“With the ten-year anniversary of the Bangladesh Rana Plaza tragedy upon us, there are calls for more brands to now commit to the Pakistan Accord, for the safety of garment workers.
“As of today, 41 apparel companies, including H&M, ASOS, Inditex, American Eagle Outfitters and PVH have signed up to the new Pakistan Accord. By signing the Bangladesh and Pakistan Accord, brands can be certain their factories are safe places for their workers. They can utilise the Accord’s resources to conduct inspections and prevent disasters such as the Rana Plaza from ever happening again.
Scott Nova, executive director of the Workers Rights Consortium, believes there is still a reluctance to embrace the Pakistan Accord: “It is a challenge to the voluntary code of conduct and monitoring systems, that the brands and retailers continue to utilise across the globe as the primary mechanism for managing the risk to their reputation that derives from the often-poor working conditions and the countries from which they’ve chosen to source their apparel.”
This is because the Accord, which is a legally binding agreement that assures that brands negotiate commercial terms to ensure financial feasibility for the remediation, stands in stark contrast to other voluntary methods.
“That’s why it’s so important for everyone involved in this work, to recognise that if we do not have binding agreements, if we do not replace more of these voluntary systems with binding agreements, that we’re going to see the same problems perpetuated year after year, decade after decade in this industry.
“Hopefully more brands and retailers will understand that ultimately, they won’t be able to defend these voluntary systems if we continue to see workers dying in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh and so forth.”
Joris added: “The most important characteristic of the Accord is the collective effort it represents. From a financial perspective, brands don’t need to do their work separately; they will be adding to the audit fatigue in factories. For factories, it can be quite cumbersome to have multiple brands coming in with multiple different auditors, to do inspections or audits.
“Whereas the Accord Inspection Secretariat undertakes these inspections on behalf of all the brands that have signed the Accord. The Accord is very unique in terms of the technical expertise that it has, as it relates to fire, electrical, structural and boiler safety. It requires specialised engineers to be able to do those inspections.
“So, there’s a collective effort, to ensure the minimisation of audit fatigue, and ensure consistency in the application of corrective action plans.
“There are very few brands that can do those on their own, so that’s why from a financial perspective, it is a smart idea to join the Accord.”
The Accord has a method in place in which the corrective action plans and inspections are published online to share with brands and all interested stakeholders.
The Accord suggests that suppliers look at the remediation as an investment rather than a cost: an investment that provides a return over the years in terms of providing assurances to brands that continue sourcing from factories.
Bride built on this from a brand perspective: “The Accord model makes perfect sense. There are independent, trusted inspections, there are worker engagements with unions in a real way, and there’s joint governance that includes rights holders as an equal party in decision-making, that’s becoming more and more relevant in the legislative and regulatory space, especially when we are seeing the developments on mandatory due diligence.”