The building collapse in Bangladesh last month was the latest in a long series of preventable tragedies in the garment industry. Blame quickly extended from the owners of the building and the factories it contained, to the government of Bangladesh, to the retailers who sold the clothing. But the culpability extends all the way down the supply chain — to us.
Our willingness to buy garments sewn under dangerous conditions, chocolate made from cocoa picked by captive children, or cellphones and laptops containing “conflict minerals” from Congo create the demand that underwrites these tragedies.
After a generation of outsourcing and globalization, corporations in many industries are often merely the last step in a long chain of suppliers and assemblers. As a result, the companies whose brands are on the product often have little idea of what might have occurred two steps back.
Even the biggest electronics companies have had to mobilize substantial effort to comply with the Dodd-Frank Act’s requirement to report their use of conflict minerals. The tech giant Hewlett-Packard is four steps upstream from the smelters that buy and refine the minerals that ultimately end up in its products. By locating and publicizing the identity of these smelters, H.P. intends to enable its suppliers to verify that their parts are conflict-free.
Shareholder pressures are unlikely to reduce unsafe practices in the supply chain. In the seven months after The Times published an exposé about safety problems in the iPad’s supply chain, Apple’s stock market value increased by over $200 billion, making it the most valuable corporation in history. Investors apparently had little reason to question Apple’s supplier practices.
If we want to see fewer tragedies like the one in Bangladesh, we as consumers need to reward the companies that make the effort to verify their supply chains and shun those that do not. Make it unprofitable to be unsafe.
Source: The New York Times
