• Commentary

    More on Bangladesh

    When I visited my family earlier this week for Christmas, the millenniums and the baby boomers were all quite inquisitive about my recent trip to Bangladesh.  I showed them my cell phone pictures of the workers who were disabled by the garment factory tragedies of the last year.  Immediately, they wanted to know about the conditions in the factories there.  Their initial reaction – without even the slightest goading by me – was outrage by the unsafe conditions that led to the two recent tragedies. They didn’t know until a little later that their Christmas gifts would further raise their awareness about the garment industry in Bangladesh – and the…

  • Commentary

    My Trip to Bangladesh Continues to Resonate as We Approach Christmas

    Last month, I was invited to visit garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh with a delegation of New Yorkers that included Tom DiNapoli, New York State Comptroller, and Stuart Appelbaum, the head of the RWDSU (Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.) More than 1,100 workers’ lives were lost in the collapse of Rana Plaza nearly eight months ago, making it the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry. In a front-page story published just yesterday in The New York Times, reporter Jim Yardley wrote how “inside the single room he shares with his wife and young child, Hasan Mahmud Forkan does not sleep easily. Some nights he hears the screams of the garment workers he tried…