As Bangladesh files Rana Plaza charges, neighbor Philippines yet to learn labor lessons

Last week, the Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Commission filed a case accusing 17 people of violating regulations in the construction of the eight-story Rana Plaza complex outside of Dhaka that collapsed just over a year ago.

More than 1,100 employees were killed and about 2,000 injured when the building came down in April 2013. More than 200 are still missing today. Investigators later found locked fire escapes, extra floors and other breaches of building safety code throughout the structure.

The disaster triggered a global outcry for the enforcement of workers’ rights and health and safety standards in the workplace. In the weeks following the events at Rana Plaza, thousands of workers across Southeast Asia – where the low-cost manufacturing industry is for better wages and working conditions.

"The incident was a wake-up call," Farah Kabir, country director for the nonprofit ActionAid, told CNN on the one-year anniversary of the collapse. "Efforts are being taken on different levels in terms of safety and other related matters.”

But it seems Bangladesh’s regional neighbors have left that call unanswered. The deaths of eight women in a warehouse fire in the Philippine city of Pasay late last month, for instance, is the latest incident to call attention to the loose employment of work-related health and safety laws in parts of South and Southeast Asia.

Locked inside a warehouse owned by electronics company Asia Metro Tech, Inc., eight workers died of suffocation when a fire broke out after midnight on Friday, May 30. Eight others were injured after jumping from the building’s rooftop to escape the blaze.

While not as central to the global market as the Bangladeshi garment industry, the Philippine manufacturing sector – which includes electronics, furniture and textile production – still accounts for 22 percent of the nation’s GDP and employs almost one million workers.

Both Bangladesh and the Philippines ranked among the worst in the world for workers in the International Trade Union Confederation’s 2014 Global Rights Index, which looks at industry compliance with fundamental labor rights standards in 139 nations. Those in the lowest ranks gives workers almost no guaranteed rights in the workplace, according to the report.

Human rights groups in the Philippines have since called for change in working conditions and labor practices.

On June 4, just days after the fire, women’s group Gabriela and labor union Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement) took to the offices of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to protest what they said was the current administration’s inattention to industry standards and workers’ rights.

“We call for justice … for all workers who died because of the [current] government’s criminal neglect of occupational health and safety,” Nenita Gonzaga, KMU vice-chair for women’s affairs, told local news outlet Bulatlat. “The number of deaths in the workplace under [President Benigno] Aquino already amounts to a massacre.”

In the last three years since Aquino assumed office, Gonzaga said, almost 50 people have died in work-related accidents that could have been prevented.

The survivors of the fire later told officials that their employer, Chinese national Juanito Go, often kept them in locked rooms with grilled windows and forbade them from leaving the warehouse where they worked and lived.

If proven true, these allegations not only violate Rule 1943-03 of the 1989 Philippine Occupational Safety and Health Standards, which requires employers to provide at least two unobstructed exits in every floor and basement of any building; they also represent the latest in an unsettling trend of violations and neglect across the country.

In January 2011, 10 workers were killed when the outdoor elevator they were riding broke. The workers, who were installing glass panels at a high-rise condominium in Makati, fell 21 stories – from the 28th to the 7th floor. Officials later found that the elevator could hold only two persons at a time.

Months later at a shipyard in Subic Bay, a steel post supporting a platform gave way, killing five workers and injuring eight. Among other safety violations, investigators found that the hydraulic jack that should have stopped or slowed the platform’s plunge was either out of order or not in the area.

And, eerily similar to the incident at Asia Metro Tech, Inc., 17 employees died in an early-morning fire at a retail store in Butuan City, Mindanao in May 2012. Management had also locked the workers in the shop the night before, officials said.

It doesn’t stop there. Later that year, four plumbers died cleaning a grease trap at a mall in Quezon City, where they had been working without the safety gear or assigned watcher required by law.

Five more workers were killed and 12 hurt after a 70-foot piece of scaffolding collapsed at a power plant in Pililia, Rizal in February 2013. Their employers had failed to submit a safety plan before beginning construction, a probe found.

Juanito Go, the owner and manager of Asia Metro Tech, Inc., has since been arrested and charged with a number of offenses, including negligence resulting in homicide and operating a business without a permit. DOLE has also helped some survivors and families of victims claim compensation.

But the issue is bigger than that, said Noel Colina, executive director of the Institute for Occupational Health and Safety Development, a nonprofit that promotes awareness of labor standards and provides support to Filipino workers.

The system needs to be scrutinized and the government held accountable, Colina said. They can start by scrapping the 2004 DOLE order that allows employers to assess their own compliance of health and safety standards, he added, and criminalizing violators.

In a blog post condemning the government on the IOHSAD website, Colina wrote, “Not a single company involved in work-related accidents during [Aquino’s] term was jailed or tried in criminal court.”