JOSH EIDELSON: How a Wal-Mart “safety” scheme is dividing the Democratic Party

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/30/how_a_walmart_safety_scheme_is_dividing_the_democrat_party/

While some Democrats back Wal-Mart's approach to Bangladesh building safety, others join unions in slamming it

BY JOSH EIDELSON



(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

In the latest sign of Democrats’ divisions on Wal-Mart, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has urged a Wal-Mart-backed Bangladesh safety group – which congressional Democrats have called everything from a “missed opportunity” to an “important initiative” – to incorporate training factory managers to accept and cooperate with unions as part of its agenda.

As I’ve reported, Western retailers have been under increased scrutiny following the deaths of over 1,200 Bangladesh workers in a November fire and an April building collapse. Both disasters took place in factories from which Wal-Mart had previously sourced garments; in both cases Wal-Mart placed blame on rogue suppliers for filing orders. Following the disaster, over 70 companies, the vast majority of them outside the U.S., have joined a union-backed “Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh,” which labor groups hailed as a new precedent for establishing binding commitments and involving workers in the process of monitoring their own conditions.

Rather than joining in, Wal-Mart and the Gap, along with former Sens. Olympia Snowe and George Mitchell and the D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center, developed a safety group of their own, the “Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety,” whose board is now chaired by former Democratic congresswoman Ellen Tauscher. The Nation’s Lee Fang reported that the public rollout of the group was joined by a private lobbying blitz to win congressional support.

Wal-Mart did not respond to a Thursday request for comment. In July, the retail giant pledged that the Alliance would “move quickly and decisively to create uniform safety standards,” with “worker safety” as its top priority. The same day, the U.S. labor federations AFL-CIO and Change to Win issued a rare joint statement blasting the business-backed Alliance as “weak and worthless,” “a way to avoid accountability, limit costs and silence workers and their representatives,” and an effort to “maintain a system that has a long and bloody record of failure.”

FULL story at link.