The rise, demise and replacement of the Bangladesh experiment in transnational labour regulation

Abstract

Five years after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in 2013 – a disaster that killed 1,133 garment workers – the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a multi‐stakeholder programme designed to set labour standards for the garment industry, was terminated by Bangladesh's highest court. Widely hailed as a promising example of transnational regulation, the Accord was never successfully institutionalized locally. On the basis of archival and ethnographic work in Bangladesh, the author suggests that, although the Accord successfully upgraded factory safety standards, its failure to build widespread support among local employers, workers and the Government led to its termination and replacement.

Transnational Representation in Global Labour Governance and the Politics of Input Legitimacy

“…NGOs presented themselves as transmitters of workers’ own demands into global discourses to build legitimacy around their claims and enhance their reputation as “authentic” claim makers. Moreover, rather than focussing on Bangladeshi institutions or employers (Kang, 2021), this representative claim is directed at where greatest attention can be generated: brands and their consumers.…”

Labour Rights from Labour Wrongs? Transnational Compensation and the Spatial Politics of Labour Rights after Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza Garment Factory Collapse

“…A noteworthy feature of the Accord is that it makes the participating companies contractually liable for safety in the factories from which they source. Designed to be a transnational solution to the failures of national safety regulation, the Accord was widely criticised in Bangladesh for bypassing government institutions and intruding on national sovereignty, and has since been taken over by a local consortium that includes national employers’ associations (Kang 2021; Saxena 2020).…”

Social Protection as Technocratic Fix?: Labour Precarity and Crises of Capitalism after Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza Collapse

“…Rana Plaza's collapse, and the vociferous protests that kept it in the media spotlight, created space for new initiatives in Bangladesh that emphasize greater legal enforceability and respect for internationally-recognized rights (Bair et al, 2020;Kang, 2021;Saxena, 2020;Vanpeperstraede, 2021). George Tsogas (2020) identifies the difference between labor governance and regulation: governance is concerned with "soft" forms of corporate selfmonitoring, private audits, and codes of conduct, whereas regulation implies enforceability, accountability, and sanctions for breaches.…”

“…The five factories housed in the building, and the companies they produced for, were party to many corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to monitor labor standards. Rana Plaza not only exposed the inadequacies of these voluntaristic approaches, it also ushered in a new era of reforms that sought to develop new mechanisms for enforceable regulation (Kang, 2021;Trebilcock, 2020). Recentering the role of the state, some post-Rana Plaza initiatives emphasized holding corporate actors legally liable in foreign courts-such as the Accord on Fire and Buildings Safety in Bangladesh-whereas others sought to enhance the Bangladesh state's regulatory and social welfare capacity (Bair et al, 2020;Saxena, 2020;Vanpeperstraete, 2021).…”