Facing criticism for selling garments made at a Bangladesh factory where 112 workers died in a fire last November, Wal-Mart Stores told its worldwide suppliers Tuesday that it was adopting tougher rules on fire safety at its contractors and would have “zero tolerance” for suppliers that used unauthorized subcontractors.
At least two suppliers were using the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh to produce garments for Wal-Mart in the weeks before the fire there. After the fatal blaze, Wal-Mart said those suppliers had used the factory without its knowledge after it had stopped authorizing production there. It did not say why. Wal-Mart said it had ended its relationship with those two suppliers.
In a letter sent to its suppliers on Tuesday, Wal-Mart said they must “fully and accurately disclose” in advance any factories they or any of their subcontractors plan to use. Under the policy, suppliers will be subject to termination even if an undisclosed factory is used “without the supplier’s knowledge” by anyone in the supplier’s supply chain. David Schilling, a program director at the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, praised the move, saying, “It’s an important step toward increased transparency and accountability of suppliers.”
Wal-Mart also announced tougher requirements on fire safety, saying “facilities found to have fire safety-related violations must initiate corrective actions immediately.” The company said that the repairs must be completed no later than 30 days after the violations were identified.
Three inspection reports that worker advocates found at the Tazreen factory after the fire showed that it had serious, continuing fire safety violations from May 2011 through April 2012.
Wal-Mart also told its suppliers that if they want to use additional factories, those factories will be required to “prequalify,” meaning they must first pass ethical sourcing standards on fire safety and other criteria.
Some labor rights groups said Wal-Mart’s new policy did not go nearly far enough.
Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a monitoring group financed by American universities, said: “There are giant gaps. There is no commitment on covering the costs of the fire safety repairs and renovations that we all know are necessary.”
“There is also no real transparency,” he said. “There’s no way of knowing for two months, six months, a year, what the inspection reports find, and they won’t tell the workers the results of the inspections at their factories.”
Brooke Buchanan, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the company would publicize the names of factories dropped for noncompliance. But she said there were no plans to list or publicize the names of all the factories that Wal-Mart and its suppliers use — something that worker rights groups have advocated to make it easier to monitor factories.
To help suppliers finance needed safety improvements, Wal-Mart is considering participating in a revolving fund that would provide loans to Bangladeshi factory owners, Ms. Buchanan said.
The letter to suppliers was first reported Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal.
Wal-Mart said all of its Bangladesh factories must have an “electrical and building safety assessment” by an independent, certified agency. Since 2005, factory fires in Bangladesh, many caused by electrical problems, have killed 600 workers.
After the Tazreen fire, many surviving workers said the eight-story factory had barred windows that prevented workers from escaping. In its new rules, Wal-Mart said any barred windows must have an emergency mechanism to allow for escape.
Wal-Mart also told its suppliers, “All floors and buildings, including dormitories, must have a secondary exit, and preferably an external fire escape route.”
But Mr. Nova voiced dismay that Wal-Mart’s new policy did not explicitly require fireproof staircases or external fire escapes in multistory factories. “The failure to have such effective means to exit was an important reason so many workers died at Tazreen,” he said. Ms. Buchanan said she expected inspectors to call for such measures when visiting multistory factories.
Dara O’Rourke, a specialist on labor policy at the University of California, Berkeley, praised Wal-Mart’s new requirement that fire safety violations be addressed immediately. “This is a critical step towards motivating factories to fix the problems they find in audits,” he said.
Wal-Mart is also requiring factories to have proper access for fire trucks and firefighting equipment, and that suppliers have a worker in each country where they operate responsible for ensuring factory compliance.
