DHAKA, Bangladesh: Leading global fashion brands and trade unions agreed Thursday to continue a safety program involving thousands of garment factories in Bangladesh for another three years.
Two Switzerland-based global trade unions — IndustriALL Global Union and UNIGlobal Union — and brand representatives announced the agreement in Paris.
The current five-year campaign for fire and building safety expires next May and involves only European brands. Another group of North American brands is working separately to improve safety conditions in Bangladesh.
Following the collapse in 2013 of Rana Plaza, a complex housing five garment factories, global clothing companies joined the Bangladesh government in promising to improve safety standards.
The collapse, which killed more than 1,130 workers and injured 2,500 others, highlighted grim conditions in the country’s garment industry, the second largest in the world with about 4,000 factories employing about 4 million workers and earning $25 billion a year from exports, mainly to the United States and Europe. Low wages in the South Asian country have attracted global apparel brands and retailers.
Since then, representatives from North American and European brands have visited the country’s garment factories to suggest improvements or sever ties with factories that failed to improve.
The Bangladesh government has also hired more than 350 new factory inspectors and passed legislation setting up a workers’ welfare fund and allowing stronger union representation.
As of Thursday morning, 23 companies had signed the new agreement, said Christy Hoffman, deputy general secretary of UNIGlobal Union, which represents workers in the retail sector. But a large majority of the previous signers — 217 brands — are expected to be part of the new deal, which will include more worker training, she said.
The initial agreement covered about 2.5 million workers, Hoffman said.
“It’s a remarkable achievement. Four years ago, we signed this agreement and some of the brands said this could be a one-off agreement only in the aftermath of a big crisis,” Hoffman said in an interview after the Paris announcement. “In fact, we have proven that this is a model that works, that brands and unions can make change at the work site through classical industrial relations.”
The new agreement extends building safety inspections for all covered factories, ensuring that safety improvements achieved under the first accord will be maintained and any new problems will be addressed, IndustriALL General Secretary Valter Sanches said in a statement.
Under the first accord, engineers carried out fire, electrical and structural safety inspections at more than 1,800 factories, identifying 118,500 hazards, of which 79 percent were addressed, Sanches said.
He said the agreement “shows that industrial relations can be used to save lives and improve global supply chains.”
Aleix Gusquets Gonzalez, head of C&A Global’s external stakeholders’ engagement, said 41 percent of the garments sold by the worldwide chain of clothing stores are produced in Bangladesh.
“We need to make sure that our garments are made in decent conditions,” he told AP.
“We don’t think that doing things on our own, on a lone rider approach, will be the way of really solving the (problem). We are talking about endemic issues, issues that have been in our supply chain for a certain period of time and we don’t have the capacity to just remedy it on our own,” he said of the safety issues. “We need to include our natural counterparts and these are the representatives of the workers.”
Jenny Holdcroft, assistant general secretary of IndustriALL, said a key aspect of the Bangladesh accord is putting tools for health and safety improvement in the hands of the workers.
“What they need is tools they can use,” she said during a news briefing. These “give them power inside the factory,” she said, stressing that the new accord further emphasizes the role of workers.
“Only workers, she said, can be “the eyes and ears in a factory.”
World fashion brands, unions agree to extend Bangladesh deal
World fashion brands, unions agree to extend Bangladesh deal
Epstein files reveal links to cash, women, power in Africa
- Documents attest to Epstein’sclose ties with Karim Wade, son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade
- They also reveal his ties to Nina Keita, niece of Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara
PARIS: Jeffrey Epstein built close ties with powerful figures in Senegal and Ivory Coast, files released by the US government last month show, detailing the late sex offender’s influence network across Africa.
Emails, scheduled meetings, investment projects, and loans reviewed by AFP attest to the disgraced New York financier’s close relationship with Karim Wade, son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade.
They also reveal his ties to Nina Keita, niece of Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara.
Wade and Epstein met in 2010 through Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, who recently resigned as CEO of port giant DP World after mounting pressure over his close friendship with Epstein.
The pair quickly struck up a rapport.
“Thanks for coming. I think there are many things to consider... I feel confident that we will have fun,” Epstein wrote to Wade on November 15, 2010 after their first meeting in Paris.
“Have a safe trip back to your paradise Island,” Wade replied.
While Wade’s exchanges show no link to Epstein-related sex trafficking crimes, they do reveal conversations on potential business ventures in various sectors, such as finance and energy.
Nicknamed the “Minister of Heaven and Earth” for the multiple portfolios he held including international cooperation, energy, and air transport, Wade was a powerful figure in Senegal until April 2012, when his father’s bid for a third term sparked deadly riots.
Epstein saw him as “one of the most important players in africa” and invited him to meet close contacts such as Ehud Barak, then Israel’s defense minister.
He also put him in touch with Chinese businessman Desmond Shum to discuss “offshore banking.”
The US Department of Justice documents show Shum and Wade met in Beijing on May 9, 2011.
That same month, Wade planned an African tour through Senegal, Mali, and Gabon for Epstein.
‘You will not suffer’
Epstein and Wade’s relationship became even more apparent after the latter’s fortunes reversed when his father left office in 2012.
That autumn, Epstein proposed that his “friend” — under the Dakar authorities’ scrutiny over his assets — use his house in Florida.
“You and your family are welcome to use my house in palm beach, staff is there, pool etc. you will not suffer,” Epstein wrote.
“Txs a lot Brother for the advise,” Wade replied a few weeks later to another email, in which Epstein urged him to “stay mentally strong.”
Numerous files suggest Epstein became financially involved on Karim Wade’s behalf after his arrest in 2013 and his 2015 sentencing to six years in prison for corruption.
Karim Wade’s lawyer, Mohamed Seydou Diagne, sent two invoices in May 2014 and July 2015 of $500,000 to one of Epstein’s companies.
Contacted by AFP on Monday, Diagne said he “did not consider it useful to comment.”
Other archives suggest that Epstein covered at least $50,000 in fees for the US lobbying firm Nelson Mullins, hired by Wade’s entourage to secure his release.
Epstein regularly exchanged emails with Robert Crowe, a partner at the firm who kept him informed of their efforts in the US and Senegal.
In a June 16, 2016 email thread where Epstein and Crowe discussed whether then Senegalese president Macky Sall would pardon Wade, Crowe writes: “He has told my friends high up at State that he was going to do it. They have been putting pressure on him!“
Karim Wade was released from prison eight days later, on June 24, and went into exile in Qatar, which he credited for efforts toward his release.
Jeffrey Epstein was told by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem and Nina Keita.
‘A very interesting person!’
The DOJ documents show Nina Keita was close to both Epstein and Karim Wade and that she acted as a regular intermediary while Wade was in prison.
Keita also helped put Epstein in contact with her uncle, president of Ivory Coast since May 2011, and his team.
“He thought you were a very interesting person! ... they were all very happy to have you here,” she wrote on January 20, 2012, after the financier’s visit to Abidjan.
She had booked him the “ministerial suite” of the luxury Hotel Ivoire for that trip.
Ahead of the visit, Epstein had said he hoped to see “very pretty girls there, as well as interesting places.”
“You will!” Keita replied.
Emails show Keita, a former model, at least once sent photos and the phone number of a young woman to Epstein.
He then met this woman at the Ritz hotel in Paris on August 31, 2011.
“ask sadia to send pictures of her sister. i prefer under 25,” Epstein wrote to Keita after the meeting.
Now the deputy general director of Ivorian petroleum stocks company GESTOCI, Keita also appears in a February 2019 will in which Epstein requested that debts owed to him by a number of people be canceled upon his death.
AFP received no response to its requests for comment from both Keita and the Ivorian presidency, or from Karim Wade, who was contacted through his entourage.
The mere mention of a person’s name in the Epstein files does not in itself imply wrongdoing.
