Made in Bangladesh - the fifth estate

[Music] this mountain of rubble is a monument to the 1100 lives lost here last April when this garment Factory collapsed in Bangladesh unleashing the stories that had long been locked inside a th000 people died no one said a thing do you recognize these shorts we meet the people who make your clothes and find out where those clothes were made this is your address this is where this came from the truth that retailers don't want you to know been hit been hit been hit do any of you worry that one day you may die in your factory dangerous factories and dark secrets hi I'm Mark Kelly and welcome to the Fifth Estate I'm standing by the rubble of what was once Rana Plaza when the eight-story factory collapsed in April a frantic search for survivors began so too did the search for answers how the world wondered could a disaster like this happen well we joined that search when we learned many of the victims died here making clothes for Canadian consumers along the way we uncovered this Ledger pulled from the rubble and using the information inside here we spent months piecing together clues that would reveal how and where your clothes are being made and what we would also discover is the disaster that happened here was no accident fashion is built on an image of beauty Glamour and style Creations that not only make you look good but feel good close without a conscience the reality of the fashion industry is far less glamorous a reality Canadian retailers don't want you to know about it's known as the race to the bottom where the cheapest prices win a race that created fast fashion and that's why today many of your clothes bear the label made in Bangladesh it was that glamour of the fashion industry that spoke to sjit senic even as a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Toronto I'm from a South Asian family my father is a doctor um and they wanted me to sort of Follow that follow that path um I was super creative so it was a way for me to say Hey listen there's a job for me it's an actual commercial career he went to Couture school and turned a dream into a dream job designing for Christian Dior and Balenciaga in Paris it was like a fish finding a pond it gave me a way out uh a way to you know lead my own life it gave me my freedom and uh it gave me everything but the growing popularity and increasing demand for fast fashion led him back to Toronto to design $20 blouses for Walmart instead of Paris his fashion Focus was Bangladesh there was a natural flow towards Bangladesh because of of fast fashion in the last in the last 10 years and trying to get trying to get clothes cheaper and cheaper but I think when the recession hit I think people just ran for the price it was you know it was Mecca it was Mecca but the road to Mecca decimated Canada's garment industry from 2001 to 2010 75,000 jobs were lost here many deep rooted manufacturers had a stark choice move or close my great-grandfather was a rag dealer he used to go from sherbrook to Montreal uh in a horse and buggy buying Rags uh from the farmers Barry laxer family has been in the Garment business in Montreal and Toronto for three generations but he was forced to pack it all up for Price my single largest customer that at the time in Canada accounted for over 50% of our volume told us that to continue doing business we needed to find a lower cost uh manufacturing base somewhere else and That Was Bangladesh it turned out to be Bangladesh companies around the world were now beating a path to Bangladesh from H&M to Walmart Nike and the Gap Barry laxer joined that garment Gold Rush today his company radical designs runs two factories outside DACA the capital of Bangladesh at least half the machines in this Factory all came from Canada we had like 80 containers of Machinery that came here and just rushed it over here to do business oh we just Lo wasn't doing anything in Toronto now he employs more than a thousand people and he pays them three times the minimum wage when you own a packer nothing is bad better than walking through it and seeing it fold and busy and busy yeah hey build Quint Empire here Barry what's the Allure for companies to come to Bangladesh the only real Allure is is Labor uh the workers will work for wages that most countries won't because there's no alternative working for next to nothing is better than working for nothing in real terms next to nothing is $38 a month or 24 an hour the lowest garment worker wage on the planet the floodgates for Canadian businesses opened when Ottawa dropped import duties from Bangladesh in 2003 Canadian companies like Lululemon HBC and Walmart Canada climbed aboard the Bangladeshi bandwagon the result Imports grew by 68 % some say the front runner in the race to the bottom was L Blah's brand Joe Fresh these tv ads show the appeal of its cheap and cheerful kids clothing line the brand has bounced its way to one of the top spots in the children's wear Market in Canada speaking to the CBC in 2010 the company president said he's just giving consumers what they want they wanted fashion and they wanted fashion that would play across the country and they needed it at amazing price points Joseph mimran was now a fast Fashion Icon but just how low could prices go well look at this TV ad for Walmart clearly the lower the better now more Styles and more stylish all at unbelievable prices exclusively at Walmart for designers like sujit senic Beauty took a back seat to price what was the pressure that was put on you to make cheaper and cheaper clothes price is the starting point it's it's everything it was down to you got six buttons on your shirt take it down to five can we take it down to four senic says he felt the pressure from retailers to cut costs and so did the factory owners they can't say no to to 100,000 units that means a very long time that the factory is going to be sitting idle if they don't get that that order so they needed you they need you they need you and you know at the end of the day you know that's not my decision but like um I started wondering Mark I really started wondering how is it possible for clothing to be made at these low prices it's a good question because while price was the priority there were signs worker safety was not in the decade before ra Plaza hundreds of people died in Factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh tragedy after tragedy year after year and no one in Canada seemed to notice that changed on the morning of April 24th when the eight-story Rana Plaza collapsed more than 11 100 people were killed hundreds are still missing believed to be buried in the rubble tell me about what happened when you learned about Rana Plaza it was like if you if you start having nightmares and then they become real that was what what what Rana Plaza was for me the search for Survivor seem to drag on and on sujit remembers being called into one particular meeting after the collapse where prophets were put ahead of people we were in a room full of people when we were told that we were connected and no one said anything about a th000 people a th000 people died no one said a thing they didn't they didn't say anything about them they just talked about their the loss in terms of units how are they going to make up their margins people were talking about that and I sat there I said nothing shame on me Walmart was just one of dozens of companies that had used Rana Plaza at the time of the collapse the biggest Factory in the building was making clothes for Joe Fresh their pink and red pants were found in the rubble along with the bodies of the workers who made [Music] them one week after the collapse Joseph mimran and lbla chairman gayen Weston faced the glare of the media this has been uh quite a tragic event um and it's something that has touched all of our hearts it's been u a very difficult uh weak for everybody I'm troubled that despite a clear commitment to the highest standards of ethical sourcing our company can still be part of such an unspeakable tragedy but just how deep was that commitment to ethical sourcing what did Canadian companies know about how their clothes were being made in Bangladesh and what did they do to find out sujit wanted to find the TRU so he made a lifechanging decision and quit his job I thought I don't want to be a part of this anymore I can't be a part of this so I I I stopped when we come back sujit's Journey are we sending people to factories knowing that there's a huge danger and a teenage garment worker who survived the collapse [Music] W welcome to the wild west of the global garment industry Bangladesh has one of the world's densest populations political instability and worldclass Corruption and since the '90s the economy has grown by double digits fueled by fast fashion factories sit unfinished just waiting for new floors to be added to accomodate new business and every morning scenes like this play out through the capital DACA as 4 million garment workers quietly file into work they carry with them the memories of RA Plaza wondering if a tragedy like this could happen to [Music] them the Rana collapse put sujit senic on a mission the former fashion designer from Walmart Canada now wanted to learn the truth about how the clothes he designed were made I had to find out for myself is this what my my industry has been doing are we doing this on purpose are we sending people to factories knowing that there's a huge danger sujit traveled with us to Bangladesh first stop a residential neighborhood in Dhaka an unlikely backdrop for the deadliest accident in the Garment industry before Rana Plaza this is tazarine it's massive November 2012 Fire broke out in the tazarine fashion factory a 9-story building though the owner only had a permit for three stories there were no fire escapes many doors were blocked by boxes windows were barred shut months before the Blaze the Factory's fire safety certificate had been revoked most of the 112 victims here were burned alive when the tazarine factory fire happened I was horrified all these fingers were pointing all everywhere and no one was saying they listen Maybe maybe we might have just a little bit to do with this wmart did indeed have something to do with this Factory their Faded Glory shorts were pulled From the Ashes the company tried to distance itself from the tragedy insisting tazin was not an authorized Walmart Factory there's bars on every single window how are these people supposed to get out of here there's no [Music] escaping I wonder for you CG what what does this building what is this a symbol of to you I think it's shame we should be ashamed of ourselves to let something like this happen how is it possible that people didn't know that this Factory was built this way this woman emerged from the crowd the curious to tell us her story how workers knocked out a ventilation fan and how she survived by jumping three stories to the ground will you ever work again will you ever have another job now after your injuries here how am I supposed to work I'm afraid to work and no one wants to take me I cannot sit or lie down for a long time I get better when I take medicine but when I don't it's painful with few prospects she appears as disposable as the fast fashion she once made here this could been one of my prints you know snake skins in there it is you know could have been a shirt a dress is it that important that you have to Bar people into a building to to meet our deadlines it's not not for me it's disgusting so how did Walmart's clothes end up at such a dangerous Factory and in investigation by Walmart concluded one of its suppliers subcontracted part of the order to tazrin without their permission but how hard would it be for Canadian retailers to find out where their clothes are being made we wanted to find out so we bought a Walmart shirt in Canada that suit had designed shipping records led us to a factory on the outskirts of daaka the record names the factory Hassan tanir Walmart publishes a list of banned factories in Bangladesh factories that have failed the company's Audits and this Factory has been on that list since June we made repeated requests to visit the factory but it wasn't until we showed up with our camera that the manager would even talk to us hi I'm my name is Mark I'm from Canada yeah Canadian television how are you okay I'm fine great we want to see where our clothes are being made and how they're being made and that's why we came over here I want to go inside and visit but he wouldn't let us in instead he passed us off to another manager have you made this here we have a shipping record here that shows that it was made here Hassan tan fashion this is your address this is where this came from [Music] hello he says he's never seen this before doesn't recognize it despite the fact that we've got the shipping record right here that shows it was in fact made right there at Hen 10er fashion wees Walmart puts it this way they do make shirts here but not our shirt in fact 3 months after black listing this Factory Walmart admits they are still making clothes here one last order they say since we couldn't get in to meet the workers then we would take sujit to meet them at home after work this entire area here everyone who lives here Works in a garment Factory it's like a compound of garment Factory workers so we're going to go and meet some of them tonight okay and here they are tonight oh wow these are nine people who work at the factory right they asked us to hide their faces fearing they'd lose their jobs simp for talking to us I want to know who are you making garments for now inside the factory can can we hear that there's some problems working inside Hassan tanir we've heard reports that there was a fire at the factory recently can they tell us what happened when the fire really started to spread all the workers started to protest they broke the gates and escaped they didn't want to let us out let us out they just want to turn off the lights and keep us in there and say sit down shut up and work do any of you worry that one day you may die in your factory of course of course and it happens all the time it happens regularly yeah it's happen all the time every few days there is a fire I want to know if if you recognize this shirt if any of you recognize having made this shirt over the past few months is this something that you made in the factory we showed them sujit shirt that we bought in Canada yeah it's from the fifth floor I made it when I used to work on the fifth floor so she she worked on this garment yes I designed this garment I Drew this garment okay look I did this you put these two pieces together so you put the sleeve in thank you how do you feel meeting the woman who made your design I'm grateful to meet you I wanted to meet you um it's nice to finally be able to see you and and tell you that I I think that you should have a better [Music] life coming up why were Joe Fresh clothes being made in the death trap that was raana Plaza we go inside a prison in Bangladesh looking for [Music] answers every piece of clothing we wear has a silent story stitched into it the story of who made it and [Music] where when ranana Plaza collapsed in April those stories came spilling out so did the clothes from the ill- fated Factory ever make it to Canada well we visited six stores in the Toronto area with a hidden camera 3 months after the ROP Plaza collapse we found clothes made in Plaza in store after store so I have a question but you wouldn't know it by asking the sales associates there was really like there was really only one product that we were making in that particular Factory it was like this line of pants that we did we never ended up getting them like obviously like we just like got rid of it and everything it's doubtful that it was from that factory last stuff that was made in that place never even made it here L's own shipping records reveal all all these Styles hundreds of thousands of garments were made in Rana Plaza before the collapse and sold in Joe Fresh stores this [Music] summer so how did closeth for Joe Fresh end up being made in the death trap that was Rana Plaza well that's a question we had for the factory owner the problem is he's Behind Bars charged with negligence in the deaths of the workers so The Fifth Estate petitioned the BNG adesi government for permission to speak with him the government eventually agreed but with one condition our camera would not be allowed inside the [Music] prison as public outrage grew after the collapse basas Adan surrendered to police his three factories occupied almost half of Rana Plaza we arrived at daaka Central Jail where he's awaiting trial he began our interview saying how he had parlayed an $8,000 loan from his dad had in 1992 and turned it into a $15 million a year business thanks in large part to his best customer Joe Fresh Joe Fresh was my biggest client about $6 million a year that's why I was going bigger he says he was eager to please his biggest client so work had begun on ra Plaza to add a ninth floor for his booming business I asked whether he was under pressure to make clothes cheaper and faster everybody is doing this they all squeezed me but joof frish was a very good customer their policy was just ship it on time before my time was up for the interview I asked him to name one lbl employee who had ever visited his Factory at Rana Plaza before the collapse he couldn't this Ledger helps explain how that could happen from the entries here we learned la blah place orders with a buying house in India called House of pearl who in turn placed Joe Fresh orders with the factory at Rana Plaza House of pearl we learned hired inspectors to check the quality of the clothes made in R Plaza but not to inspect Building Safety Outsourcing ethical responsibility to third parties enables companies like lbla to distance themselves from the work being done on the ground according to our Canadian Factory owner Barry laxer you know after Rana Plaza happened all these retailers were saying well we didn't know I mean is that true that they not know what's going on in this country a lot of companies just want cheap manufacturing so they don't really look um or ask the tough questions or ask the questions because it's if you don't ask the questions you don't get the answers that you don't want to hear was the ranana plaza collaps was this was this a wakeup call I mean do you really believe it's going to change anything here I think in the end a lot of companies are really just look are continuing just to look for margin and cost and and ultimately that's why that's why they're here right that's why they're here look if they if that if that wasn't the issue they could be they could be buying product made in the United States or Canada we wanted to know more about the working conditions inside R Plaza who better to tell us than the people who work there after the collapse cameras captured this footage of survivors recovering in hospital we were intrigued by this girl who was trapped in the rubble for 3 Days pinned under two dead bodies she lost her mother as well as her leg both mother and daughter were making clothes for Joe Fresh [Music] months after the collapse we finally found her her name is arudi she tells us she's 17 though her grandmother says she's really 15 a kid making kids clothes for Canadians do you recognize these shorts like these shorts yeah these pant were there she sewed pocket seams 150 Pockets an hour how do you feel when when you look at those pants up I feel sad if I didn't work in that factory this would not have happened I feel very bad seeing these pants she says she's been working in the industry for 3 years meaning she started when she was just 12 like many women in Bangladesh she felt it was her only hope when I was little I thought I would grow up go to school study and have a job if you study you have a job a doctor a teacher you can have any job but I couldn't do it because I'm poor I have to work to eat that's why I wanted to garment work whatever a Rudy shift was punishing 12 hours a day 7 days a week and when a rush order was placed overtime was demanded how did your bosses treat you and and the other workers if the others didn't know how to do the work they used to yell and swear if I can't work fast enough and meet the target they will swear at me as well I'd feel really bad she also remembers how cracks had been spotted inside Rana Plaza the day before the tragedy the building was evacuated she didn't believe the building owner who insisted everything was safe just hours before the collapse the next day April 24th her boss phoned her at home and ordered her to get back to work or should be fired on that day that they told you to go back to work were you afraid were you worried that that building was dangerous there were many of us who didn't want to go but they forced us they said don't worry nothing will happen if you die we will die too but they didn't go inside they made us start work and then left I was scared but there was nothing I could do if I stopped working the line would stop and I would be in trouble she and her fellow workers returned an hour later the building collapsed arudi was on the sixth floor what do you remember about the the moment the building collapsed when it collapsed I thought I wouldn't survive two dead bodies fell on my leg and my leg was stuck there the roof fell on top of the bodies I didn't know then that I would actually come out alive her family received some compensation from the government for the death of her mother and the loss of her leg when asked what she received from lbla she told us she's still hoping when we come back we expose an even uglier side of the fashion industry in Bangladesh hit hit after the collapse of Rana Plaza the Bangladeshi government scrambled to to assure nervous retailers and consumers that the country was a safe place to do business but even lobl who had been making Joe Fresh clothes in this country for 7 years wondered how garment workers could be exposed to what it called unacceptable risk so we took a closer look and discovered within 3 hours how easy it was to find the ugly side of fast fashion a factory dumping technicolored Wastewater directly into a [Music] river a river that now runs black then we saw a Jude Factory with an open door that caught our Eye Inside the air was thick with dust dust from a toxic dye yet no one here wore a mask within minutes we were kicked out by the owner and his thugs Del finally we went into one last factory with a hidden camera you very good Factory have Loom everything in at one place and found these children operating looms one manager admitted some Factory owners hire kids under the age of 10 for menial jobs and pay them about a dollar a day the Garment industry has made some people in this country fabulously rich but poverty is still everywhere you look some of the poorest are these squatters who live next to the railway tracks in the shadow of wealth this gleaming Tower is home to the bgmea that's the business group that represents the titans of the Garment industry in Bang [Applause] we arrived to find a thousand angry workers protesting outside they say they haven't been paid by their employer in a month they work for a factory that until last fall made clothes for Canadians so what happened sh sh you been hit you been hit you've been hit you been hit who did this who did this who the owners hired gangsters yes gang and the gangsters came out and what were you doing you were just protesting you were protesting because you wanted your your back wages you wanted your pay and you make you make clothes for Canada yes we had some questions for the powerful head of the Garment industry the top man Canadian retailers deal with a Islam is a prominent Factory owner in his own right he's made clothes for Walmart Canada lbla and HBC between I asked him about the protest outside his window this is completely open industry if you don't like there you can go the other work there we have a 25% worker shortage in the industry still today working in other words if workers are abused his advice quit and work somewhere else when I ask him about the bad factories we saw the child labor the pollution the dangerous working conditions he wasn't alarmed a lot of factories of the state of the art we've seen the nice ones we've seen the stateof the art we're seeing the example of where the industry is moving yes but you're you're at a point right now where there's some shining examples so for that sometimes the shin is covered by The Cloud of these kind of things so we need to uh clean the cloud but what about a legal subcontracting when one Factory gives orders to another without approval if the factories have the overbooked they must say no I'm overbooked and as well as the from the outside also the retailer side also but you're you're a businessman are they are they really going to say I'm over booked and I can't take the business everybody wants the bus no no it's not like that it is not like that things are completely changed it is not like that we had spoken with some sources who worked for Walmart Canada they placed an order with your group mhm and they said said that that order then ended up being made at a factory that was not approved Hassan tanir hassanan remember that Walmart shirt well we had some questions about who exactly made it take a look we showed it to the workers there and they said yep they made it just very difficult for me to know this whether I'm making a this number one and number two there's no way that we're giving the goods to outside there absolutely no way our all garments has made in our Factory but Walmart told us Mr Islam did indeed have the contract to make sujit's shirt but at his own Factory not Hassan tanir thank you okay thank you I'll take that you don't need that can I just I just want to see this one you just have it sit and absolutely and then something extraordinary happened after our interview wrapped up look in the background as Mr Islam conceals the Garment behind his desk with a pen in [Music] hand after we left we noticed the tag on the shirt had been defaced the BARC code and the Canadian import number that could connect this shirt to a tikle Islam's company were blacked out we asked him the next day if he did it he denied it as for lbla and Joe Fresh the Canadian company insists it will help lead the way to clean up the industry in Bangladesh our industry can be a force for good properly inspected well-built factories play important role in the development of countries such as Bangladesh did lbla properly inspect R Plaza before the collapse they say they did visit the factory so why were they still making clothes there well that's what we wanted to ask Joe mimran but we were told he wasn't available for an interview I'm troubled by the deafening Silence from other apparel retailers on this issue and while lbla CEO gayen Weston publicly criticizes other companies for their deafening silence he declined to be interviewed for this story lla did send us an email outlining their efforts to help workers in Bangladesh they say since the collapse they've contributed a million dollar to two Charities and joined a compliance Accord with other retailers aimed at improving working conditions in Bangladesh and the company will now put boots on the ground somewhere in the region to inspect factories but there's another way Canadian Factory owner Barry laxer wanted a safe Factory so he built one it's run by a Canadian team and he visits it regularly but what are the effects then of paying that cheapest possible price in in a country like Bangladesh sooner or later there'll be another ROP Plaza it's just a matter of time sooner or later there'll be another fire somewhere uh that will claim more lives because Bangladesh is just the floor and the testing ground for how cheap products can be [Music] sold before former Walmart designer suit senic left Bangladesh we had one more stop to make there's one last thing I wanted to show you before you go this is where Rana Plaza once stood oh my God there's nothing left there are people walking around in Canada wearing clothes that were made by these people who died here this is kind of a monument to Greed this is a product of the race to the bottom so what are consumers to do boycott clothes made in Bangladesh the jobs are pulling millions of women out of poverty like a Rudy who despite her loss knows she has to go back to work especially now that her mother is gone and she'll have to support her younger sisters and her grandmother do you want to go back and work inside a garment Factory now that if I wanted to work in the factory it's not possible to walk back and forth and go up up and down the stairs I can't do it yet that's the issue now I will be able to go back but I'm [Music] afraid well after watching tonight's episode you may be wondering more about the clothes you buy and how they were made well for some of the brands and lines of clothing that we mention on tonight's program you can find out more information by going to our website that's at cbc.ca and of course we'll continue to update that website with developments on this story in the weeks and months ahead stay with us we'll be right back after this

Channel: CBC News

Views: 987,805

Keywords: Bangladesh (Country), News (TV Genre), Rana Plaza Factory Collapse, CBC Television (TV Network), CBC News (Website Owner), Mark Kelley, The Fifth Estate (Award-Winning Work)

Id: onD5UOP5z_c

Length: 42min 41sec (2561 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 03 2014