A Bangladeshi garment factory building crumbled in 2013, causing 1,134 deaths and 2500 injuries. Poor health and safety management by Human Resource management, construction blunders, and economic and political challenges caused the building to fall. The two upper stories of the garment construction were exhausted with workers; thousands of industrial sewing equipment and two power generators were the immediate causes of the tragic collapse. Despite the pre-eminent safety risks identified, the management forced workers to operate in the building.
The political and economic pressure imposed on the garment industry is the long-run cause of the tragedy. First, the largest proportion of Bangladesh’s export earnings relies on ready-made garments. However, stiff competition in the industry causes tight prices and deadlines to supply the lucrative markets in Europe and the US (The RoSPPA OS&H Journal, 2018). The garment company owners collide with government officials to ignore implementing effective health and safety policies to regulate the industry. The building floors were thinly constructed with too much sand on the concrete (The RoSPA OS&H Journal, 2018). The tragedy triggered a collective response by the Accord and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety to ensure the garment companies have legal obligations to observe health and safety. The Alliance and the Accord established the standard inspection guide to prevent safety hazards in major Bangladesh facilities.
However, more preventive health and safety policies need to be implemented in the Bangladesh garment industry. Aside from the construction inspections, I would recommend that the workers’ rights and good relations be observed in the Bangladesh garment industry to empower employees to raise health and safety concerns. Acting as the HR manager I would foster high levels of employee engagement through orientation to encourage them to raise health and safety concerns. Allowing workers to disclose their well-being at the workplace to the HRM promotes a positive health and safety culture (Hauff et al., 2020). Additionally, I would engage government officials to back measures and policies that guarantee workers’ health and safety.
References
Hauff, S., Guerci, M., & Gilardi, S. (2020). Well-being-oriented HRM configurations: Diffusion, contingencies and outcomes. In Evidence-based HRM: A Global Forum for Empirical Scholarship. Emerald Publishing Limited.
The RoSPA OS&H Journal. (2018). Rana Plaza Revisited. Web.