Rana Plaza: The tragedy that changed the fashion industry forever

Thirteen years from the collapse, Ineke Zeldenrust tells the story of how a global solidarity movement achieved compensation for the victims and forced brands to take action.

On April 24th, 2013, the Rana Plaza, an eight-story building near Dhaka housing five garment factories, apartments, and a bank, collapsed due to structural failure. 1,138 people lost their lives, most of whom were garment workers. The tragedy, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history, has marked the lives of those close to the victims and all involved forever.

Thirteen years from that day, I spoke with Ineke Zeldenrust to reflect on the aftermath of the tragedy and the role she and the Clean Clothes Campaign played in achieving justice for its victims and ensuring action was taken to prevent similar tragedies.

The 24^th of April is also Ineke’s birthday. Anyone else would write that off as a sad coincidence, but in this case, it feels more like an odd astrological conjunction. She is the closest thing CCC has to a (co)founder, but she would probably roll her eyes at the term - she is committed to our non-hierarchical model, and dislikes the spotlight. A fixture of the Amsterdam anarchist and squatter movement in the eighties, thirty-five years ago, together with a handful of activists, she started a solidarity movement with striking garment workers in the Philippines. That collective grew into the Clean Clothes Campaign, a global network spanning 45 countries and bringing together more than 220 civil society organisations and trade unions. The largest organisation of its kind. For all those years, she has been at the heart of that movement and, in a way, of the global garment industry.

She was already confronting brands over garment workers’ rights and had seen her share of factory disasters when the Rana Plaza tragedy unfolded. After Rana, she played a key role in setting up the International Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a binding agreement between unions and fashion brands that has improved the lives of millions of workers in Bangladesh and Pakistan, becoming the gold standard in the industry. For all these reasons, the date overlap feels almost ordained.

“I always forget the Rana Plaza anniversary is also your birthday,” I tell her when I receive the first batch of answers to my questions. “I know… weird”, she replies. It is a text, but I can feel the discomfort of having what should be a celebratory day associated with such immense loss of life. The outrageousness of the thought that the date could be about anything else but the victims.

As I start going through the answers, it is clear that it is a tragic story, a stark reminder of how little fashion brands care about the workers who make their clothes, and of denial in the face of evidence. But also one of a global solidarity movement that would achieve compensation for the victims and change the fashion industry – or at least a part of it – for the better.

Do you remember where you were on April 24^th 2013, on the day of the Rana Plaza collapse?

I was just outside my house, in Amsterdam, when I heard the news. It was a sunny day, and I was off because it was my birthday. Over the previous two days, we had been having meetings with colleagues from other countries, discussing our factory safety campaign. The night before, we closed what had been a very good meeting with an amazing party. I normally keep my phone on, but the previous evening, after the party, I had switched it off. I wanted to have breakfast with my kids that morning and take them to school, which I did.

On the way back, I sat for a while outside, enjoying the sun. I turned on my phone, expecting birthday wishes to pop up, and instead, the news of the Rana Plaza collapse hit me. I was shocked, but my first thought was “oh God, not again”. It had been a year marred by building fires, with two major incidents in September in Pakistan and another later that year in Bangladesh. I had just spent two days discussing it with colleagues.

I immediately called Amin from NGWF and Kalpona Akter from BCWS, union leaders on the ground who knew what to do. Then I woke up the colleagues in Amsterdam, most of whom were still hungover from the previous day, and went to the office. At this point, we had no idea of the magnitude of the events, but we started phoning colleagues all over the world, reaching out to those able to collect information. It was chaotic, and I had mixed feelings; I remember people, including my mum, calling me to wish me a happy birthday, and me having to cut them all off. Everybody came together, and only as the days went by did we realise what a massive task we had ahead of us.

Q: By the time the collapse happened, CCC had been denouncing unsafe working conditions and working on fire cases for years. How did the network react to the news?

The priority on our end was to document what was happening, to identify the brands that had been sourcing from the factories in Rana Plaza, and to pass on that information to the rest of the CCC network and to the press. And, of course, to keep in touch with and support the people in Bangladesh.

Identifying the brands meant literally digging through the debris of the collapse to find labels. A group of us produced large spreadsheets documenting which brands were making clothes in the building and assessing their responses to the collapse. This allowed us to coordinate brand outreach quite rapidly. That is mostly what we did in those early days: identify brands based on labels found in the rubble and information from partners in Bangladesh, then reaching out to the press and the brands.

The amount of support in the network was really commensurate with the tragedy. Many came to volunteer and help out; groups were manning phones in different countries to coordinate volunteers, to call the press, to pressure brands.

“Listen”, I said, “I have fifteen major international news outlets who want to talk to me right now, and if we are not going to discuss the fire and building safety agreement and how to make it a reality, I am going to walk straight out of this room and tell the press what a big waste of time this is.”

Speaking of brands involved, what were their first reactions? How hard was it to get them to acknowledge responsibility?

The first response from brands was, as expected: “We are horrified, we are shocked. We didn’t make our clothes there.” That was the most common reaction, together with trying to write off the collapse as a fatality, a sad reality of “countries like these”. Fingers were pointed at government failure and at failure on the part of factory owners, and the first reaction by most was denial.

Our central message, which we managed to consistently get across in the media, was that this was a man-made disaster, not the “natural” consequence of living in an unsafe city, a failure of the city council or of building design. Of course, all those factors played a part. But the reason why so many people died was that brands did not assume their responsibilities. That is why brand identification was crucial.

This meant scouting different corners of the Rana Plaza to excavate in the rubble and note down which labels were found in which areas. And it had to be done fast, as local authorities were cordoning off the whole site. People went in very early, both to support the rescue efforts and to look for brand labels. You have to understand how difficult this was for our Bangladeshi friends: trying to save people and find labels at the same time. No one should have had to go through that. But through this hard work, we could document which brands were involved. We had great help from the media, as they often cross-check the information on their side, which allowed us to counter the brands’ claims of “not being there”.

Of course, after identifying the brands, we started to reach out to them, presenting them with the evidence and asking for confirmation of their presence. Sometimes we had additional evidence from confidential insider sources. For others, we had shipping information—this is how we found receipts for Inditex’s (the company that owns Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka and others) brand ‘Lefties’, which linked it to Rana Plaza. Yet, as with most other companies, they kept denying.

At the forefront of those denials, Benetton gets a special shout-out. They kept denying they were there in the face of evidence, then later on, they kind of admitted it, but kept on denying compensation. Then they had PriceWaterhouseCoopers write a report to estimate how much they should pay in compensation, as a counter to our demands. Guess what, from the same report, it emerged they knew very well they were sourcing from Rana Plaza, having had the evidence in-house all along.

Other brands understood the gravity of the situation more quickly. Primark, for example, acted rapidly. I think it was also because of the experience they had had with the Spectrum collapse ten years prior. They were quick to frame their response in terms of compensation. We had some issues with how they wished to proceed with it, but in that phase, having a large brand talking publicly and early about compensation was very helpful.

After identifying what brands were responsible, the next step would be compensation for workers and their families. How did you coordinate with Bangladesh on those demands and get them across?

We always try to articulate this: there is a compensation element, but there is also a rights component and a justice component. No matter the amount of financial compensation you receive, nothing can replace the loss of a loved one or of your health. In addition to financial compensation, justice must be done. This means ensuring that those responsible are held accountable. It also means making sure that such a tragedy never happens again. And ensuring that when compensation schemes are set up, it is done in a way that is respectful of people’s rights, not as a handout or a privilege.

When Rana happened, we had unfortunately already worked on similar cases and had done a lot of thinking with victim groups on how they can represent themselves, on what type of support they need. This led us to some really good results that I think we can still feel proud of. For many friends in Bangladesh, and for me personally, this was also a way to reclaim some sort of agency in a situation where we had seen tragedy unfolding that we, as activists and campaigners, had not been able to prevent.

At the time, we had been working for a while to calculate the compensation, using a formula we had developed for other cases based on international standards. We reworked it together with our Bangladeshi partners, which brought us to a final number. As I said, financial compensation is never enough, and even the amount that victims received was not enough. But we had a number: thirty million USD to cover the loss of income and medical costs. That was what I became very focused on for a number of years in conversations and interviews. I would always come back to it and say, “This is the amount that we need, we are targeting the brands that we know were there, and we will not stop. We will not rest. We will not cease campaigning until we get it”.

The Rana Plaza collapse is often referred to as a watershed moment, especially as it gave a final push to the creation of the International Accord. Do you remember the discussions at the time between unions, brands, and civil society that led to the signing of the Accord?

As I mentioned, by the time the Rana Plaza happened, we had been campaigning for years for a fire building and safety agreement, something to prevent similar disasters from happening and to hold those responsible accountable. Brands were set that legally binding agreements were out of the question. A few days after Rana Plaza, we received an invitation from the German government to a meeting with brands and others to discuss worker safety. We debated whether we should go, as we knew it would likely be used to push for more business-friendly alternatives to our proposal.

At the last moment, we decided to go to the meeting. I nearly missed my train. When I made it, I told myself I was not going to lose my temper and that I would stay collected. But then I walked into the meeting, and all these brands were there, and all these multi-stakeholder initiatives. The first thing the organisers said was that they were going to put us all in workshops with Post-its to identify where we had common ground. More than a thousand people had just died. I lost my temper straight away. “Listen” I said “I have fifteen major international news outlets who want to talk to me right now (which was actually true; we had been telling people we would go to that meeting), and if we are not going to discuss the fire and building safety agreement and how to make it a reality, I am going to walk straight out of this room and tell the press what a big waste of time this is.” That felt good, and it worked. The meeting agenda was changed, and with the support of the global unions, negotiations started in earnest. The unions started talking to the brands, to H&M, to Zara, and we got across that any agreement must be legally binding. We were all united on that, which helped the campaigning and really pushed the Accord over the finish line.

In Bangladesh, things, of course, were different, and the labour movement was much more focused on immediate medical care and compensation. Of course, they were also pushing for measures to prevent similar tragedies, but the scale of people injured and suffering was so huge that immediate relief was the priority. And there was backlash coming their way from the Bangladeshi government and the factory owner organisations.

Our connection with the Bangladeshi partners during the long history of fire and building safety cases is what allowed us to push for our proposal so strongly. Three weeks after the collapse, the Accord was signed, but we were nowhere with regard to compensation.

Thirteen years after the Rana Plaza, do you think the industry is in a better place? Are garment workers safer?

It is certainly in a different place. Perhaps I would have given a different answer a few years ago. Now I think the fact that we have the Accord is something that remains unparalleled. It binds a large number of brands to accept their responsibility in terms of fire and building safety, to be held systematically accountable for concrete and detailed improvements to their factories and to address every complaint received. Of course, like every mechanism, it is only as strong as those supporting it can make it. CCC is a witness signatory to the Accord, which means protecting its independence is our job. Expanding the Accord to other countries has been very slow, but otherwise, the impact in Bangladesh and Pakistan has been very important.

We campaign for other similar mechanisms on wages and other topics, but progress has been minimal. The media outrage and public outcry after Rana Plaza, combined with our campaigning, opened a window through which the Accord could be pushed through. It is sad to say, but without that sense of urgency, brands and governments often remain unresponsive.

What would you like to see at the twentieth commemoration of the Rana Plaza collapse?

I would like to see better laws in place, both at the national and international levels. A global response to hold corporations accountable throughout their supply chain requires global collaboration and institution-building, which are difficult to imagine nowadays. We had a different world before Rana Plaza and Covid. We could imagine new institutions, a mix of binding agreements and public regulation that would govern the global garment sector, ensuring basic rights, planetary-bound limits to production and consumption, and dignity for workers. Salaries that enable workers to make enough money to put their kids through school, to feel safe, to have a social life outside work and some control over the way they lead their lives and how their sector is organised.

On this day, while we grieve the people we have lost, we should allow ourselves to dream. To dream of making some of the small and big victories happen. Even, and perhaps especially, during these difficult times, we must allow ourselves to imagine a better future and to fight for it. It is our right, and it is the right of all workers to live in one.

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Loose Threads is curated by the International Office of the Clean Clothes Campaign, a global movement of more than 220 NGOs and trade unions fighting for garment workers rights. The opinions expressed in this piece represent exclusively those of their authors and not those of the Clean Clothes Campaign.