Rana Plaza collapse

I didn't plan that date.

April twenty-fourth, twenty thirteen, Rana Plaza, Dhaka.

Eleven hundred and thirty-eight garment workers killed when a building they'd been told was safe collapsed around them.

The largest garment factory disaster in history.

And it was so interesting to also learn that a few years after these social impact audits started, there was also audit consultants who suddenly came into play who were ex-social impact auditors and they helped these factories pass these audits.

And that's how we have disasters like Rana Plaza because in the year before the disaster, the building passed all the checks, the factory passed all the audits because they had someone help them skirt all these rules you have an industry that exists exists to counter the compliance now which I mean are we really holding our systems accountable as as as people and I know these institutions are supposed to hold us accountable but are they

yeah I mean things like certification there's some real there's some real power dynamics behind them aren't they that I think you people are trying to to do the right thing, and they're trying to find ways, but I think we end up looking for shortcuts, is what it sounds like you're saying.

Shortcuts that mean we don't have to do the long, hard work and actually be engaged, and I don't know exactly what the answer for that is when you have such a globalized industry, but at least to know that these things, that maybe there are no shortcuts.

Hi, thanks so much for the talk.

It sounds like around the time that you started working on the book, there was the Rana Plaza tragedy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where over 1,000 women died in a ready-made garment factory, a clothing factory.

And since that happened around the time you started working on the project, I just thought maybe you could share some thoughts on the similarities between the two tragedies and the responses to them.

It's a great question.