[Music] hello I'm Adrien finegan now if you've seen rewind before you'll know that we're marking this year's 10th birthday of aler English by taking a fresh look at some of the best documentaries we've made over the past decade whenever possible we've been updating those films to find out what happened after our cameras left sometimes though there's little to add because the story that attracted our attention the first time around hasn't really changed that much this episode is a case in point we're revisiting Bangladesh where a few years ago a garment Factory collapsed and killed over 1 ,000 people working inside the magnitude of the accident laid bare the lack of safety standards for the country's garment workers and the apparent indifference of the multinational corporations that profited from them it wasn't the first accident to happen in that industry and sadly it's unlikely to be the last but the issues raised by this film are worth airing again here it is then an award-winning investigation from alzer's Faultline series made in Bangladesh all [Applause] right when we operate for less and we buy for less we can pass those savings on to our customers through everyday low prices welcome Hugh Jackman total revenue I believe every year $400 billion having low prices drives traffic to our stores and increases sale which then allows us to lower expenses and lower prices again please welcome Tom Cruz all around the globe Walmart is taking the lead in making a difference it's a continuous loop the American dream has become a global concept I think it's our country's best export 2012 was a good year for Walmart but it was a bad year for Bangladesh it experiened the deadliest factory fire in its history Walmart shorts were among the clothes found in the chard remains but the company escaped accountability and for many Western retailers whose clothes are made in Bangladesh its business as usual anybody out there know how many zeros are in half a trillion dollars take it from the numbers goty they're aive the fire at the tazarine Fashion's Factory last November started on the ground floor and quickly spread at least A2 people died hundreds of others were injured many workers were trapped inside because the doors were locked and the building had no fire exits [Music] the remains of the fire are still everywhere here this is where workers jumped out of the burning building onto the roof of this dormatory there's bars in all the windows so workers have to kick out at the exhaust fans and jump onto this building Rukia beam's daughter Hina died in the fire you haven't received any compensation for your daughter's death many of the women who escaped the fire still live in the shadow of the factory mbano is one of them she says she was sewing the Walmart shorts when the fire broke out for so how did you escape [Music] [Music] can you describe what you were working on these are the pants you were working on when word got out that we were visiting other survivors came to share their stories so you did the hemming along the zipper and the belt and how about you none of the women received any compensation from Walmart so you hanged and packed it up and they all vowed to never work at a garment Factory again do you know who these pair of shorts were for five months after the fire yet another disaster in Bangladesh captured the world's attention Rana Plaza and eight-story building housing several garment factories collapsed more than a thousand people died even though the scale of the collapse eclipsed the fire the fundamental questions raised by tazin were the same how could tragedies like this happen and who ultimately should be held responsible before we arrived in Bangladesh we'd received internal documents related to the Walmart shorts order the paper trail gives us an inside look into the complicated way that Walmart produces its clothing Walmart is a Pioneer and also the most ruthless practitioner of a sourcing model that has now come to dominate The Apparel industry it's a system that can Shield a company from blame when disaster strikes Walmart supply chain is defined by two critical features the tremendous pressure Walmart puts on its suppliers and its contract Factor overseas to slash production costs which Walmart knows those factories will do By ignoring the rights and safety of workers and then secondly the utilization of multiple layers of agents and contractors so that Walmart can distance itself from responsibility for the inevitable consequences of those sourcing practices Simco is a midsized garment Factory in a neighborhood crowded with them at its height it had, 1500 workers today today there are 600 Simco is where the shorts were supposed to have been made Walmart placed the order with a new york-based supplier called success apparel success apparel then filled it with Simco with help from a local buying agent called True Colors so this is from success apparel yeah there's the contract and you can see this is the price and the quantity 28,000 which is like 337,000 pieces nowhere it is mentioned that this is a Walmart product but except if you see the level style number this FG FG is The Faded Glory Faded Glory is Walmart's main in-house clothing line and it was that brand of shorts that was found in the ashes of the tazrin factory fire Simco says it couldn't handle the order after dozens of workers who left town during the Muslim holiday of Eid didn't return on time so already we were over booked we were over our capacity and suddenly we don't have the workers to fill fulfill the orders on time Kevin taxon the CEO of sucus ails he visited us and he was like going through our uh facilities oh yeah the production is you know use some four-letter words Etc and then he was like and we told him like you know we're having like trouble meeting the deadline you know we need some extensions we need some help he was very upset he said not to see single day extension they can give us so he said find a subcontract you know somewhere so the Walmart supplier the direct supplier to Walmart came here and told you to subcontract yes yes yes subcontracting means paying another Factory to take on some of the work Simco was already stretched thin dealing with the shorts then it was hit with yet another massive order and then we' got this other document from public clothing company and that's another Walmart supplier another Walmart supplier and they've sent a purchase order for almost 300,000 shorts yes another set of shorts August 17th August 17th 3 days later yes Simco can make around 300,000 garments a month put together the two Walmart orders will more than double its capacity I guess the logic was you place the order and somehow the factory will fulfill it somehow the factory will fulfill it what is that code for uh that's code for like yes you do subcontracting you give it to other lines other production lines to fulfill the order did Walmart know about your production capacity here yes Walmart does thirdparty audits so the Auditors come and they count your machines so they know exactly how many garments you can produce on average on a line given what happened in tzin some have asked why Simco didn't simply refus the second Walmart order factories in a place like Bangladesh are engaged in Cutthroat competition with competitors in Bangladesh and around the world so it's practically impossible to turn down a major order from Walmart because that is the Factory's livelihood so to meet Walmart's deadline Simco subcontracted a small part of the success apparal order to a manufacturer called tuba tuba then sent the shorts to its tazarine Factory a few weeks later the factory caught fire oh my God couldn't believe couldn't believe you know I could couldn't believe how can that happen I don't know so I called Kevin you know I said look Kevin that factory you know CAU fire he got mad you know he said what happened is the factory so why didn't you send somebody to get our things out success appar accused Simco of subcontracting the order without their knowledge and Walmart blamed their supplier success but Simco insists that success knew about tasin and that Walmart also would have known because its own database retail link requires suppliers to identify where orders are being filled retail link is supposed to have a record of every Factory authorized to produce Walmart Goods every Factory engaged in the production of Walmart Goods in May Walmart named over 240 factories it would no longer work with saying it had a zero tolerance policy for unauthorized subcontracting Simco was one of them if there was no shorts found at tazin then business would have gone on as usual it's like everybody knows what's going on it's an Open Secret but getting caught on camera is or I think in the act then you have to disown everything and say I didn't know anything about it that it is the practice of the Walmart to hide you know so not direct contact so he has the supplier who is the vendor and every Factory you see in Bangladesh are subcontractors everybody facing a scandal Walmart refused to accept the shorts or to pay the bill even after some of the order had already been shipped and this is our entirely uh abandoned floor out $1.2 million Simco says it's nearly bankrupt so all of these shorts were made in these production lines and I really feel bad uh when I don't see our workers in these production lines some of whom they have been with us for like 24 25 years you know and all these machines are now empty after the tazarine fire Walmart announced it had dropped success apparel as a supplier we tried to speak to success is representative in Bangladesh but we found the company had closed down its office here we also tried to interview the company's CEO Gila Goodman in New York but she refused to speak with us Kevin taxon who was success's president at the time of the fire also refused to speak to us on camera he now heads up another supplier called Americo group one of its clients is Walmart if were really so upset about what success apparel did one assumes they would not be Keen to continue to do business with a leading executive From Success apparel on the phone Kevin told us that neither success nor its agent in Bangladesh True Colors knew about the subcontract to tazrin but we managed to track down true colors's last remaining employee in Taka if there's any subcontracting would you be aware of that yeah and then what do you do with that information do you pass it up yeah we pass it up to our importer so can you read this email from me and tell me who it's from okay it's saying hi K I heard the shocking news about the fire last evening it is number 26 and what's the subject line of the email fire at subcon subcon is industry speak for subcontractor that email was sent by a manager at True Colors shortly after the fire so despite success's denials their own agent may have been aware of the subcontract to tazin we're on the trail investigating how Walmart's supply chain works here in Bangladesh does the company know when its orders are being subcontracted is the way they Source their clothing the system itself flawed the Garment industry is notoriously secretive so we needed an Insider we're on our way to meet an auditor he was hired by Walmart to assess standards at some of its factories it's very rare for Auditors to speak on the record and he doesn't want to speak to us on camera so we recorded the conversation secretly in Bangladesh government regulation of garment factories is LAX and international companies are not legally required to ensure working conditions are safe some companies hire Auditors to inspect the factories puring system of Walmart very comp how so uh because they rely on their agents they don't sourly from thees that's the problem in in my opinion because if you rely on agents that agent sells the order to sub agent that sub agent sells the order to so changes what do you think about their system what why is it bad like what's the danger means you don't know why your products are coming in you don't have any idea that dang so you uh have very little idea after one or two agents you lost so from what you're saying it sounds like Walmart supply chain is is so out of control that there could be more Tarin has no idea from where theirs are coming from this is the bad and wor sentence I I can say well if warmont doesn't know where its goods are being produced it's because they choose not to know uh this is a company whose success is built first and foremost on the extraordinary level of control they exert over production in their Global Supply Chain Walmart refused to give us any information about its supply chain but a spokesperson told us Walmart relies on its suppliers to implement the company's standards there's a reason Bangladesh is so popular with companies especially those that produce inexpensive clothes that need to be made quickly it's the Rock Bottom cheapest place in the world to make apparel it's cheap because it has the lowest minimum wage for a PA workers of any country in the world at 18 cents an hour that's about $38 a month but it goes both ways garments are just as important to Bangladesh accounting for 80% of its exports and giving jobs to 4 million people mostly poor women that gives the industry enormous leverage inside the country so what they do the retailers and buyers come here to look for the cheapest supplier so here there is a buyer Market everybody share everybody takes the uh the share of the cake so these are formally we have five to six layers but there are uh many hands with these layers who are taking all this money it's not just the multinationals in Bangladesh everyone wants a shot at making it in the Garment industry I'm headed to a small Factory that does finishing of garments they're supposed to be finishing garments for Walmart and posing as a buyer to get in there for those who can't open large factories there's always business in subcontracting even if it means putting the finishing touches on garments before they're shipped out do you make anything anything that ends up in Walmart you've made products that go to Walmart were you an authorized Walmart subcontractor so is this very common that a lot of factory sub contract for big labels like Walmart without authorization Sabina 14 years you're 14 so you started working when you were 13 years old yes so what's the average age of your workers [Music] we just spoke to a girl who said she's 14 Walmart told us they don't tolerate child labor in their supply chain and they're investigating whether this finishing Center did any work on Walmart products once we found one finishing house it wasn't hard to find others what are you making how many buttons do you put on every day how old are you [Music] how long have you been working [Music] here Chile how old are you sh do you go to school how much money do you make here sh 2500 taka is just $32 a month she you're putting the elastic band into Old Navy pants [Music] says Old Navy Old Navy is owned by Gap Inc one of the largest clothing companies in the world this is where a lot of America's clothes come from and it's a reality many companies don't want us to see this is one of very many subcontracting Factories at the bottom of the supply f chain in Bangladesh it seems completely unregulated completely unauthorized there's no fire extinguisher no fire exit it's just a Shack in someone's backyard this morning we went to a finishing house and they had about 20 workers there more than half of them were under 14 there were girls as young as 12 making clothes for Gap really in a finishing section that you went oh my gosh oh my gosh I mean for me it just I just can't believe so this is the time that Gap should step forward to make this correct oh my gosh so see the how critical is the supply chain is how critical it is Gap declined to give us an on camera interview they did give us a statement though saying the products we found were quote either counterfeit or improperly acquired but through the barcodes on the tags we found at the finishing house we were able to match the garments to ones at Old Navy stores in the US Gap added that it quote strictly prohibits any vendor from employing underage workers there's a fairy tale that major brands and retailers like Gap and Walmart tell to the public in this fairy tale Gap and Walmart are companies that are socially responsible and deeply committed to protecting the rights of workers and making every effort to inspect their factories and ensure that everything is on the up and up that fairy tale has very little to do with the reality of the supply chain for Walmart for Gap worker rights issues are not a moral issue they're an issue of reputational risk and Walmart and GAP understand that their image in the eyes of the public has a very large impact on the degree to which they can get people to come to their stores and buy their goods and so to the extent that they can be convinced that their image will be damaged if they don't do the right thing for workers then they will make change kPa akar a worker's rights activist is still haunted by what she saw that day it's a feeling that when you are in the inside the building you can feel that how these workers for to remove this window bar the adjustment bar to and they jumped my feeling was like nothing can be worse than this nothing can be worse than this like seeing these people burn to Ash and their family crying in front of you and they cannot find the I mean they cannot identify these bodies whether is they beloved or not nobody think about this these human faces who are making clothes for them and dying in this F every day nobody talking about their compensation nobody talking about their wages that they getting even I would say even they don't even consider they are the human but they are really human they have needs they have a voice they want it to speak out they have right to have a safe working Place made in Bangladesh and that's all we've got time for this week if you want to see that film again please join us at the rewind website where you can also leave your comments about this or any other program in the series otherwise until next time bye for now [Music]