companies are going to see. scott, i want to open it up to our panel in new york. melissa, we talked about there are a host of issues that confront consumers. and there are a host of issues that affect american workers and we rarely talk about them. part of the reason we started talking about the bangladesh factory is a, because of the death toll. and b, the fact that there isn t a lot of attention paid to the after-effects, what can be done to prevent something like this from ever happening again. same with the factory explosion of west, texas. we were focused on boston, but there s a situation