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The Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) is a labour and women's rights organization that supports the efforts of workers in global supply chains to win improved wages and working conditions and a better quality of life. ( More)
Thirty-one of the world’s leading apparel retailers and brands have committed to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, accounting for more than 1,000 Bangladeshi garment factories. The legally binding program for fire and building safety includes independent inspections, worker-led health and safety committees and union access to factories, commitments to underwrite improvements in dangerous factories and resolve fire safety and structural problems.
The Maquila Solidarity Network welcomes the precedent-setting announcement by Loblaw Companies (owner of the Joe Fresh brand) that it has joined more than a dozen leading international apparel brands and retailers in signing the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh with the Global Unions IndustriALL and UNI and Bangladeshi unions.
The Maquila Solidarity (MSN) welcomes the decision of H&M, Inditex (owner of the Zara brand), Primark, C&A, Benneton, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and others to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh with the Global Unions IndustriALL and UNI and Bangladeshi unions. MSN is calling on Loblaw (owner of the Joe Fresh label), Gap, Walmart and other North American retailers and brands to also sign the Accord by a May 15 deadline and work together with trade union and labour rights groups to prevent further tragedies like the Rana Plaza building collapse from taking place.
In the wake of the horrifying factory collapse in Bangladesh that has taken the lives of more than 900 workers and injured many more, there are things that can be done to respond to this disaster and to prevent future tragedies -- by governments, by retailers, apparel brands, consumers and investors. Find out what you can do to support these efforts here.
On the eve of the Annual Meeting of Loblaw Companies Limited, 23 prominent Canadian trade unions, NGOs and faith organizations have sent an Open Letter to the company’s Executive Chairman, Galen Weston, calling on his company to take immediate steps to ensure that the deaths and injuries suffered by hundreds of garment workers in the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh are not repeated.
The Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN), along with trade unions and labour rights organisations in Bangladesh and around the world, is calling for immediate action from international brands following the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, in Dhaka Bangladesh. MSN is calling on Joe Fresh and other Canadian brands sourcing from garment factories in the Rana Plaza building to come clean on what they knew about the health and safety record of the factories, compensate the victims, and take steps now to prevent future disasters.
On April 2, MSN received the devastating news that our long-time friend Stephen Coats had died in his sleep the previous night. For more than 25 years, Stephen worked tirelessly to defend the rights of Latin American workers as the director of the Chicago-based US Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), formerly the US/Guatemala Labor Education Project (US/GLEP). MSN joins the chorus of voices in the international labour rights movement in offering our condolences to Stephen’s wife, Kim Bobo, and their two sons.
Six international apparel companies have sent an open letter to the President of Peru supporting a repeal of three articles of a decades-old law allowing employers in the garment and textile export sector to hire workers on consecutive short-term employment contracts, thereby denying them job security, seniority rights and other benefits, access to health and pension coverage, and their right to organize and bargain collectively.
As Apple held its Annual General Meeting in Cupertino, California on February 27, activists from the labour rights group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) rallied in front of Apple stores in Hong Kong to protest the continuing abuse of workers that make the company’s popular electronics products.
Democratic trade unions and the workers they represent in Mexico continually struggle to exercise their rights. They are persecuted, arrested, and criminalized when they protest and mobilize against attacks from companies and federal and local authorities. Further, workers continue to be systematically excluded from any genuine process of collective bargaining. From February 18 to 24, 2013, activists from around the world gathered at Mexican embassies and consulates around the globe to protest systematic attacks on trade union rights in Mexico.
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