Bangladesh: Another Fire, More Sexist Murders = Bosses’ Profits

DHAKA, BANGLADESH, January 27 — Seven young women garment workers were murdered and 50 others were injured yesterday when a deadly fire swept through still another textile factory of mostly women.  “When I tried to escape through the emergency exit, I found the gate locked” Raushan Ara told the Prothom Ala newspaper here. Many workers jumped from the second-story windows to try to escape the flames.
The factory lacked the most basic safety standards. “We did not find fire extinguishers. We did not find any safety measures,” a fire department official told the New York Times (1/27).
Several fire victims were teenagers, as young as 15. Bangladesh’s “laws allow teenagers as young as 14 to work” in these factories” (NYT, 1/25).
The Smart Garment Export Company is among the country’s 5,000 clothing factories that manufacture garments for leading Western retailers. This is the 33rd major fire since 2006, which has killed over 700 workers. It follows the November atrocity at Tazreen Fashions that killed 112 workers who manufactured garments for outfits like Wal-mart, the GAP and Sears and are paid as little as $37 a month. That fire led to millions of workers taking to the streets and strikes that shut down much of the industry for days.
 While the government had conducted many high-profile inspections after that fire, they are meaningless given that nothing has changed in this industry for decades. Just since November there have been 18 more fires. Not one factory owner has ever been held responsible for any of the deaths in all 33 major fires.
This country’s $19 billion textile export industry is the world’s second largest, behind China’s. Its profits are reaped over the dead bodies and slave-labor conditions suffered by its four million mostly women workers, another example of the special oppression that women endure under this system. Workers everywhere should rage in protest to show unity with these garment workers’ struggles.
It is this capitalist drive for maximum profits that is at the root of the exploitation and murders of these women workers. It will continue until workers become part of a mass revolutionary communist party that can start a fire that will sweep the world and extinguish this hellish system.