Has it been successful? Yes. - 93% of safety issues identified during initial inspections have been remedied.
- Over 1,300 joint labour-management factory level Safety Committees have been set up to monitor safety measurements regularly.
- Over 700 safety complaints from factory workers and their representatives have been solved.
What happens when it expires? When the Accord expires on the 31
st May 2021, in order to make sure that we can continue to protect garment workers in Bangladesh, a new international binding agreement
needs to be signed which will also ensure that, eventually, other countries will be covered by a similar agreement.
Instead, brands don't want to extend the Accord and make it international. They want to limit the protection to Bangladesh and be regulated by a new national body established last year. This national body is much less effective than the Accord because worker representatives only hold one third of the governance seats (instead of half). This new national agreement is not legally binding, it doesn't have an independent secretariat to oversee the compliance, and unions will no longer be able to take brands to court. In summary, it's a return to self-monitoring which is a huge step backwards for garment worker rights.