USAS memorializes tragedy in Bangladesh last year
October 9, 2014
By Cheyene Miller
The UK United Students Against Sweatshops Local 73 organization urged students to remember the Rana Plaza factory tragedy that claimed more than 1,000 lives last year.
The organization placed 1,000 flags outside of the Student Center Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. in honor of the estimated 1,129 workers who died when the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh collapsed on April 24, 2013. A large poster board in the free speech zone outside of the Student Center accompanied the flags, explaining the Rana Plaza situation to UK students.
“Justice still hasn’t been served for a lot of the victims and their families,” said USAS member and English senior Autumn Murphy, who said many families still have not received any sort of compensation from the country or the corporations who oversaw the factory.
These people were blatantly lied to about the condition of the building in which they were working, Murphy said.
In addition to increasing awareness about the tragedy and putting up flags in memory of those who lost their lives, the USAS held a private meeting with UK Chief of Staff Bill Swinford, expressing their concerns about the university’s involvement with VF Corporation, an American clothing corporation that was a contractor with the Rana Plaza building.
The university has a licensing contract with the VF Corporation, and sells apparel from Majestic Athletic and JanSport, which are subsidiaries of the corporation, in the UK bookstore and online.
Murphy said the corporation has refused to join 170 other organizations in signing the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, an independent agreement designed to make all garment factories in Bangladesh safe workplaces, according to the Accord’s website.
“Our campaign this semester is to ask the university to cut contracts with the VF Corporation because they store some of their clothing in Bangladesh and they refuse to sign onto the accord,” Murphy said. “In doing so, what they’re doing is saying that they care more about their own (public relations) standing than they do about worker safety.”
She said the garment industry accounts for 70 to 80 percent of exports for Bangladesh.
UK spokesman Jay Blanton noted that the meeting between the USAS and Swinford was private, so details could not be discussed.
“As always, we had a very good conversation with representatives of USAS,” Blanton wrote in an email to the Kentucky Kernel. “We appreciate and respect their positions and, as such, continued to have a good dialogue.”
