apparel manufacturing industry has declined by more than 80 percent in the last two decades, from about 900,000 to 150,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bangladesh is currently the third-largest apparel importer to the United States, after China and Vietnam. It's now one of the largest apparel exporters in the world, second only to China (which still far outpaces any other nation in exports, but has lost a good deal of contracts to Bangladesh, where production costs are even cheaper). Since the 1990s, Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry has exploded, and now generates close to $20 billion a year in exports. There's a good chance at least some of them were made in Bangladesh.
Take a quick look at the tags on your clothing. Making clothes in Bangladesh costs less than just about anywhere else in the world. Labor and production costs are dirt cheap. Just the year before, 112 garment workers were killed in a factory fire near Dhaka, when supervisors ignored fire alarms and prevented workers from leaving their sewing machines. This was the deadliest industrial disaster in Bangladesh’s history, but certainly not the only one in recent memory. Even after large cracks were found in the walls the day before the disaster, factory supervisors – under pressure to fill orders - ignored warnings to vacate the building, and ordered workers to continue production.
Rana Plaza, the building near Dhaka that collapsed, was owned by a local politician who illegally built three additional floors onto the structure and installed heavy textile machinery. The collapsed Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, where more than 1,100 garment workers died in 2013. In November 2013, amid local labor unrest and international pressure, it was increased to $68 per month. At the time of the disaster, the minimum wage was roughly $38 per month. One consequence of cheap clothing received international attention in 2013, when an eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers who were manufacturing clothing for American and European retailers.īangladeshi garment workers, the majority of them women, receive among the world’s lowest wages. It’s almost as though you can’t afford not to buy it.Īmericans, on average, now spend a significantly smaller portion of their incomes on clothing, yet have more expansive wardrobes than ever before.īuying a whole new wardrobe is almost cheaper than the cost of washing your old one (a bit of an exaggeration, but not all that far off).īut those deals don't come without a catch. T-shirts for five bucks jeans and dresses for under 20.
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