Friday, November 22, 2013
5:30pm
Bascom Hill, UW-Madison campus
UW-Madison’s Student Labor Action Coalition is holding a candlelight vigil in memory of the 120 lives lost in the Nov. 23rd, 2012 Tazreen Fashion factory fire. The factory was opened in 2009, but lacked emergency exits, leading to workers to jump out of the building to their deaths in attempt to escape the fire. According to the New York Times, Walmart, a company who was producing in Tazreen, was a major playing in blocking implementing safety measures in Bangladeshi factories, because “in most cases” it would be a “very extensive and costly modification.”
Bangladesh is now the second largest garment exporting country in the world, with over 5 million workers in 5,000 factories. A Dhaka engineering school found that 9 out of 10 garment factories in Bangladesh are structurally unsound. There are over 30 companies that produce UW-Madison apparel in Bangladesh. Join us to commemorate the lives that have been lost and ask that UW-Madison requires companies that make Bucky Badger apparel sign onto the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.
Photographs from the vigil
click on images for larger version
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back to Bangladesh campaign