Who is to blame?

On March 25, 1911, in New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, all young women, aged 14 to 43. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrants. The fire started in a scrap bin toward the end of the long working day, and quickly spread. Probably a match or cigarette butt started it, the bin was full of months' worth of accumulated fabric scraps, and the fire spread rapidly. There were no alarms. The fire exits had been sealed to prevent unauthorized breaks and theft; this was a common practice at the time. The workers died of smoke inhalation or in the flames, and many tried to leap from the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the building, where the factory/sweatshop was located. Most died, of course. Others who did manage to find an unlocked fire exit were killed when a poorly-constructed fire escape broke away and dumped them 100ft onto concrete.
The tragedy was the second deadliest disaster in NYC until the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001.
As a result of this horror, significant workplace reform took place. Legislation led to improved factory safety standards. The Ladies' Garment Workers Union was formed to fight for better conditions for sweatshop workers.

Whose fault was this fire? It was certainly not the fault of the consumers of the ladies' blouses that the factory produced.

The recent collapse of the Bangladeshi factory has so far killed 380 garment workers. It is unlikely that any more survivors will be pulled from the rubble, 5 days after the event. The 8 story building was illegally constructed and cracks in the building had been noted; the workers were not supposed to have been there on the day the collapse occurred, but they were ordered to come to work by their bosses, so they came. They needed the job. Many children were killed because there was a creche on the premises; a part of me thought that having childcare at work is actually a pretty good thing for working mothers, but who knows what that sort of childcare means? Playing with a ball of yarn under your mother's machine, until you are old enough to thread a needle?

So now I am reading opinions in the blogosphere about how it's all our fault in the West; it's the fault of the global economy and it's the fault of the consumers who want inexpensive clothing. It's the fault of Benneton and whoever else was having their product made in Bangladesh. It's the fault of Wal-Mart for keeping prices low for their customers. And how we in the West should care about where our clothes come from, just as we care where our eggs and coffee come from, and we should have clothing labelled to show if it was made in an acceptable factory, and we should not buy from countries where sweatshop workers are exploited etc.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/the-role-we-all-played-in-the-bangladesh-tragedy-20130428-2in4s.html#comments

I think that this is just middle-class white guilt. The fault does not lie with the customer who wants nice clothes for a low price; the fault lies with corrupt and incompetent governance. It lies with the building inspector who is bribed to turn a blind eye to shoddy and illegal practices. It lies with the government department who only employs 18 building inspectors for the whole of Bangladesh, as if there is a shortage of people there. It lies with the owner who built an extra 3 storeys onto a 5 story building and got away with it. Until it collapsed.
Corruption and to a lesser degree, incompetence, are the 2 major contributors to bad governance in the Third World.

We in the West can beat our collective breast over our rampant consumerism, but we did not kill those poor women. There is nothing inherently wrong with being paid a low wage as a semi-skilled worker. These women want the work and need the work; the garment industry in Bangladesh is the third largest in the world, after China and Italy. It is worth 20 billion dollars annually.

But there is everything wrong with being killed at work.

We cannot 'fix' Bangladesh and other such countries. Certainly boycotting these garments would be impossible, absurd and, in the end, harmful to the economy and the workers.
Change must come from within, as it did after the Triangle fire.