On April 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building, collapsed in Savar Upazila, Bangladesh. This disaster, which can be regarded as one of the world worst industrial accidents, caused more than 1,100 people died. Most of victims in this disaster were the low-paid workers in the garment industry in Bangladesh. Those workers, in order to earn comparatively higher salary, suffer from long working hours, abuse from employers and poor social security. Especially, the working environment is too bad to ensure employees’ health and safety.

Before the collapse of the Rana Plaza, in order to minimize the costs, many high street brands, such as Inditex, H&M, Primar, to a large extent, pay no attention to the health and safety of their employees. After that, those brands, and other worldwide-supplying companies have began to care about how to build a socially-responsible global chain.

According to the article “The social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, the only social responsibility of business is to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits to create more wealth as much as possible. In this sense, it is fairly reasonable for those companies to co-operate with the suppliers that provides cheapest clothes but put their employees in dangerous working environment because they can earn most profits by doing so. But actually, they should not. This is because chasing profits should based on the rules of the game, which is to say, following certain social customs and ethics. Otherwise, their reputation among customers would not be good, since obviously, none believe a company which does not care about their own employees health and safety at all would care about that of customers.

In conclusion, although the main social responsibility of business is to maximize their profits, companies should also follow some social customs and business ethics.

the links of references:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/bangladesh-factory-building-collapse-community

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/jul/29/responsible-business-retail-supply-chains

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse

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