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What Can Be Changed About This To Make It Better?

In my opinon, it’s fine to own factories and employ people to work in them in other countries. It’s the fact that the Canadian government doesn’t cover these people. What I think should be changed is the way work is handled overseas. What should happen is that if a factory in a developing country is working for a retailer in Canada, then they should be under Canada’s labour laws, not the ones of the place they live. This would mean that these workers have access to safer workplaces, a real salary, and are protected from abuses, forced labour and child labour. Basically, the company they are producing for should take full responsibilty for their workers and not be able to place the blame on the lackluster laws and governments of these developing countries.

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Why Should Canadians Care About This?

You should care about this because this is an issue of human rights. Think of what you would do if you were forced to work in a terrible environment for a sum of money that you can just barely live off of? You’d probably be very unhappy. I know I would be.

Keep in mind that this is also setting a type of precedent for these companies. If they see that they can get cheap labour and make a nice profit off of it, they won’t care about all the red flags that come up overseas. It’s sad, but it’s how things work.

Now, I’m not saying to stop buying from places like WalMart and Loblaws, because let’s face it, that’ll be really hard to take out of our lives and one customer quitting isn’t going to make a big profit loss. I mean, it’ll definitely make a message, but a small one. What you really need to do is spread the word. Make sure people know about what’s beind the scenes. Because sure, one person’s not going to make a big difference, but a big group of them will.

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The Incident In Rana Plaza, Bangladesh

I promised that I would give you more details about the whole busted building thing and I’m here to deliver. 

On April 24th, 2013, the Rana Plaza building collapsed due to a number of reasons. In that building was a workshop for the clothing company Joe Fresh, and inside were many workers who did not want to enter that building because they noticed cracks in the cement walls. In that collapse, 1032 of those workers were killed and another 2500 were left injured.

Why did this happen?

It’s simple, really. There was a lot of neglect from the landlord. Number one, the building was very old and was already kind a flight risk. Another big issue was that there were multiple extra floors added on illegally that the supports couldn’t handle. There were also many instances of heavy machinery being installed, mainly power generators, because the building frequently ran out of power. When you look at all of these issues and the consequence that came from it, it’s very obvious that the conditions that these people work in are definitely not safe for people to work in.

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The Conditions Of The Workers

If you’re reading this, I’ll assume that you’re still around because you’re intrested in what I’m talking about, so let’s get started.

Now, I don’t know if we’ve all heard of the problems surrounding companies like Joe Fresh and Walmart, but the base line is that the companies’ clothing lines are actually being produced overseas by workers in very poor conditions.

How poor? Well, these workers are technically treated fairly (according to one of the companies that use this cheap labour), but that’s fair according to the laws of those poorer countries. These people are forced to work in buildings that are very, very unstable. I’ll get into the deatails on that later.

Not only do they work in bad conditions, but they also get paid a pittance for what they go through. Over in places like Bangladesh, the minimum wage is around $38 a month. Compare that to Canada, where the minimum wage is $14 per hour. I don’t know exactly how much one would earn for that amount of work, but I can guaruntee that it’s way more than $38 a month.

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Do You Know Where Your Clothes Come From?

Have you ever wondered about where your clothes come from? Probably not, because you’re probably content with getting things cheap. Well, what if I told you that what you’re wearing was made by people who are underpaid, treated terribly, and are forced to work in awful buildings that can barely handle the equipment inside of them? 

Caught you’re attention, didn’t it? If you’re intrigued, read on to get the whole story. By the end of this, you’ll hopefully be more informed than you already were and maybe you’ll think twice when shopping for clothes.