Safety Accord For Bangladesh Worker (Essay Sample)

SAFETY ACCORD FOR BANGLADESH WORKER
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In public opinion there are many ways to describe a business but the first word that comes into mind is “profit.” In order for a business to maintain and expand its ability to serve the public, it proves very important for the company to be able to produce a profit. Without the influx of money and an improving bottom line, the business simply is not able to compete with other companies offering the same service and product, which in turn would ultimately result in a failure of the business and it eventually going bankrupt. Despite a profit, however, there are a few other aspects of a business requiring further attention. Profit might prove most important to the longevity of the business, but other elements do play a role in how the business functions and what it is and is not able to do. These additional elements include the legal situation of the region, environmental aspects, ethical elements and the organization in general (although there are others, these are the four most important additional elements of the business). While ethics might not directly relate to the overall profitability of a business, it does prove important for a company to have strong ethical aspects; otherwise it might run into problems with all of the other vital elements of the business. Without a strong ethical standing, problems with the region, environment and business organization can come up, which ultimately affects the profits of the business.
Lately, business ethics has become a main issue throughout Bangladesh, and especially in the fashion and garments industry. From fire safety to the quality of working environments inside of businesses and the amount individuals are paid, all of these have come into the forefront of the fashion industry throughout the region, and while owners often look for ways to save money and reduce the amount of overhead it must pay for the workers and the facility itself, it is ultimately coming at the expense of the business’s ethical offerings. While profits might increase for a time, it reduces the quality of life for the workers, which, eventually, might lead to backlash amongst buyers and lead to the business falling apart.
A common aspect of garment facilities throughout the nation of Bangladesh is the fact more and more individuals are crammed into small spaces of the facility. This way, they are able to complete more tasks in a small building, which in turn saves the company rent and the price of a building. However, it also makes it difficult for individuals to escape in the time of a fire. Should a fire break out, especially when the majority of the facility is readily flammable, it makes it that much more difficult for workers to make their way out of the building without injury. All of this came to the forefront on April 24, 2013 in the Rana Plaza, when the Dhaka garment-factory collapsed due to fire, which in turn took the lives over 1,129 workers (Motlagh, 2013). The death of so many workers caused an international uproar, as individuals in other nations who were once blind to the working conditions of such factories inside of Bangladesh finally saw how many of their own favourite brands were produced. Due to this, they demanded a change in how their clothing came out of the factory, and in turn, the fashion lines turned towards the facility owners to upgrade their facilities in order to improve the quality of working space (Reuters, 2013).
In a business, ethical decision often help point towards the overall quality of a business. While negative aspects of a company’s ethical situation might cause it to increase, for a time, in profits, it ultimately is going to see a strong drop off in the quality of work due to distaste from the workers and, eventually, once the negative ethical decisions from the business are discovered by the individuals who consume and purchase the produced products, it becomes that much more likely for the negative aspects of the business to harm it. In order to understand what ethics means to a business, it must prove necessary to look at the mean of ethics itself. Ethics is a philosophical term, in which it is the moral principle or guidelines set to determine what is right and wrong. Every individual has their own ethical principles guiding them in everyday decisions. The same proves true for a business. While an individual or group of people fabricate the business into existence, it still has the ethical qualities of the owners. The owners dictate what ultimately proves the ‘right’ decision based on their moral principles (Velasquez, 2010). However, the negative aspect to this is many individual look towards profit s the underlining attribute of their company, and every other decision revolves around profit. This eventually leads to some of the negative decision making, which to individuals on the outside of the business, looks as if it is an undesirable (Waddell, Jones, George 2011,149). In Bangladesh well over a thousand individuals died in the building because business neglect the safety for their employee. Due to the not only the pressure applied to the garment facilities form external sources, such as the United Nations, but also the internal government as well, it ultimately came to the conclusion that these businesses had to improve the safety of their buildings and provide a more ethical treatment of workers in order to ensure the worker’s safety and not just exploit the facility for the maximum amount of financial gain at the expense of a higher profit. In order to make sure necessary improvements were made to all of the remaining garment manufacturing facilities, the Bangledesh government required all facility and business owners to sign a contract stating they would ablidge by specific rules and regulations, as all of these regulations pointed towards the need to improve fire safety, no matter the cost to the owner or management of the business (ABC News, 2013).
However, the safety document itself was made due to Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry it stated, “No worker needs to fear fires, building collapses, or other accidents that could be prevented with reasonable health and safety measures.” Every business owner had to sign the document in order to avoid government intervention, which in turn would have shut down the business and cost it additional fees. Due to the mandate to sign the documentation and to agree to the new regulations, facility owners throughout the country had to abide by a set timeline in which the buildings had to drastically improve in order to ensure the improved safety of their workers (ANN, 2013).
Every decision made by a business owner comes with some sort of ethical dilemma attached to it. Regardless of the situation, there is always some sort of a decision that might ultimately affect the wellbeing of not only those who work for the business but also those who use the material and services as well. For factory owners inside of Bangladesh, many of these ethical decisions came down to if the company is able to either make more profits or maintain safety and security for all of those who work inside of the building. In a world where profits is the most important element of a business, many of these managers and owners have to look for ways to improve their business, increase profits and opt into the best ethical decision for their employees as well. To do this, a specific ethical model needs to be utilized (Manik, 2012). There are two basic approaches for this
The first one is utilitarian model approach. According to this model, a manager will attempt to make decision that made the greatest number of improvements for the shareholder (Nantel, Weeks, 1996). When looking at the tragedy that happens in Bangladesh, a few companies were boycotted by customers from the origin country of the company, such as Primark and Mango (Elgot, 2013). The business being boycott generally suffers further loss financially, which eventually comes out of the shareholder’s profits. By signing the safety accord, most of the stakeholder will be satisfy. In this case, workers will feel safer working under the new conditions of the building without worrying that it might break down. In addition, customers will be happier to know their products are produce by worker that have decent safety. However in the short term business will get additional fixed cost but in the long term it will definitely a good investment. In this scenario supplier and shareholder will feel secure because there is certainly to long-term process of the business (Harris, 2013).
The second one is moral right model approach. According to this model, all decisions made by the business reflect the overall quality of the employee. The business owner does not necessarily look to specifically make profits or to improve the share value for the stockholders, but instead all of the decisions are made for the betterment of the employees. This recues the need for any sort of mandate from the government, and the businesses look out for the employees (BBC, 2013). While this might reduce the potential for improved value to the company, it also reduces the chance of these tragedies, which in turn reduces the chance of boycotts, which also saves the company a good amount of money as well.
While the ...