JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Tomorrow, women and workers will be out in force around the world to demand justice for the Rana Plaza workplace disaster, in which 1,100 mostly women workers died.

Survivors of history's deadliest factory collapse, still seeking justice after two years, will be joining with other Bangladesh workers tomorrow to commemorate the anniversary of the massacre and demand that the surviving workers and families receive the reparations they have been promised. They will form a human chain in Dhaka, visit the site of the factory and leave flowers at the graves of the victims.

When on April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza textile factory (used by brands like Gap, Benetton, and Mango) collapsed in the worst textile factory disaster in the history of the world, it came as a surprise to few. 80% of export profits in Bangladesh come from the readymade clothing industry, which demands intensive exploitation and fast production. Before the factory collapse, factory supervisors had ordered workers back into the factory, despite cracks that began to appear in the walls. 1,100 died and 2,500 were injured in the collapse.

When workers and Rana Plaza survivors rose up in Bangladesh in protests that lasted for months, Bangladesh began to implement workplace safety regulations, minimum wage increases and protection of workers' right to unionize—particularly crucial for the 4 million textile sector workers, most of them women.

But according to research by Human Rights Watch, today, less than 10% of factories are unionized in the country. Workers in Bangladesh face widespread physical abuse as well as wage theft and late pay, particularly targeted at workers who try to unionize. Sexualized violence against women workers is common.

The survivors of Rana Plaza are still waiting for companies that made their profits from the exploitation at Rana Plaza to keep their promises. Although companies implicated in the collapse promised to contribute a certain amount of reparations to the survivors, the companies have not paid in to the fund. As a result, survivors have only received around 40% of payments. It took a signature campaign of one million to convince Benetton to pay its share last Friday.

An international campaign aims to target the companies that have not yet paid in to the fund tomorrow, with actions planned for cities around the world, including New York, London and Istanbul.

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