The Great Debate

On Wednesday, while a Bangladeshi survivor of last November’s Tazreen fire that killed 113 people was talking to a Seattle audience about the need for corporations to be held liable for safety violations, it happened again. That day, a factory housing dozens of garment manufacturers in Bangladesh collapsed outside of Dhaka. Since then the death toll has skyrocketed to more than 300 workers, with hundreds more still trapped in the rubble.

Could it be that the so-called convenience of economic globalization is collapsing, too?

Sumi Abedin survived the Tazreen fire in a Bangladeshi garment factory by jumping out a window, breaking an arm and a leg. The Tazreen factory manufactured clothes for a number of Western companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, Sears, Sean John and Disney.

Workers smelled smoke and tried to leave the building but they were told it was a false alarm and were sent back to their sewing machines. As the room filled with smoke, workers tried to escape but found doors and windows locked — apparently to prevent workers from stealing garments. Abedin said she jumped not to save her life but for another reason. “I wanted my family to be able to identify my dead body. If I had stayed there, it would have burned and they would not have been able to find me,” Abedin told a packed audience.

Kalpona Akter, the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, is traveling with Abedin on a 12-state tour in the United States. They are demanding fair compensation from Wal-Mart and a legally binding agreement from manufacturers to ensure fire and building safety and worker rights. “This is a pattern of gross negligence on the part of multinational corporations,” Akter said. “They know what is happening, but they are not stopping it.”

Some Republicans, like Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, are arguing that the GOP needs to move away from big business and become a more populist defender of the middle class. That is good advice, and one dramatic way for Jindal or other party leaders to turn over a new leaf would be to join the pressure campaign on Wal-Mart to raise wages for its 2.2 million workers – a campaign that led to protests at Wal-Mart stores nationwide on Black Friday. The protests were coordinated by a labor-backed group of Wal-Mart Associates that wants the company to pay a minimum of $13 an hour, among other demands.

Republican criticism of Wal-Mart is not as unthinkable as it might seem. While the right heaps praise on Wal-Mart for its cheap consumer goods, the company’s low-wage business model should be problematic for conservatives for several reasons.

First, when Republicans talk about the economic challenges facing ordinary Americans, they invariably argue for private-sector solutions like faster growth and rising wages – facilitated, of course, by lower taxes and less regulation. Yet even if this fantasy of a rising free market tide lifting all boats were ever to come true, it would bypass Wal-Mart workers. Thanks to a permanently weak labor market for non-college workers, Wal-Mart can get away with paying low wages even when the economy is booming. The same goes for the rest of the retail industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary of a full-time retail sales worker is $21,000, with cashiers making a good deal less. Those numbers haven’t fluctuated much over the past decade, through good times and bad.

By Dave Chase
The views expressed are his own.

“We don’t have a debt problem. We have a healthcare problem.” Those are the words of Laura Tyson, one of the most respected economists in the world. In Bill Gates’ recent TED talk, he described healthcare as the factor that is devastating state budgets leading to education cuts. Clearly something must to be done now to address this crisis.

With the possible exception of the federal government, no organization is in a better position to reverse healthcare’s hyperinflation than Wal-Mart.

If that sounds crazy, let me explain. As Ezra Klein recently pointed out in a Washington Post graphic, it’s not the age or obesity of the population that is driving healthcare costs. Nor does it have much to do with alcohol or even malpractice costs. Rather, as the many cost comparisons in the presentation below show, we simply pay more for the same items when compared to other countries.

– Aron Cramer is the president and CEO of BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability. He is also coauthor of the forthcoming book Sustainable Excellence (Rodale 2010). The views expressed are his own.  –

(Updated on December 17th to correct figure in McKinsey study in paragraph 7.)

As world leaders seem uncertain about whether a binding treaty is even possible at Copenhagen, it’s important to remember what was already clear: Twelve days in Copenhagen were never going to solve climate change anyway.

No doubt, these negotiations, now extending into 2010, are crucial. The sooner we can seal a global deal to reduce emissions, the sooner we can avoid catastrophic climate change. But as important as the treaty negotiations in Copenhagen’s Bella Centre are, even a successful outcome will be for naught if boardroom decisions and factory processes aren’t reoriented toward a low-carbon future.

– Aron Cramer is president and CEO of BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability. The views expressed are his own. —

As the World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos” meeting in Dalian, China, gets underway, it is a bit chilling to think back to how the financial crisis was unfolding in real time during last year’s event.

As the 1,000 leaders gathering for this year’s event spend three days debating how to restore economic growth and social stability, the need to focus on a long-term transition to a more sustainable economy is clearer than ever.

Welch is the publisher and editorial director of Ogden Publications, home to Mother Earth News and Utne Reader. Any opinions expressed are his own.

Green business is arguably the most important marketing innovation of the century. And it’s here to stay.

When we talk about green business, we’re really talking about the provenance of the products and services we sell. A business is green if its creators take into account its impact on the environment, and on society. Like a historic work of art, a pair of running shoes now has a provenance – a chain of collaborators, stakeholders and events that led to its appearance in your closet.