This is what mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and IKEA call globalization. These corporations pretend that they have safety and quality standards for all of their foreign suppliers. Having worked for IKEA for 14 years, I can assure you it is complete bullshit. IKEA used child labor in India to produce their cheap rugs. A recent report revealed their suppliers in Eastern Europe used slave labor to produce their flat packed particle board shit furniture. I guess when your company is run by a Nazi, anything goes. It continues today. Wal-Mart and IKEA know that these Bangladesh factories are using slave labor and the conditions are atrocious. They don’t give a shit as long as the profits keep rolling in. Having 112 poor people burn to death in a factory is just a minor blip. The PR machines at both companies will be announcing strict new controls on their suppliers. More bullshit. The corporate titans don’t give a shit about you, their workers, or these poor peasants in Bangladesh. They care about profit margins, bonuses and their stock price.
Bangladesh factory fire: Doomed factory where 112 were killed in massive blaze deemed ‘high risk’ by Wal-Mart assessors last year
Wal-Mart says it stopped working with nearly 50 Bangladeshi factories because of fire risks, but wasn’t sure if they were still buying products from the firetrap garment factory located outside Dhaka, the capital.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, November 26, 2012, 10:03 AM
Andrew Biraj/REUTERS
Relatives mourn the death of a garment worker after a fire swept through the Tazreen Fashion factory in the Ashulia industrial belt of Dhaka, on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital killing more than 100 people.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Fire raced up the floors of a Bangladeshi garment factory with no emergency exits, killing at least 112 people, some of whom jumped from the eight-story building where they made clothes for major global retailers.
Investigators suspect that a short circuit caused the fire Saturday night outside the capital, Dhaka, said Maj. Mohammad Mahbub, fire department operations director.
The factory is owned by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a subsidiary of the Tuba Group, which makes products for Wal-Mart, IKEA and other companies in the U.S. and Europe.
EARLIER: AT LEAST 112 DIE IN FIRE AT GARMENT FACTORY WITH NO EMERGENCY EXITS
BY THE NUMBERS: DEADLY BLAZE BRINGS GARMENT FACTORY FIRE DEATH TOLL TO MORE THAN 300 SINCE 2006
Wal-Mart says it previously stopped working with nearly 50 Bangladeshi factories because of fire danger.
An assessment of Tazreen conducted for the retailer last year rated the company as a “high risk,” but Wal-Mart said Monday it did not know whether it was still buying products made at the factory.
Andrew Biraj/REUTERS
A firefighter inspects the charred rubble inside the factory. Officials said the building did not have emergency exits.
Firefighters recovered at least 100 bodies from the factory and 12 more people died at hospitals after jumping from the building to escape the fire, Mahbub told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower,” Mahbub said.
Local media reported that up to 124 people were killed.
Andrew Biraj/REUTERS
Workers shout slogans as they protest against the death of their colleagues after the devastating blaze.
Army soldiers and border guards were helping keep order as thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered, Mahbub said.
Relatives of the workers frantically looked for their loved ones.
Sabina Yasmine said she saw the body of her daughter-in-law, but had seen no trace of her son, who also worked there.
“Oh, Allah, where’s my soul? Where’s my son?” wailed Yasmine, who works at another factory in the area. “I want the factory owner to be hanged. For him, many have died, many have gone.”
Neither Tazreen’s owner nor Tuba Group officials could be reached for comment.
AP Photo/Polash Khan
Bangladeshi people identify the bodies of their relatives who died in a garment factory fire in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Tazreen was given a “high risk” safety rating after a May 16, 2011, audit conducted by an “ethical sourcing” assessor for Wal-Mart, according to a document posted on the Tuba Group’s website. It did not specify what led to the rating.
Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Gardner said online documents indicating an orange or “high risk” assessment after the May 2011 inspection and a yellow or “medium risk” report after an inspection in August 2011 appeared to pertain to the factory.
The August 2011 letter said Wal-Mart would conduct another inspection within one year.
Gardner said it was not clear if that inspection had been conducted or whether the factory was still making products for Wal-Mart.
If a factory is rated “orange” three times in two years, Wal-Mart won’t place any orders for one year. The May 2011 report was the first orange rating for the factory.
“Our thoughts are with the families of the victims of this tragedy,” the retailer said in a statement. “While we are trying to determine if the factory has a current relationship with Wal-Mart or one of our suppliers, fire safety is a critically important area of Wal-Mart’s factory audit program and we have been working across the apparel industry to improve fire safety education and training in Bangladesh.”
The Tuba Group is a major Bangladeshi garment exporter whose clients also include Carrefour and IKEA, according to its website.
Its factories export garments to the U.S., Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, among other countries.
The Tazreen factory, which opened in 2009 and employed about 1,700 people, made polo shirts, fleece jackets and T-shirts.
Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures.
The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the U.S. and Europe.
In its 2012 Global Responsibility report, Wal-Mart said that “fire safety continues to be a key focus for brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh.”
Wal-Mart said it ceased working with 49 factories in Bangladesh in 2011 because of fire safety issues, and was working with its supplier factories to phase out production from buildings deemed high risk.
Mahbub said the fire broke out on the ground floor, which was used as a warehouse, and spread quickly to the upper floors.
Many workers who retreated to the roof were rescued, he said. But he said that with no emergency exits leading outside the building, many victims were trapped, and firefighters recovered 69 bodies from the second floor alone.
“The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor,” Mahbub said. “So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building.”
Many victims were burned beyond recognition. The bodies were laid out in rows at a school nearby. Many of them were handed over to families; unclaimed victims were taken to Dhaka Medical College for identification.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed shock at the loss of so many lives.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said it would stand by the victims’ families and offered 100,000 takas ($1,250) to each of the families of the dead. The association’s acting president, Siddiqur Rahman, said on a late-night talk show early Monday that Tazreen’s owner was to meet with group representatives later in the day.
“We will discuss what other things we can do for the families of the dead,” Rahman said on Rtv, a private television station. “We are worried about what has happened. We hope to discuss everything in detail in that meeting.”
youcanthavemyglock says:
oops just a minor setback! no wonder Wal Mart opened on 8pm on Thanksgiving, they wanted to start selling shit before this news broke out.
‘Wal-Mart says it stopped working with nearly 50 Bangladeshi factories because of fire risks, but wasn’t sure if they were still buying products from the firetrap garment factory located outside Dhaka, the capital.’ – WTF does that even mean? You don’t know who you’re buying from? So laughable, I know I couldn’t say this shit with a straight face if I worked for Wal Mart.
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26th November 2012 at 1:12 pm
Administrator says:
Wal-Mart knows how many tubes of K-Y Jelly were sold in the world in the last 30 minutes, but they don’t know whether the slave laborers at this paradise like factory produced any products for them. That’s laughable.
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26th November 2012 at 1:18 pm
AWD says:
Not all people are created equal. Dying in a fire would be preferable to working in a sweat shop 12 hours a day for $30 a month. What’s going to happen to Wal Mart when they run out of shithole countries to exploit? Bangladesh is about the last cheap labor country left. Maybe they can train Americans to work, we have 100 million that get paid 100x what Bangladesh workers make to NOT WORK every day.
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26th November 2012 at 2:11 pm
sensetti says:
WMES
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26th November 2012 at 2:20 pm
Mats B says:
Dear Administrator,
Since you’ve been working for IKEA for 14 years perhaps you can advice me where to buy stocks in IKEA. I would like some.
I agree that many “corporate titans” don’t give a shit, unfortunatelly, nor do most of the consumers of the western world.
If you (we) were willing to pay more for all the shit you (we) buy for christmas perhaps the labour conditions in the developing countries would improve.
Merry Christmas from Sweden.
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26th November 2012 at 4:05 pm
Eddie says:
Mixed feelings here for me. I’m sorry for the people who died, who were just trying to make enough money to eat and have shelter.
(But on the other hand they were all Bengali raghead Muslims who probably hated my guts, and they breed like bunny rabbits, so they are still gaining on my people demographically and bound to take over unless there’s a major die-off.)
I know that corporate greedheads at Walmart and IKEA bear some responsibility.
(But what about the Bengali raghead who owned the building? He could have built a couple of doors, for Mohammed’s sake. Doesn’t he bear some responsibility?)
And, last but not least….would I rather be able to do business in a place that has no enforced rules, like Bangladesh, or a place like here, where there are so many damned regulations that it keeps little guys from ever making a start, because obeying all the rules a so-called benevolent government can come up with costs money out the wazoo?
And the answer is…I’d probably be better off there, all other things (like language and ethnicity) being equal. Sad to say.
But corporations are just too powerful. Forty of the largest economies in the world are corporations, not countries. That’s too much power for any business entity. It just is….
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26th November 2012 at 7:48 pm
Administrator says:
Mats B
I worked for IKEA for 14 years. You can’t buy stock in IKEA. Ingvar Kamprad, the Nazi owner, hordes all the billions for himself. Of course he has brilliant tax engineers who set up shell companies in low tax countries and use transfer pricing laws to pay little to no taxes. He actually wants people to believe the company is owned by a charitable foundation. It’s nothing but a scam. I know everything to know about IKEA and Ingvar’s tax “planning”.
Perhaps IKEA and Wal-Mart could act in a manner that doesn’t get people killed. IKEA has a history of buying their mass produced particle board shit from the lowest cost provider. This is not a requirement. This is a choice made by their Nazi owner. Profits are all that matter to these parasitic corporations.
By the way, did you know old Ingvar joined the Nazi Party in 1946?????
How fucked up is that Mats?
The world knew the Nazis had just murdered 6 million Jews and this 25 year old douchebag decided to join the party.
Merry Christmas from West Philly
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26th November 2012 at 7:53 pm
llpoh says:
I suppose that foreign governments have no responsibility in this stuff?
As a businessman, I try hard to obey all laws and regulations – I believe it is my duty, and it is my legal responsibility. I guess the suggestion now is that in addition to that, I need to also be responsible for overseeing anyone I buy from, and also for mandating that companies resident in other countries follow the rules and regs that I deem appropriate.
Bullshit.
Countries must make their own laws, and create their own regulations. If someone should be dictating to these countries that they improve or increase those laws, it sure as hell should not be companies in the US. That should fall to the US government if it falls anywhere. They – the government – can, for instance, ban imports from nations failing to institute proper safety regs. But to expect a company – any company – to be responsible for the actions of a company in another country is ridiculous. It is not their role, and it sure as hell is not their responsibility.
And, of course, there is the little matter of what the people of these poor countries will do if/when people stop buying their goods because buyers deem that the manufacturers are not behaving in a safe manner.
It is sad – but the blame does not rest on the companies buying the goods. It rests on the companies manufacturing the goods, and it rests on the governments of the countries where the factories are located.
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26th November 2012 at 8:02 pm
llpoh says:
Admin – Ingvar sounds, as always, like a beacon of ethics and morality.
Mats said “If you (we) were willing to pay more for all the shit you (we) buy for christmas perhaps the labour conditions in the developing countries would improve.”
Perhaps my ass. That would never fucking happen without force of government of intervention of the people in strikes and such. Bangladeshi owners will not share the spoils on such things as safety. Do not be so ignorant.
I know for a fact that this happened:
There is a plant in China where people were being killed by working in acid without protective clothing. A western visitor asked why they were not being provided protective clothing. The response was that the clothes cost more than the employee. When an employee died – appartently an every day event – they would deposit the body out the back door for the family to collect, and would open the front door and select one of the many waiting appicants for the vaqcancy.
Those are the fuckers that are responsible. Alng with their countries governments.
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26th November 2012 at 8:09 pm
Administrator says:
llpoh
The dynamic you describe is not how these mega-corporations operate. You are a small business and cannot dictate how your suppliers should operate. Wal-Mart, IKEA, Apple and the rest of the mega-corporations that “outsourced” their production to the Far East effectively are in control of these suppliers. IKEA was often the only customer of many of their suppliers in Eastern Europe and the Far East. They therefore have to accept responsibility for how these suppliers operate. From a legal standpoint I’m sure they’ve arranged the agreements so that no liability will fall on their shoulders. The 112 burned to death peasants are just a cost of business for Wal-Mart and IKEA.
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26th November 2012 at 8:19 pm
llpoh says:
Admin – in some cases I know what you are saying is in fact true – that those companies are in effect extensions of Wal-Mart et al. And a good argument can be made as you are so making. And were I running those corps I would be making different decisions than they make.
Nevertheless, I believe the governments and the business owners must bear the majority of the responsibility, despite Wal-Marts willingness to take advantage of the situations that present themselves. Wal-Mart, and others, will almost always obey the law of the land. They may, and do, try to draft the laws in their favor. But in the end, they will obey whatever law is in place. And they wil also, it seems, take advantage of any and every situation, no matter how shady.
I do not permit my employees to behave in an unsafe manner (they at times do, but I do not permit it). No matter what my customers demand, and no matter what the laws state, I try to run a safe workplace. It seems that many businesses in Bangladesh and elsewhere are run by people with no ethics or morals. It is most unfortunate but not surprising.
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26th November 2012 at 8:31 pm
Administrator says:
llpoh
The owner of the factory should be put in jail for 50 years. The governments in Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, etc don’t give a shit about workers. They get payoffs from the factory owners to look the other way. The mega-corps know this. This is the reason they can produce their goods so cheaply. This is the world we’ve created. Americans don’t care how those Wal-Mart goods are produced. They just want cheap stuff they can buy on credit. I’m almost ashamed to be living in a world that operates this way. Survival of the fittest with no concern for morality is not a sustainable paradigm.
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26th November 2012 at 8:45 pm
Administrator says:
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26th November 2012 at 8:55 pm
Administrator says:
Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad’s Nazi ties ‘went deeper’
The founder of the Ikea furniture chain, Ingvar Kamprad, is facing further questions about his Nazi past following claims in a new book.
Author Elisabeth Asbrink says Mr Kamprad was an active recruiter for a Swedish Nazi group, and stayed close to sympathisers well after World War II.
The details go beyond what Mr Kamprad has previously admitted.
The Swedish billionaire has said his involvement was youthful “stupidity”, and the “greatest mistake” of his life.
In her book, Ms Asbrink says Mr Kamprad actively recruited people to the fascist Sweden’s Socialist Union (SSS).
She says the activity prompted security police to set up a file on him in 1943 when he was 17 – the same year that he founded Ikea.
Ms Asbrink says the security police intercepted his post, and noted that he “had some sort of functionary position” in a youth Nazi organization.
The intelligence services have refused to comment.
‘Proud of links’
The tycoon revealed some elements of his past in a book in 1988, admitting that he was a close friend of the Swedish fascist activist Per Engdahl, and a member of his New Swedish Movement between 1942 and 1945.
Ms Asbrink’s book includes details of a wedding invitation Mr Kamprad sent to Engdahl in 1950, telling him how proud he was that the two belonged to the same circle.
She says that, in an interview in 2010, he told her that: “Per Engdahl is a great man, and I will maintain that as long as I live.”
A Swedish expert on far-right extremism, Anna-Lena Lodenius, told Radio Sweden that Mr Kamprad’s Nazi involvement could no longer be dismissed as the by-product of an accidental friendship with Per Engdahl.
His involvement in another fascist organisation, she said, showed he must have been “perfectly aware” of what it stood for.
However, a spokesman for Mr Kamprad said he had long admitted flirting with fascism, but that now, “there are no Nazi-sympathising thoughts in Ingvar’s head whatsoever”.
Although Mr Kamprad ranks 162nd in the most recent Forbes magazine wealth list, worth an estimated $6bn (£3.6bn), some analysts believe he is much richer.
Ownership of Ikea, the world’s largest furniture chain, is now in the hands of a Dutch charitable foundation created by Mr Kamprad. But some, including the Swedish business newspaper Veckans Affarer, believe that behind complicated legal arrangements, it is still effectively his company.
Even so, Mr Kamprad is renowned for a devotion to frugality, reportedly driving an old Volvo and travelling by economy class.
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26th November 2012 at 8:58 pm
llpoh says:
Admin – yup. I believe you, and totally agree.
I never had the misfortune of working for a multinational that behaved in the way you describe. Quite the contrary – every one I have worked for refused to behave inappropriately. For instance, the ones I worked for pulled out of countries where they were expected to pay bribes or look the other way while bribes were paid, etc. Maybe things have changed in the last 15 – 20 years, but I had no exposure to this stuff, and I worked for some reallly big corps – Electrolux, etc.
And I guess my experience is somewhat different than yours – I have seen sociopaths, for sure. But by and large, the people I worked with behaved appropriately. I never saw,or heard of, senior management proposing anything I would have thought illegal or seriously unethical. Saw a lot of purchasing managers behave poorly – some got arrested.
But I do know that in recent years the pressure to drive cost down by X percent every year has grown enormously. This could be affecting the overall culture of the corporations. And becaue a lot more product is off-shored, the opportunity for abuse has undoubtedly grown.
I also understand that a lot of employees – especially in purchasing – are gradually programmed to act unethically, by being rewarded for cost reduction, etc., and so they eventually can be co-erced into anything with the promise of bonuses and such. Seems that tool is used on Wall Street as well.
We are screwed.
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26th November 2012 at 8:58 pm
ecliptix543 says:
Geez llpoh, I figured you’d be throwing a party for the factory owners because now, not only do they get the insurance payoff, but they also get to stiff the dead workers’ families of wages – probably get to stiff all the surviving employees since the payroll records were “unfortunate victims” in the fire…
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26th November 2012 at 11:59 pm
Svarghese says:
This is a very complex issue and whatever Wal-mart or Target or Ikea will do will not stop the Asians from behaving the way they are behaving. The Americans and Europeans want the cheap(est) clothes and the Asians need employment.
I live in India and here a good branded dress shirt will cost me about rupees 2000 which is $40. I am very sure that these shirts are manufactures in very professionally managed decent workplaces. In the US you get a gap shirt for $40 or even less. These shirts are manufactured in India or Bangaladesh or Sri Lanka.
Once manufactured these shirts are transported to the West and sold in company showrooms. I still do not understand how can a simple shirt cost the same in India and in the US – where the costs of sale are 3-4 times as in india. The only answer is slave labor.
This can never be regulated by the corporations when Americans need shirts for $10 and Indians are there to work at $1 an hour. The solutions are only one of the following:
1. Indian (or any Asian) government regulates working conditions – but then why would Indian government do that when the Chinese will run away with the business?
2. The American consumer refuses to buy slave labor items which are sold dirt cheap. Americans may need to do with one good shirt instead of 3 cheap ones, but then it will be worth it.
If Gap decides to cut out a manufacturer for slave labor, Kohls will only be too willing to sign him up and Americans will stop buying from Gap and they move to Kohls. I feel slave labor is keeping prices artificially low in the US.
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26th November 2012 at 7:51 am
Administrator says:
Liberal IKEA Announces ‘Regret’ For Using Slave Labor
Ikea, which has become world famous not only for its furniture but for its sanctimonious leftism, has announced “regret” for using East German slave labor to make its product during the cold war. According to the Associated Press, Ikea allowed forced prison labor from its suppliers. Ikea apparently took measures to stop this, but they were “insufficient.” Ikea announced:
We deeply regret that this could happen. The use of political prisoners for manufacturing was at no point accepted by IKEA … at the time we didn’t have the well-developed control system that we have today and we clearly did too little to prevent such production methods.
Ikea’s hypocrisy is nothing new. While Ikea is a vocal proponent of gay marriage, for example, the photos in their Saudi catalog airbrush female models out so as not to offend Islamist sensibilities. The founder of Ikea reportedly joined the Swedish Nazi Party in 1943.
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26th November 2012 at 8:08 am
Administrator says:
Ikea Admits Forced Labor Was Used in 1980s
By NICHOLAS KULISH and JULIA WERDIGIER
BERLIN — Ikea has long been famous for its inexpensive, some-assembly-required furniture. On Friday the company admitted that political prisoners in the former East Germany provided some of the labor that helped it keep its prices so low.
A report by auditors at Ernst & Young concluded that Ikea, a Swedish company, knowingly benefited from forced labor in the former East Germany to manufacture some of its products in the 1980s. Ikea had commissioned the report in May as a result of accusations that both political and criminal prisoners were involved in making components of Ikea furniture and that some Ikea employees knew about it.
“Even though Ikea Group took steps to secure that prisoners were not used in production, it is now clear that these measures were not effective enough,” the company said in a statement on Friday.
The use of political prisoners as forced labor, even decades ago, is a publicity disaster for a company that with its familiar blue and yellow logo seems at times like a cultural ambassador for Sweden. Inexpensive Ikea furnishings have filled countless student apartments and the homes of millions of young families around the world.
Accusations against Ikea started to appear about a year ago in news media reports in Germany and Sweden. Ikea’s admission has given new impetus to efforts by victims’ groups to receive compensation for work they were forced to perform under the Communist government in East Germany, an issue that has long been overshadowed here by the large and deadly slave-labor program under the Nazis.
“There’s little recognition,” said Hugo Diederich, the chairman of the Association of Victims of Stalinism, himself a former forced laborer, after a news conference here a short walk from the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing, in a building that stands along the path of the Berlin Wall.
Ikea is not the only company that has been linked to forced labor in the former East Germany by purchasing goods from suppliers there, though the actual number may never be known.
Mr. Diederich said that after an attempt to escape from East Germany, he was forced to make steel pipes for the firms Klöckner & Company and Mannesmann.
At least two well-known mail-order companies in the former West Germany, Neckermann and Quelle, which have since run into financial trouble, have also been accused of using forced labor.
Christian Sachse, a Berlin historian, said forced labor permeated institutions across East Germany, and that it would take “years of research to properly understand the field.”
Mr. Diederich said that more needs to be done for the victims, many of whom today live under worse circumstances than their former tormentors. “This will raise the pressure enormously on politicians to act,” he added.
Ikea’s announcement received a mixed response. There was praise that the company had made an effort to uncover unpleasant facts about its past, but also criticism that it had not been transparent enough with the results. Rather than releasing the entire report, the company made only a four-page summary available, citing privacy concerns.
But Steffen Alisch, a researcher on prisons in the former East Germany at the Free University in Berlin, said, “They have to make the entire report available, and they have to do it quickly.”
The fact that Ikea retained Ernst & Young for the inquiry instead of using independent academic experts also raised questions. “Ernst & Young has no experience with research into dictatorships and is clearly not objective,” said Ronald Lässig, chairman of the East German victims’ group DDR-Opfer-Hilfe. “What Ikea did today was little more than an event for show.”
Investigators examined 20,000 pages of internal Ikea records, as well as 80,000 pages of documents from federal and state archives. They interviewed about 90 people, including current and former Ikea workers and witnesses from East Germany.
A political prisoner in Naumburg, about an hour’s drive from Leipzig, told investigators that he was sent to VEB Metallwaren Naumburg, one of East Germany’s state-owned enterprises. He was put to work placing metal pegs in chair legs and furniture rollers, and remembered seeing boxes with the Ikea logo.
A purchaser for the company said that “the use of prison labor was not an official Ikea strategy, but that there was an awareness within the company about the issue.”
“The G.D.R. did not differentiate between political and criminal prisoners,” Ernst & Young wrote, referring to East Germany, adding that “during this time period, many innocent individuals were sent to prison.” Ikea repeatedly raised concerns about the possible use of forced labor at the time but no action was taken, the report said.
Jochen Staadt, a professor at the Free University of Berlin, said it was well known at the time that East Germany was using prisoners to work in factories but that West Germany encouraged the production of goods in the East because it allowed the East to reduce its debt. At the same time, companies liked to move production to East Germany because costs were lower.
Professor Staadt said companies like Ikea would still have paid for the work in East Germany but that the pay never reached the workers. “It was pocketed by the G.D.R.,” he said.
Ikea employees did visit the production sites in East Germany, but rules governing such visits were strict, that way reducing the effectiveness of site inspections. Any visit had to be registered and approved in advance and could take place only in selected parts of the plants, and a representative of the East German government had to be there.
Ikea said Friday it was sorry about the episodes and pledged to donate money to research on forced labor in the former East Germany.
“We deeply regret that this could happen,” Jeanette Skjelmose, sustainability manager at Ikea, said in a statement.
Rainer Wagner, chairman of the victims’ group UOKG, said at the news conference here that “a broad public clarification” was necessary, not just from Ikea but from “all the firms” that used forced labor. But Mr. Wagner also thanked Ikea for its “pioneering role” in helping to bring greater public attention to the subject.
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26th November 2012 at 8:08 am
Administrator says:
Growing IKEA Russia Corruption Scandal – Two Execs Fired
Last Friday, Swedish furniture-giant IKEA announced that it fired two top managers at its Russia subsidiary ZAO “IKEA MOS” (ООО «ИКЕА МОС»), which shares responsibility for the management of IKEA’s chain of shopping malls named “MEGA” («МЕГА»). IKEA spokeswoman Camilla Meiby stated that the two execs – from the store’s St. Petersburg branch – were fired once documents surfaced with evidence implicating them in bribery “in connection with a contractor-company that was trying to resolve the situation with the power supply at the Mega shopping center in St. Petersburg.” In typically efficient Swedish fashion, Meiby stated: “We know there have been bribes … We’ve seen the documents.” She added that the managers did not appear to engage in the conduct for their own personal gain. IKEA Group CEO Mikael Ohlsson released a statement in which he said he was “deeply upset and disappointed’ and that “[c]orruption is totally unacceptable for IKEA.”
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26th November 2012 at 8:10 am
Administrator says:
IKEA exposed over ‘child Labour’ and green issues
Marc Wadsworth
Furniture giant IKEA has made the astonishing admission that some of its suppliers in the developing world use exploitative child labour and others are involved in illegal logging which destroys protected forests.
Anders Dahlvig, the multi-national’s Chief Executive Officer, made the candid revelations after IKEA’s hypocrisy over its much-trumpeted ‘ethical policies’ was exposed by the Washington Post and the BBC.
Challenged by BBC Hard Talk presenter Stephen Sackur on Monday that his company was not as ‘clean and green’ as it claimed, Dahlvig said: ‘If you know how production takes place in the world you cannot guarantee that, for instance, there is no child labour or that some wood doesn’t comes from illegal (logging at protected) forests.’
But Dahlvig said IKEA was not being hypocritical with the slogan that its products had a ‘low price but not at any price’. The company website asserts that all products must be manufactured in a responsible manner with as little effect on the environment as possible.
However, senior IKEA staff told the Washington Post, which has just completed a year-long investigation into deforestation and illegal logging, that the company annually inspect only 30 per cent of the wood used by Chinese partner firms that are among its major suppliers. And IKEA usually relied worldwide on paperwork presented by factories and logging companies themselves rather than independent inspectors. Sofia Beckham, IKEA’s forestry co-ordinator, told the Washington Post: ‘The falsification of documents is rampant.’
Dahlvig hit back by saying that IKEA has a ‘very elaborate’ checking system, to ‘eradicate’ child labour and illegal logging, which included its own specialist auditors and projects with reputable organisations like the World Wildlife Fund and UNICEF, the United Nations body for children.
Despite this, IKEA refuses to sign up to the industry standard international Rugmark which guarantees – free trade products-style – that child labour has not been used in the manufacture of its products. Dahlvig said that signatories to the rug mark, who include big international retailers, were either ‘ignorant or naive’.
He explained: ‘If you produce rugs in India and countries like this and if you have been there then you will know that many of these rugs are produced in the homes of individuals. So, how can anyone guarantee that at any given time a child is not sitting behind a loom in their homes?’
Sackur asked Dahlvig if that was so why didn’t IKEA move its production elsewhere. Dahlvig said, firmly: ‘No. I think it would be irresponsible to do that. Just because it is difficult to be somewhere we shouldn’t get out of there.’
The respected BBC presenter charged that it wasn’t about being difficult. ‘You’re only there because it is cheap. You’re not being altruistic because you want to help people are you?’
This rattled Dahlvig who retorted: ‘No. No. Of course (to manufacture in low or no wage countries like India) has a business case. But we also want to be able to change or influence the places where we are.’
He added, tellingly: ‘I think all multi-national companies going to developing countries and producing could make a difference from an environmental and social perspective. Because if we are there we can influence and change how people produce and how things get done and through that we speed up the development.’
The multi-billion pound privately-owned Swedish home furnishings firm has become a global shopping phenomenon, selling trendy low cost Scandinavian design in a flat-pack box. Shoppers have to assemble the furniture they buy themselves.
IKEA’s rapidly expanded world-wide to more than 250 stores in 35 countries; most of them in Europe, and in the United States, Canada, China, Japan and Australia. There are plans to open another 24 stores around the globe this year. Human rights and environmental campaigners say that IKEA’s self-proclaimed ethics are being squeezed in favour of profits.
IKEA has been controversial from its early days. The company’s founder Ingvar Kamprad was, as a teenager, directly involved in the pro-Nazi New Swedish Movement (Nysvenska Rörelsen) until at least 1945, causing tensions when the company began opening stores in Israel. Kamprad devotes two chapters to this in his book, Leading By Design: The IKEA Story. When his embarrassing past was exposed, Kamprad wrote a letter in 1994 to IKEA employees, and called his affiliation with the fascist organisation the “greatest mistake of my life”.
IKEA’s most popular store in Brent Park, London, has frequent traffic jams at weekends. A new store opened in Edmonton, North London at midnight on 10 February 2005. It attracted more than 6,000 visitors because of the huge opening discounts offered on products in the first three opening hours.
This resulted in a number of people being injured as they were crushed in the rush to get into the store. The store was closed after only 30 minutes (because of the large number of customers and inadequate security staff and police). It was re-opened at 5pm on 11 February 2005.
In Saudi Arabia three people were crushed to death in September 2004 when IKEA offered a limited number of free $150 vouchers.
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26th November 2012 at 8:13 am
Stucky says:
“The owner of the factory should be put in jail for 50 years. “ —— Admin
Bullshit. That comes out to less than 6 months for every dead worker.
The factory owner should get a minimum of 50 years per worker. More preferably, he should be found guilty as an accessory to murder, and sentenced to death. THAT would be justice.
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26th November 2012 at 9:27 am
Stucky says:
“But to expect a company to be responsible for the actions of a company in another country is ridiculous. It is not their role, and it sure as hell is not their responsibility.” —- llpoh
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
All you are doing is passing the buck. Hiding behind the wall. Turning a blind eye. Claiming innocence, when you are a guilty party. The person who provides a gun to a murderer is just as guilty as the person who pulled the trigger.
Let’s say you order Widgets from WidgeCo as a component of your final product. It just so happens that you factually know that WidgeCo uses (and abuses) children to make these cheap-o Widgets. You order them anyway. YOU, sir, are just as guilty as WidgeCo because except for you, and others like you, WidgeCo would not exist.
Your excuses to the contrary are as hollow as the SS Stormtrooper who cries out, “Don’t blame me …. I was only following orders!”.
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26th November 2012 at 9:42 am
Eddie says:
If nobody shopped at IKEA and Walmart, they’d go out of business. Vote with your feet.
(Like that’s gonna happen).
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26th November 2012 at 9:55 am
sangell says:
Without knowing the cause of the fire in Bangladesh its a little premature to start throwing blame around. Fires happen. Horrible fires. 100 young people burned to death in a Rhode Island night club a few years ago. It was a stupid accident that started it. Sometimes its arson. While I concede Bangladesh is unlikely to have the same safety regulations as Europe or North America there is no evidence that paying low wages increases the risk of fire. Even strict fire and safety codes don’t prevent people from evading them. Just yesterday I read that a Texas government agency abandoned two floors of its office building rather than comply with a fire code that required sprinklers be installed.
The textile industry has always migrated towards cheap labor. Britain imported Pakistani workers to keep its mills running after WW2. If you ask most non Pakistani Britons today that wasn’t such a good idea since the jobs went to South Asia anyway. American mills moved out of New England to the American South and then on to the Mariana Islands. Free trade moved those factories to Bangladesh.
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26th November 2012 at 10:13 am
Administrator says:
Stuck seems to be itching for a fight today. Did Ms. Freud turn you down this morning?
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26th November 2012 at 10:23 am
Colma Rising says:
“Triangle Shirt Fire” moments are bound to happen….
Cause and effect.
These are human beings and it’s a fucked up and ugly side to the mounds of rubber dog shit being produced. For now, the best of the worst is a reminder to, like Eddie said, vote with your feet/dollars.
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26th November 2012 at 10:24 am
ThePessimisticChemist says:
@sangell “Without knowing the cause of the fire in Bangladesh its a little premature to start throwing blame around.”
THATS WHAT YOU GET FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT THE COLD
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26th November 2012 at 10:31 am
sangell says:
Back in the 1970′s I bought a Volkswagen. I was washing it one day when I noticed the tires were made in East Germany. Besides not wanting to support a Soviet puppet state I was also dubious as to the quality of the tires and wondered why Volkswagen would put them on their cars. Was it because East German tires were better or cheaper or was it because the socialist government of Willy Brandt was pursuing his “Ostpolitik” and pressuring West German companies to support his commie stooge friends in East Germany and Moscow?
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26th November 2012 at 10:36 am
Stucky says:
Admin
If anything, I’d turned HER down. In the last 2 weeks;
1. My dad fell off a ladder and could have died.
2. I dislocated my shoulder cutting down a goddamned branch.
3. My sister threw me out of her house on Thanksgiving. Really. I guess I picked the wrong timing when I said “Fuck Obama”.
4. My crazy son is again threatening to take off … this time to San Diego … with no money, no clothes, no car, no job, and no living arrangements.
5. My car battery dies overnight, and nobody can find the fucking short.
6. The Penis Enlargement pills I paid $99 bucks for aren’t working.
7. I had a nice dinner with Ms Freud’s homo friends …. and, I think “it” moved.
.
So, all in all, poontang is the last fuckin’ thing on my mind right now.
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26th November 2012 at 10:41 am
Administrator says:
Stuck
At least you have your health.
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26th November 2012 at 10:52 am
ecliptix543 says:
Stucky, what year is your car and has anything like that happened before? What make is it?
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26th November 2012 at 11:06 am
Llpoh says:
Stuck – you know about as much as an ant re corporate law. The business of business is business. The business of government is enforcement and law. Business simply does not have the ability to vet the internal mechanisms of other businesses. Even the government has trouble doing that.
That is 2 shots at me and I have only opened 2 threads so far. You really are pushing your luck.
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26th November 2012 at 2:27 pm
Llpoh says:
Stuck – that I factually know? How would I factually know a goddamn thing unless I go vet their entire business. Why are consumers liable for finding out. My comments were about holding a company responsible for the actions of another company – that is untenable. If a situation arises like you describe there would be a moral and ethical responsibility. Seems to me that attaches to consumers as well.
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26th November 2012 at 2:48 pm
AWD says:
“6. The Penis Enlargement pills I paid $99 bucks for aren’t working.”
Send me $99 and I’ll send you Viagra and Cialis samples, that I got for free. I’ll include a bottle of Korean ginseng.
You’re on Medicare right? Just get a free penis pump (at no cost to you). Just call Liberty medical and they’ll ship you one right out. Medicare spent $500,000,000 on penis pumps so far this year (half a billion dollars). Your tax money at work.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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26th November 2012 at 2:56 pm