Bangladesh- 100 plus workers burnt to death. Walmart again?

Murdered in the quest for profits

Over 100 people died in a fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh over the weekend. At least 111 people died and scores of others are missing or injured. Bangladesh is the second largest exporter of clothing after China. Since 2006 more than 500 workers have died in fires in Bangladesh according to Clean Clothes Campaign an anti-sweat shop group based in Amsterdam. The industry employs more than three million workers in Bangladesh, most of them women.

Outfits like Walmart, Tommy Hilfiger and Gap get clothing produced in these sweat shop death traps. A spokesperson for the Clean Clothes Campaign says that these profit addicted companies "have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps. "Their failure to take action amounts to criminal negligence."

This factory where all these workers died had sales of $35 million a year. Fire officials said they were killed because there were not enough fire exits. The managing director of the Tuba Group, which ran Tazreen Fashions which ran the factory, said he was too busy to comment. Then in an astounding statement he said: "Pray for me," and hung up. Not pray  for the dead workers, not for the burnt and suffering workers, but pray for him the managing director. As we say on this blog again and again capitalism and its dirty profit addicted degenerates are much worse than you could ever imagine. Yes pray for him. It is something else he needs.

But these degenerates are not only owners of Bangladeshi factories. Documents found at the site showed that the factory produced clothing for Walmarts Faded Glory line. The dirty degenerate Walton family have their fingers in this too. As the drive to organize Walmart develops in the US links must be built with workers in other countries who are working in sweat shop conditions and death traps over seas. The Walton family which has wealth equal to at least the lower income 30% of the US population are making their billions off the US low paid workers and also the even lower paid Bangladeshi workers. A united drive to bring this Walmart and its poverty wages to its knees must be launched.

The workers, mainly women, in the Bangladesh factory were getting $37 a month. They have been demanding an increase. A union organizer, Aminul Islam, who campaigned for better working conditions and higher wages, was found tortured and killed outside Dhaka last year. Sweat shop conditions, mass deaths by burning because of lack of safety conditions, the torture and murder of organizers fighting for better wages and safety. This is what lies at the heart of the US clothing industry and its cheap clothes in its garish malls.

Sean