Eventually the death toll from the collapsed garment factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, will stop climbing because eventually there will be no more bodies to pull from the rubble of what was an illegally augmented eight-story building that wasn’t designed for industrial use.
As of Wednesday, at least 803 workers died in the April 24 collapse. Nobody really knows how many bodies remain to be recovered.
The tragedy struck home recently when I noticed the label on one of my shirts, recently bought. Made in Bangladesh, it said.
It’s impossible to know whether the shirt was sewn by a worker killed in the Dhaka building collapse, but the worker who made my shirt is (or perhaps was) regarded as little more than a piece of lint by those who benefit most from a $20 billion Bangladeshi garment industry that makes clothes for American and European brands. The monthly minimum wage in Bangladesh is about $38, The Associated Press reports, in a very poor country where the per capita monthly income is about $65.
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan … Poor countries are excellent sources of cheap, easily exploitable labor for manufacturers. And cheap labor translates into inexpensive clothes for Americans.
How expensive would our clothes be if they, or at least more of them, were made in the United States? Here’s a comparison that offers a clue: According to CNN, it costs $13.22 to make a denim shirt in the United States, compared with $3.72 in Bangladesh.
That’s a difference of $9.50.
The retail difference would be greater than $9.50, but would the denim shirt made in America be prohibitively more expensive than the one made in Bangladesh? Or would the price difference simply limit shoppers to buying one shirt rather than two or three (and maybe spending less overall)?
The March 25, 1911, Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York killed 146 workers. The fire led to dozens of safety and labor reforms in New York that later influenced federal workplace reforms, and improved workers’ lives (and livelihoods) nationwide.
I want to think the Dhaka building collapse will become Bangladesh’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory and force Western brands to demand the Bangladeshi government pass and enforce wage and work reforms, and that it will prompt American shoppers to pause their consumption long enough to consider the cost in lives of the inexpensive clothing that jam-packs their closets. But I’m under no illusion it will do so. Such is the power of profit margins and a few bucks saved over blood.