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The Bangladesh Accord is the Wrong Model for Legal Accountability in the Fashion Industry
Legal accountability should be about pushing brands to have more skin in the game and ensuring a distribution of financial risk that’s equitable. As long as brands continue to cope with uncertain consumer demand by pushing financial risk onto their suppliers, factory managers are likely to push that risk down to their workers.
The Bangladesh Accord, a legally binding agreement between brands and trade unions set up in the wake of the Rana Plaza collapse, was set to expire at the end of August. It’s just been renewed, and going forward, will be referred to as the International Accord for Health And Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, extending beyond Bangladesh.
On the one hand, the renewal makes sense: data seems to suggest that safety standards have substantively improved, and advocating for a legally enforceable mechanism (as opposed to unenforceable voluntary codes of conduct) is intuitive. On the other hand, is the Accord the right model for legal accountability? Is it a model that will push the industry towards collaboration? I’m not sure.