Raising Labour Standards under Pressure: Analysis of the 2013 Rana Plaza Building Collapse International Advocacy Campaign

Whether it be an Industrial or Natural disaster – it’s an event that receives public attention, mobilizes interest groups, influences agenda setting and creates policy change. As was the case for the April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh, when intense pressure was placed on brands/retailers and the national government by policy communities to enact policy change. Neither the government nor brands could deny the visible example of policy failure or refuse to engage in the agenda setting that occurred in the labour policy domain. The combined pressure of the event and from interest groups, resulted in expedited labour law and structural reform, a shift in the dominate topic of International agendas, and most notably, the first internationally formed, union led, five -year legally binding agreement regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a particular country. This paper will take you through the dynamic aftermath of the Rana Plaza Collapse using Birkland’s theoretical lens on ‘focusing events’. A detailed account of interest group mobilization, post event politics, agenda setting and policy change is then followed by an analysis of the effects of consumer and labour power on private market labour governance. In 2014, Donaghey, Reinecke, Niforou and Lawson (hereafter referred to as Donaghey) developed a conceptual framework on the governance regimes achieved by the intersection of consumption relations and employment/industrial relations. It has yet to be tested, and given that, the theoretical framework is applied and examined through the Rana Plaza case study as a means of testing the framework’s viability to the overall study of global labour governance.