Two days after the Nov. 24 fire, Walmart said in a statement that it had stopped authorizing production at Tazreen and that despite that move, a single supplier, later identified as Success Apparel, had “subcontracted work to this factory without authorization and in direct violation of our policies.”
The documents — found in the factory by officials from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity — show that a subcontractor for an additional Walmart supplier, International Intimates, was having women’s robes and nightgowns made at the factory for Walmart’s winter season. The documents show that the factory was also making women’s nightwear for Sears.
The documents contain a June 2012 e-mail from International Intimates’ subcontractor to officials at the Tazreen factory confirming plans to produce a robe and nightgown for Walmart, as well as a robe and pajama set for Sears. The documents also contain a production report from September 13 showing plans to produce 117,000 of these garments for Walmart.
Another document, dated Nov. 24 — the date of the fire — shows that Tazreen’s parent company, the Tuba Group, billed the subcontractor, I.T. Apparels, for the “chemise robe” production.
The documents were found in factory offices that were largely undamaged by the fire and were made available to The New York Times by an intermediary, the Worker Rights Consortium, a factory monitoring group based in Washington that is financed by American universities.
Kevin Gardner, a Walmart spokesman, said that the retailer had stopped authorizing production at the plant “many months ago,” but on Monday he again declined to say when or why Walmart had ended such authorization.
“We are still investigating the facts,” Mr. Gardner said. “If we determine that other suppliers were using a deactivated factory to produce merchandise for Walmart, that’s a violation of our supplier standards. If that is the case, it is unacceptable and we will take appropriate action.”
Documents found at the factory earlier showed that orders in the name of three other American apparel suppliers had been produced at the factory for Walmart within the last year or so.
In a statement, International Intimates said it was “conducting a thorough review of this incident.” The company added, “It is critical to note that Tazreen Fashions is NOT one of our approved partners and no one was authorized to make our products there.”
Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, a Washington-based nonprofit group, said, “I don’t understand why Walmart is spending so much time focusing on trying to claim that they didn’t know that work for Walmart was being done in this factory when Walmart should be focusing on trying to insure decent compensation for the families and to prevent future fires in its supply chain.”
Mr. Gardner said Walmart was working with “key stakeholders,” including Bangladesh garment manufacturers, the Bangladesh government and others “to improve fire safety standards in Bangladesh.”
Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, said the new documents raised additional questions about Walmart’s role at the factory.
“If Walmart’s claim that they were the victim of one rogue supplier had any shred of credibility, it’s gone now,” he said. “Walmart is limited to one of two options — to say, yes, we know these suppliers were using the factory or, two, we have no control over the supply chain that we’ve been building in Bangladesh for more than 20 years.”
In a statement, Success Apparel said that it had placed an order with a Walmart-approved subcontractor, Simco, and that Simco, without its authorization, in turn subcontracted 7 percent of that order to Tazreen’s parent, the Tuba Group.
A spokesman for Success Apparel acknowledged that it was the company that Walmart had terminated as a supplier.
In a statement, Sears said that it did not know that one of its suppliers had been using Tazreen and that it, too, had terminated that supplier.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/world/asia/tazreen-factory-used-by-2nd-walmart-supplier-at-time-of-fire.html?partner=rss&emc=rss