On the day of the fire at 4:40pm the 8th floor caught aflame (from what is thought to be a discarded cigarette), there was no plan, never even practice of a fire drill. After eighteen minutes of the fire, the last body jumped from the window ceil to her death. While some were saved from a jam packed elevator, others searched for a way to exit the flames that possessed their workplace. Unfortunately 146 people were caught in the inescapable fire. Some jumped holding hands, holding each other, while the others died in the midst of the fire. Charcoaled bodies were carried and brought down from the top three floors, later to be identified by family and friends.

By Jeremy Liu, International Labor Rights Forum

The formation of this Coalition is meant to address a systemic structural problem that plagues the industry – the supply chain for any particular product is spread out over many contractor factories, often in different countries, and under no direct control of the brand manufacturer that sells the product.  Therefore it is a challenge for companies to know the details about the environmental conditions under which the entire product is made, and also impossible for consumers to know much about the sustainability of these products.  The industry freely admits this problem, one they created through structuring their supply chains in this manner.  After all, if they wanted to know everything about the production of their own product, they could build and run their own factories, which they

The FAO, IFAD, ILO report states, “women are disproportionately employed in low-quality jobs, including jobs in which their rights are not adequately respected and social protection is limited.” After years of struggle for equality, men are still awarded more decent jobs than women. Additionally, the report confirms a gender gap in earning, declaring that “women earn less for a given type of work than do men – usually for both wage employment and self-employment.” This is true all over the world, in varying degrees. The variation is true between countries, within countries, between occupations, and even within sectors.