Bloomberg just put out a story on the Bangladesh factory fire that cites a meeting in 2011 where
At a meeting convened in 2011 to boost safety at Bangladesh garment factories, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) made a call: paying suppliers more to help them upgrade their manufacturing facilities was too costly
The article is
here titled
Wal-Mart Nixed Paying Bangladesh Suppliers to Fight Fire
The punch line
Kalavakolanu and her counterpart at Gap reiterated their position in a report folded into the meeting minutes, obtained by Bloomberg News.
“Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories,” they said in the document. “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”
This is going to leave a mark
Updated to put the Bllomberg article in the title