Another example of the high cost of low prices - in lives
Last edited Mon Nov 26, 2012, 12:04 PM - Edit history (1)
Those low prices at WalMart do not come as a result of happy elves in cozy Northpole workshops working amidst candy cane pillars and leisurely hot cocoa breaks with fresh baked cookies made by Mrs. Claus.
Those low prices result from other people being exploited and even killed in other countries, keeping their wages at a poverty level, and artificially forcing down our compensation for hard work here too.
It is an illusion which is a kind of shell game, a trick, that puts money in the pockets of the rich, but ultimately takes that money out of our pockets too... and which kills people in foreign countries. We used to have these kinds of tragedies in the United States, before we improved our own labor standards, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire back in 1911.
News accounts indicate that when the fire broke out, and workers wanted to leave, they were ordered back to work, and prevented from evacuating before the fire advanced. That was reported in the 1911 fire as well; and in both fires, women jumped to their deaths when they could not escape the flames.
Shouldn't we have come further than this in 101 years?
A hundred and one years later......we haven't learned from those mistakes, or we have forgotten how bad it is when labor is paid to little, valued too little, exploited and treated as expendable, which is what this is. The people who died in this fire are human beings, every bit as much as those American women who died in 1911. We need to find the same outrage in our hearts for these people. That outrage, to be sincere, means not participating in the exploitation of low prices that come at this cost in human life and suffering. Don't trust the assurances that these factories are safe or humane; they are not. They are not paid fairly, they work in horrible and unsafe conditions, men, women and children, but especially women.
from CBS news and the AP:
Bangladesh fire kills 112 at Wal-Mart supplier
Garment factory had received 'medium risk' assessment in 2011
A fire engulfed a garment factory outside Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, trapping many workers and killing at least 112 people in the building without emergency exits.
Authorities said the fire started on the ground floor late Saturday and spread upward, cutting off staircases and preventing workers' escape. Some survivors were rescued from the eight-storey building's roof.
The building was a factory operated by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a subsidiary of the Tuba Group, which supplies Wal-Mart, Ikea and other major retailers in the U.S. and Europe.
An army employee inspects the burnt interior of the factory in Savar.An army employee inspects the burnt interior of the factory in Savar. (Andrew Biraj/Reuters)By Sunday morning, firefighters had recovered 100 bodies, fire department Operations Director Maj. Mohammad Mahbub told The Associated Press. He said another 12 people who had suffered injuries after jumping from the building to escape the fire later died at hospitals. The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said.
Local media reported that up to 124 people were killed in the fire. The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, and authorities have ordered an investigation.
Army soldiers and paramilitary border guards were deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered at the scene, Mahbub said. He would not say how many people were still missing.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/11/25/bangladesh-garment-factory-fire.html
