Global rights campaigners have alleged that excessive employer influence over the operations of the RMG Sustainability Council (RSC), the factory safety monitoring body, is weakening its effectiveness and endangering workers.

The RSC was set up in 2020 to take over the responsibility from the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh which established ensuring workplace safety in the country’s readymade garment industry after the 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse that killed more than 1100 workers and injured thousands.

Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN), the witness signatories to the International Accord also called for restructuring the RSC governance to eliminate employer influence over the inspection process and maintain the integrity of the safety programme.

In a memorandum to global apparel brands participating in the garment industry’s most respected workplace safety programme, rights groups shared new research findings on February 6.

They alleged that factory owners are influencing the programme’s operations in Bangladesh, which, according to them, is weakening its enforcement and endangering workers.

The research presented in the memorandum finds that strong employer influence has resulted in the weakening of the programme’s mechanism used to enforce factory owners’ safety obligations.

The RSC has consistently failed to enforce the withdrawal of the Utilisation Declaration (UD) – a form of customs licence controlled by the trade bodies BGMEA and BKMEA – allowing grossly unsafe factories to continue exporting, including to Accord brand signatories.

This includes factories that were terminated from the programme for failing to make the required safety renovations.

According to the memorandum, there are at least 30 factories for which BGMEA/BKMEA failed to withdraw UDs for more than six months after the Stage 3 termination decision was issued.

For the period during which complete data is available, the withdrawal of UDs took, on average, more than 13 months – 1,400 per cent longer than agreed.

Export data for apparel shipments leaving Bangladesh demonstrate that the RSC’s failure to hold BGMEA/BKMEA accountable for timely UD withdrawals allowed factories that had been terminated for gross safety violations to keep shipping goods.

Of the 57 factories terminated under the RSC until October 2024, records show that at least 44 (77 per cent) were still sending shipments to customers around the world more than 60 days after their date of termination, it alleged.

It also showed delays in the implementation of a crucial programme to avert boiler explosions which have historically been a cause of injury and death for garment workers.

‘These problems do not lie with the personnel of the RSC, but with employers abusing their power and exercising undue influence in the programme,’ read the memorandum.

The RSC was established after the Accord came under attack from ‘recalcitrant’ owners, supported by the Sheikh Hasina government.

The memorandum added that, in light of the recent sweeping changes in Bangladesh’s government, it is time to review the governance structures of the Accord programme in the country.

‘Restructured governance can restore the RSC’s independence and allow it to do its job unimpeded, protecting the safety of garment workers and supporting the efforts of current and future governments in Bangladesh to strengthen the nation’s regulatory institutions,’ it said.

‘It is ultimately the responsibility of every apparel brand to ensure that the workers who make its clothes do so under safe conditions. The Accord has been extremely effective in enabling brands to fulfil that responsibility in Bangladesh, but it cannot continue to do so without reform of the RSC.’

The right groups urge brands to support the necessary changes to the RSC; to honour their Accord obligations, including paying fair prices to suppliers and to reward the resulting safety progress in Bangladesh by sustaining and expanding their production in the country.

There is heightened international interest in binding agreements and grievance mechanisms as means for brands to abide by human rights due diligence legislation, as was also a topic at this week’s OECD Forum on Due Diligence in the garment and footwear sector, a CCC statement added.

‘A reset of the RSC governance structure is necessary to keep the grievance mechanism safe from any employer interference, also in light of mandatory due diligence requirements, and to ensure its alignment with the Accord’s commitment to the eventual transition to governmental regulatory oversight,’ said Ineke Zeldenrust of CCC in the statement.