Conflict between the Country and Company

Conflict Between the Country and Company

"Battling for a Safer Bangladesh"
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/business/international/battling-for-a-safer-bangladesh.html?ref=international

As indicated in the article, "Battling for a Safer Bangladesh," Bangladesh has consistently found extreme unsafe conditions in factories and companies for employees to work in. There have been many issues with factories collapsing and killing those inside. Just last year, another factory collapsed killing 1,129 people. This has obviously inspired conflict in the public and has resulted in a conflict between the country's people and the companies that they work in.

For the conditions found, there are extreme infrastructure problems such as overloaded buildings so there are cracks in the building foundations, the storage spaces are flammable, and unsafe fire escape routes. Adding to those problems, you also have the political maneuvering and corruptions involved.

If the conflict between the country and companies is not enough, in efforts to fix the problems and satisfy the public, companies have created alliances to combat these. However, now these two alliances of companies, Bangladesh Accord for Fire and Building Safety (H&M, Carrefour, Mango) and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (Walmart, Target, Gap, Kohl's), are feuding. Basically, both alliances are saying they are inspecting the factories better and are working on improving the issues better then the other alliance. To make matters worse, universities are now saying the companies that sell their products must align with the company that the university chooses or they can't sell their products.

Out of one conflict, there has arisen many others. Conflicts between alliances, between the public, and between companies and universities is very unnecessary. The Accord has inspected less factories, but closed more and the Alliance has inspected more factories, and only closed one. These alliances are now going back and forth saying they are not being truthful and only closing or not closing factories to look better to the public.

The benefits of this conflict between the Accord and Alliance is that there is a better chance that the workers will see more safe conditions. The companies want to be seen as better and have better brand recognition so are striving to provide more. Some are providing wages to those who worked in factories that closed. This means that they are resolving the conflict between the Bangladesh population and the companies, which is good. This also means that there will be safer working conditions, people are more likely to survive and benefit the economy, they will be paid and can support their families, which could also lead to less poverty.

The conflicts between the companies and the universities is unnecessary and is just creating a bad image for each. All of the universities and companies should work together instead of separately to benefit the Bangladesh population because tensions could hurt the population in the long run. Competition between companies is beneficial to a point and they  must make sure they do not reach that point. Overall, we will be seeing improved conditions for Bangladesh in the future.