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With Bangladesh second to China in the garment production industry, many workers have faced tragedy in these factories. This video shows a young girl who escaped the collapse of a building with known structural issues. She is injured but hopes to return to work someday. For now, she is left with no income to help support her family and has lost many friends in the accident. With companies only interested in the bottom line, often worker safety is overlooked.

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Subscribe to our channel http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe Subscribe to our channel http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe A US government delegation is travelling to Bangladesh this weekend to press for a major safety overhaul following last month's garment factory collapse. More than 1,100 people were killed on April 24 after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed near the capital city of Dhaka.

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In this video, New York residents along with former employees of Walmart in the United Sates are protesting the opening of stores in New York due to unfair working conditions and low pay. Two former employees speak out against the company and the unfair treatment they received while working there. It seems that Walmart locally and globally is treating its employees unfairly.

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Walmart workers speak out about abusive working conditions

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Working conditions are extreme for those children who are unable to afford school fees. Often, they are forced to work in order to earn money for their family to survive. Children as young as 5 or 6 can be working in dangerous circumstances such as in mines or construction. With adults earning more money, employers often prefer to hire younger children so they do not have to pay them as much. Not only is this wrong, but these children are working in extreme conditions with no safety precautions in place. They have no protective gear and have to work long exhausting days to earn what sometimes won't even purchase a meal.

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Workers overseas are often exposed to harmful chemicals and given no way to protect themselves from the possible effects. This often means sickness and disease are unavoidable. With workers having no unemployment or disability insurance, if they become ill due to poor working conditions, this leaves them with no income at all.

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Below is a picture of an all too common occurrence. Sweat shops are often not built according to proper building codes and are at risk of collapsing. Fires are also a common occurrence and with improper exits and emergency plans laid out, many workers are left injured and sometimes even killed.

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Female Factory workers supervised by a Man

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Female Factory workers supervised by a Man

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Women in factories often make up the majority of employees with men as their managers and supervisors as they hold the economic power. There is little or no room to advance for women in this line of work and the endure extremely unfair working conditions. With no workers rights, or rights that are often ignored, women have no voice to stand up for themselves to better their situations. This picture shows women at work in a garment factory where they are given daily quotas. Often their pay is deducted if the quotas are not met. It is also common for unrealistic quotas to be given making it impossible for women to meet them.

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Walmart is a one stop shop for many and with its selection of anything you might need and lower than low prices, it's no wonder why so many choose to shop there. While North American workers have their grievances with the company paying minimum wage and offering little if any health benefits, the factory workers overseas are working in unbelievable conditions. The receive very little pay, are fired if they miss work due to sickness, and are often beaten and punished for taking bathroom breaks. The woman in this article is touring across the United States to inform people of the working conditions she has been subjected to since she was 12 years old. She is also due to appear in court from being arrested after trying to unionize the factory workers. The west needs to become better educated on where the products they are purchasing are actually coming from and who is really paying the price for the low low prices Walmart offers.

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SWARTHMORE -- Even as 33-year-old Kalpona Akter faces a potential death sentence in her home country of Bangladesh, she traveled halfway across the globe to talk about the working conditions in her homeland with the hope of creating an atmosphere of respect, dignity and a better life for her fellow citizens.

Aleya Akter, 26, journeyed with Kalpona to tell the tale of working 14 years of 11-hour days sewing jackets with 400 employees at a Dhaka factory for Walmart.

She gets two days off a month and lives with the fear of getting fired for being sick or being beaten for going to the bathroom. Sometimes, she sleeps on the factory floor overnight.

The two women shared their stories as part of a multi-city tour, sponsored by the International Labor Rights Forum and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 1776, and spent Friday relating their experiences at Swarthmore College.

Cynthia Murray, an 11-year Walmart associate in Laurel, Md., said Walmart needs to change.

"At this point, I make $11.60 an hour, and I have no health care benefits," she said. "Walmart needs to stop taking all the money and needs to start giving back."

Steven Restivo, director of community affairs for Walmart Stores, said, "At Walmart, we remain committed to sourcing merchandise that is produced responsibly by suppliers that adhere to our rigorous Standards for Suppliers code of conduct."

The company also stated that it had been ranked third among 35 other multinational retail corporations in an ethical reputation index scored by Covalence, a research institution that uses 45 criteria to evaluate labor standards, waste management, product social utility and human rights.

The workers, however, offered a different version.

Aleya Akter said she has worked in the factory since she was 12 years old and has never been to school. She learned how to sew, she said, by being a helper at the factory, but hopes to influence better conditions for all of her co-workers.

Her work day begins at 6 a.m.

"Then I cook, get showered and by 8, I have to be at the office," she said. "(From) 1 to 2, there's a lunch break and then up to 8, I work at the factory and there is no break in the hours. At 8:30, I come home and cook and eat.

"I used to work seven days a week," she said. "Now, it's a little better. I can enjoy two weekends a month."

Akter explained further that she received one day off for every 15 consecutive days she worked.

"When I started, I was paid $7 for 208 hours of work, once a month, and now I'm getting approximately $80 for 250 hours," she said. "The hourly target is 120 pieces in one hour. They used to yell at us when we would make less."

Now, she said, they'll get paid for eight hours of work, instead of 11, if they miss that quota.

The punishment for missing the quantity used to be more severe.

Putting her hand against the left side of her face, Akter said, "We used to be beaten by them when we couldn't make the targets, also when we wanted to use the toilet."

She said if anyone was in the bathroom for more than five minutes, they would get slapped.

The translator said Akter had been beaten by the factory managers because she tried to unionize the workers.

Now, Akter said the management yells at them.

When asked what they yell, she averted her eyes and lowered her head.

"It's a very bad word," her translator said. "She doesn't want to say."

Akter is hoping to help change the living conditions of her fellow workers by coming to the United States.

"When I came here about this tour, I wanted a better working condition and better treatment by the management," she said. "We should be paid a living wage. We should be treated well in our factory."

Although her country's law mandates 14 days of sick time each year, she said it's not being adhered to.

"The factory management is not giving that," Akter said. "If we don't go to work because of sickness, we lose our jobs."

Akter said she would like to see the workers be paid an extra $40 a month to $120 and she wants the corporal punishment to stop.

She said she wants people to buy clothes from Walmart, because it gives her a job. But, she added, "If they buy the clothes and give a more fair price for that, I can have a better working condition."

Murray advocates a boycott.

"We need to let our Congress people know," she said, "and we need to join hands and let Walmart know that you need to be a better employer, or we will stop shopping at your store."

For some, it's a matter of life or death.

Even with an uncertain future, Kalpona Akter's dedication to improving the lives of Bangladesh workers is unwavering, although she said she was wrongly charged for her organizing activities.

"It's definitely bad what I feel," she said of her upcoming six-month trial for influencing workers and vandalism. "I used to work in the factory, too."

The executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity said that when she was 12, she made $3.50 a month for 208 hours of work.

"It's my commitment to the worker that I will try to make change," Akter said. "We need the support from these people who are buying the clothes."

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Workers detail conditions of overseas factory jobs (With Video)

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SWARTHMORE -- Even as 33-year-old Kalpona Akter faces a potential death sentence in her home country of Bangladesh, she traveled halfway across the globe to talk about the working conditions in her homeland with the hope of creating an atmosphere of resp

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The global apparel industry is known to many for it's unfair working conditions from sweat shops to improper wages. However, in this article, the conditions are explained further exposing the harsh realities that workers must endure. The majority of apparel workers are women, as the employers believe in the stereotypes that women are easier to work with and more capable of the fine detail required. Companies often treat their employees who are women as less than human. Often these women are forced to work in unsafe conditions for extended hours. This article also talks about the unfair treatment of pregnant women in this industry. Often times women are subject to mandatory pregnancy tests as companies do not want to pay workers for maternity leave. The danger of these factories is also something to be mentioned as many of the workers are left with severe health issues due to improper protection from harmful substances. This article briefly describes various first hand situations of violence against women where workers were mistreated and deprived of basic rights in the workplace. Women seem to be the easiest target for the apparel companies as men are often put in managerial positions. The circumstances for these workers will not change unless the North American consumer demands it. Companies with factories overseas are looking for the cheapest manufacturing cost possible, no matter the effect on those working for them.

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BY Erik Loomis

Today, American citizens simply cannot know the working conditions of the factories that make the products they buy. We cannot know how the chemicals, tools, and technologies in these workplaces affect workers. Some brave workers publicize their conditions, and investigative institutions such as Human Rights Watch expose some of the worst violations, but there is an enormous knowledge gap.

This is hugely beneficial for corporations who want to keep us ignorant of their activities. We know about extreme incidents such as the Rana Plaza collapse that capture the world's attention, however briefly, or when workers get so fed up with the conditions that they strike long enough and loud enough to get the Western world's attention. But the day-to-day disasters that maim or kill a single worker or the accumulation of lead in workers' bodies-those go almost completely unreported.

In 1970, about one thousand women engaged in textile manufacturing in Malaysia. A decade later, eighty thousand women worked in textile, food processing, and electronics factories. A 1983 study of maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, showed an overwhelming young, single and female workforce. Eighty-five percent of the maquiladora workers were female. Electronics workers averaged only 20 years of age. American companies and Mexican maquiladora owners chose women for their supposed physical advantages, but really they chose them because they were paid less and were supposedly easy to control.

One Juárez electronics plant manager, referring to women as "patient" and "highly productive," said, "In all cultures," women "have the greater manual dexterity ... This is why we prefer to use female workers in our plants." This low-wage labor did not lead to improved income equality for women workers. In Mexico in 1980, women made 80 percent of men's wages. Twelve years later, that had fallen to 57 percent. With women seen as disposable, plant managers do nothing to protect them from unsafe working conditions. The women soldering in electronics plants routinely burn their hands. The bad light of the factories causes their sight to diminish, while the acids and solvents workers use poison their bodies.

Women make up the vast majority of the workforce, but men make up the supervisors. Sexual harassment is endemic. A 2006 report by Mexican labor and feminist organizations detailed massive sexual harassment in maquiladoras. Labor authorities ignore or downplay this harassment, not wanting to anger the corporations who could move again at a moment's notice. A Human Rights Watch survey from 2002 found widespread unreported sexual harassment and intimidation at Guatemalan maquiladoras, where women made up 80 percent of the eighty thousand workers. Forty-six percent of these factory workers had experienced mistreatment from their boss, and five percent had been subjected to sexual advances. Analysts consider these numbers underestimates, arguing that many women naturalize sexual harassment and refuse to report it or admit that it is happening to them.

Employers also discriminate against pregnant women. This has a long history: RCA fired pregnant electronics workers in its Bloomington, Indiana, plant in the 1940s. Preemployment pregnancy examinations are common today, as contractors do not want to give pregnant workers paid leave. Kimberly Estrada, a worker at a Dong Bang Fashions factory in Chimaltenango, reported that she had to undergo a gynecological exam by a company doctor at the factory before she could work. If workers became pregnant while employed, their bosses would not give them time off to go to the doctor nor the maternity leave mandated by the Guatemalan labor code. Women have miscarried at work, unable to get the medical treatment they needed to save their babies.

Human rights groups in the United States and Mexico filed a complaint in 1997 over what they called "state-tolerated sex discrimination against prospective and actual female workers in the maquiladora sector along the U.S.-Mexico border," focusing on pregnancy testing and discrimination against pregnant workers. This pressure led to American companies announcing the end of pregnancy testing in the maquiladoras and Mexico issuing new directives to labor officials to stop it. Members of Congress introduced legislation to make pregnancy testing in American-owned factories illegal, suggesting that in fact American politicians could do much more to regulate the conditions of work overseas than they usually claim. But the textile companies found Mexican wages too high anyway, and they simply moved the jobs to Central America and Southeast Asia, forcing the struggle to start anew.

Low wages, sexual harassment, and poor working conditions continue to plague women in the garment industry. Today, women in Bangladesh toil in apparel factories for the national minimum wage of $37 a month. In one factory, women were forced to work 100 hours a week during peak production periods, and supervisors punched and slapped them. The victims included pregnant women, and at least one miscarried because of the treatment. Other pregnant women were forced to quit or denied their legally mandated maternity leave. Women in Cambodia and Indonesia fare little better, making $75 a month in the former and as low as $80 a month in the latter. In all these countries, women are fighting back through labor unions. In Indonesia, Nike had to pay 4,500 workers a $1 million settlement after having not paid them for more than 600,000 hours of overtime over a two-year period-a decision that came only after Indonesia's labor federation pressed a lawsuit.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government contributes to these problems through its purchasing practices. The U.S. Marine Corps contracts its shirt production with DK Knitwear in Bangladesh. A 2010 report showed that one-third of DK workers were children, mostly young girls, and that the plant had no fire alarms despite previous fires in the facility. Women at Zongtex Garment Manufacturing in Cambodia soiled themselves at machines making clothes for the U.S. Army and Air Force. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) signed a contract with a Mexican company in February 2013; the same company had previously treated uniforms with chemicals that caused rashes in TSA agents. Yet Republicans attacked TSA for paying too much to the Mexican workers. Like the rest of the apparel industry, the government relies on subcontractors, pays no attention to the working conditions in plants, and pushes for the cheapest price regardless of the social cost.

These clothing factories often expose workers to dangers that we can barely comprehend. Distressed jeans can sell for well over $100. But how do they become distressed? Chinese workers manually sandblast the jeans.

The fine silica dust of the sand used to treat distressed jeans is particularly dangerous. Silicosis has a long history in industrial labor. It was an epidemic for early twentieth-century American tunnel workers and those who worked in factories with fine rock particles in the air. Workers lost lung capacity and died, most notoriously up to 1,000 African Americans who blasted the Hawk's Nest Tunnel near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, in 1930 without even masks to protect them. Regulations in the United States cut down on the silicosis epidemic, but overseas employers re-create the deadly conditions of a century ago.

Outsourced garment factories have had a problem with silicosis for a long time. Since Turkey outlawed manually sandblasting jeans in 2009, companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. and Lee have claimed they have or will stop the practice. But as sick Chinese workers will tell you, it still happens, and they pay the price. A worker in a Guangdong factory said there was so much sand and dust in the air that he could not see the exit door. The suppliers do not provide workers with basic protections such as eyewear, facemasks, and gloves. There is no good reason for workers to contract silicosis today: its occurrence is only because of a system that combines profit-seeking Western companies with corrupt or indifferent governments in poor countries. Once again, because the jeans companies have outsourced production, they claim no responsibility for the problem.

Around one-third of textile workers in India suffer from respiratory diseases contracted at work. When you buy a piece of clothing that is "wrinkle free" or "stain resistant," that is probably because formaldehyde is embedded in the fabric. Who put that formaldehyde there, inhaling the poison? Guatemalan activist Flor De María Salguero says of these factories, "There are some 14-year-old workers that work over ten hours a day. ... There have been many accidents and injuries in the factories too-they use toxic chemicals that have burned some workers and are responsible for health problems and illnesses like cancer."

Even if contractors want to treat their workers well, they often have little power to do so because cost is the only concern of the multinational corporations that place the contracts. When political scientist Mark Anner visited an apparel factory in El Salvador, he met a woman who had a contract to manufacture dresses for Kmart. The company forced her to limit costs to $1 per dress. When El Salvador raised the minimum wage, she could not pay the workers for the dress price. She asked Kmart to allow her a bit of leeway to pay the workers. The company refused, so she had no choice but to force workers to increase their daily productivity. In this arrangement, the American companies hold almost all the power. They could make life better for workers. They choose not to do so.

While the textile industry has received the most public attention for the outsourcing of terrible working conditions, it is hardly alone in this process. Conditions in electronics factories are no better. American, Japanese, and European companies have exported dangerous working environments to overseas plants. Hu Fengchao spray-painted DVD cases at a Panasonic plant in Dalian, China. He was exposed to toxic chemicals such as benzene, toluene, and xylene. He fell ill soon after starting work, but his employers told him to keep working. Finally, at the age of 28, Hu was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. His platelet count was so low that he risked death from a hemorrhage. Panasonic could have insisted upon basic protections such as masks for workers. Instead, Hu received no protection during his three years in the factory.

Tanning leather was never a pleasant job. Early American cities tried to banish it to the edge of town due to its noxious smells. Then, tanning largely used wood and contributed to deforestation in nineteenth-century New York and New England. Today, chemicals have replaced wood. Bangladesh is a modern center of tanning, exporting leather to the United States and Europe and using chemicals manufactured in rich nations and exported for poor workers to use without protection. Machines break, crushing workers' arms. The workers are exposed to chromium, formaldehyde, axocolorants and other chemicals.

A worker named Poribar quit the tanneries after four stomach operations necessitated by breathing in gases including sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. He told Human Rights Watch, "When the hides are raw there are many acids, lime, and sodium on them. When I touched them with my hands, my hands are affected. If there's a small cut, it will become much worse. The owner didn't give us any gloves. The same with masks-we were never given them. If we'd been given them we would use them." The World Health Organization estimates that 90 percent of Bangladeshi tanning workers die before the age of 50. Neither the chemical companies nor companies buying the Bangladeshi leather takes any responsibility for these conditions.

The working conditions of outsourced labor finally came to the world's attention on May 10, 1993, when the Kader toy factory near Bangkok, Thailand, caught fire, killing 188 workers and severely injuring more than 500. The largest workplace disaster in Thai history, the Kader fire should have demonstrated to the world the very real costs of outsourcing unsafe working conditions to the world's poorest countries.

But very little changed after this horrifying tragedy. The factory manufactured toys, mostly stuffed animals and plastic dolls, for Hasbro, Tyco, Toys"R"Us, Mattel, and other toy companies that had closed their American factories. Most of the 3,000 Kader workers were young women, some using fake IDs to get around age restrictions on labor. Thai law provided minimum wage only for full-time workers. Thus Kader and other manufacturers rarely employed people as full-time laborers. Compulsory overtime frequently kept workers until midnight, or even 5:00 a.m. if a deadline approached. Workers had their pay docked if they did not meet production quotas. On the fourth floor of Kader, 800 workers toiled. On that floor were eight toilets.

The fire alarm did not work and the fire spread rapidly in a factory full of finished plastic products. Bosses ordered the downstairs fire exits locked in order to maintain more control over workers. Fleeing back upstairs, the workers flooded the upper fire exits, causing them to collapse under all the weight. Workers began jumping from the upper stories to escape the flames. Said one survivor, "I didn't know what to do. Finally I had no other choice but to join others and jump out the window. I saw many of my friends lying dead on the ground beside me. I injured my legs but I came out alive." Said another, "In desperation, I went back and forth looking down below. The smoke was so thick and I picked the best place to jump in a pile of boxes. My sister jumped too. She died."

If this sounds much like the procession of events at Triangle, with young women dying in a burning sweatshop because of lax safety regulations and a system of widespread exploited labor, commenters at the time noted the same thing as well. In Thailand the main building collapsed from the heat of the fire. The building was constructed with uninsulated steel girders that collapsed after 15 minutes of intense heat. Shoddy design combined with employer malfeasance and a lack of basic safety standards to allow an easily preventable disaster. Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai traveled to the factory site on the night of the tragedy and pledged greater fire safety for Thai workers. But not one executive nor manager received even a day in jail. The management was fined $12,000 for building code violations. The toy companies, of course, took no responsibility.

American corporations made no meaningful reforms after the Kader fire. Today, temperatures inside Asian toy factories routinely reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In the 2000s, the toy industry again received attention in the United States when Chinese-made toys used lead paint. American parents were outraged. But this was strictly a consumer reaction; we seemed to care only about the health of our own children. What impact did these lead toys have on the workers? Largely, we do not know. This system results from Mattel and Fisher-Price simply not caring how their toys are produced so long as they come in under cost. Safety last.
This is an excerpt from Erik Loomis's new book Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe, out now from the New Press.

Erik Loomis

Erik Loomis is an assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island.

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In the Global Apparel Industry, Abusive and Deadly Working Conditions Are Still the Norm

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BY Erik Loomis Today, American citizens simply cannot know the working conditions of the factories that make the products they buy. We cannot know how the chemicals, tools, and technologies in these workplaces affect workers. Some brave workers publicize their conditions, and investigative institutions such as Human Rights Watch expose some of the worst violations, but there is an enormous knowledge gap.

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Working conditions around the world are so very different from those in North America. From workers having no rights in the workplace to unrealistic exceptions and dangerous working conditions, workers are often left with the choice to either endure the terrible circumstance or be fired. This makes it impossible for people to provide for their families. Not only are people not able ro provide, but they are not able to get ahead, which means their children will often suffer the same fate. This article takes a look at the 6 worst countries in the world to work in and what these workers must put up with in order to earn an income.

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Harrassment. Imprisonment. Murder.

Laborers in the worst countries for workers face these and other threats every day over basic rights like sick leave, fair pay and humane working conditions, according to a new report by the International Trade Union Confederation.

The group rated countries using 97 different workers' rights metrics as part of its 2014 Global Rights Index.

Countries are ranked on a scale of 1 (the best protections) to 5 (the worst protections).

In the map below, darker shades represent fewer protections for workers.

(International Trade Union Confederation)

Here's a look at six of the worst countries for workers, according to the report, and why they're so bad:

Central African Republic (Ranking: 5+)

The CAR is among eight countries with the worst ranking of 5+. Torn apart by war, CAR offers no guarantee of workers rights. The country has been in chaos since the Seleka rebel alliance captured the capital and ousted President Francois Bozize in March 2013. Three aid workers were among 22 killed in an attack by gunmen at a charity hospital in April, and the country's only centralized union was dissolved in 1981 by the Dacko regime. Child labor is common, and the Ministry of Labor and Civil Service has never defined or enforced health and safety standards in the workplace.

Workers demanding better conditions in Cambodia are subject to unfair dismissals, intimidation, arrest and even violence, according to the report. In January, Cambodian police opened fire on garment workers demanding a higher minimum wage at a protest in Phom Penh, killing three people and wounding more. Several protesters were arrested, and others were beaten by police at separate rallies demanding better wages earlier this year. At least 500 workers have fainted at garment factories this year alone, and more than 4,000 have dropped unconscious at work in the past four.

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6 of the worst countries in the world for workers

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Harrassment. Imprisonment. Murder. Laborers in the worst countries for workers face these and other threats every day over basic rights like sick leave, fair pay and humane working conditions, according to a new report by the International Trade Union Confederation. The group rated countries using 97 different workers' rights metrics as part of its 2014 Global Rights Index.