The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (the Accord) has taken note of Reuters’ article of June 24, 2014 titled “Insight – Inspection tensions add to Bangladesh garment industry’s woes."

Remarks by John Howard, M.D., NIOSH Director, at ASSE Professional Development Conference and Exposition on June 10, 2014: Just over a year ago, on April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building in Greater Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, collapsed. The death toll has reached more than 1,000.

In his Wednesday AIHce 2014 General Session address at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium in Washington, D.C., detailed the hazardous working conditions in the garment manufacturing industry, particularly in Bangladesh, where economic and political pressures have exacerbated longstanding safety problems to a greater extent than in other countries.

On May 7th, representatives of the organizations listed below heard presentations from the Embassy of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Accord for Fire and Building Safety, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau on ongoing efforts to improve safety and health in the 3,600 cut-and-sew factories that make up Bangladesh’s “ready made garment” industry.

On one side we have the Europeans. On the other, the United States. The different approaches the two are taking to provide aid to Bangladesh factory workers says a good bit about the cultural differences involved.

In the face of international criticism over the dangerous conditions in its garment factories, Bangladeshi has passed a new law aimed at improving conditions – although the export-oriented factories which make up the bulk of Bangladesh’ garment industry are exempted from a major provision.

Walmart and an industry group representing many U.S. retailers say they will not join an international pact intended to improve factory conditions in Bangladesh’s garment industry – although many global retailers have signed the agreement.