With the tragic incident of collapsed garment factories that killed over 1,100 people in Bangladesh, retailers are reconsidering the importance of the safety and working conditions for workers in factories. Pressures are also being put to improve the working environment of factories in Bangladesh. After the incident, the giant retail Walmart released a list of factories that it has barred from producing its garments due to concerns of safety and violation issues, however later finding out that there are still productions from two of the listed manufacturers. Records of shipments from the banned and blacklisted Bangladesh factories Mars Apparels and Simco Dresses were present.

Questions start to arise regarding ethical concerns of Walmart for ensuring the safety and well being of the factory workers. Other than focusing on products, retailers should also consider the appropriateness of the process in which goods are produced. It is Walmart’s responsibility to stop its use of labours working under an unsafe environment. In addition, ethical issue also arises regarding the inconsistencies of Walmart’s published information about banning certain factories and its actual continuous shipments with those factories. Businesses should be careful about the ethical implications to the actions, as ethics are now being viewed as an important topic by the society and mistakes could generate loss of reputation that would have a massive impact.

Source: http://www.propublica.org/article/walmart-accepted-clothing-from-banned-bangladesh-factories