In wake of the Rana Plaza disaster that occurred earlier in 2013, a jury of experts have awarded Gap the "Public Eye" award for the worst company of the year for its failure to sign a binding agreement to make factories safe.
In making their decision, the panel ranked Gap’s behaviour worse than HSBC’s involvement in land-grabbing, Syngenta, Bayer & BASF’s production of bee killing pesticides and mining giant Glencore's impact on communities around the world.
The Public Eye award is run by Greenpeace and the Berne Declaration and is awarded every January to the worst behaved companies of the year. The jury is made up of internationally renowned business ethicists and environmental and human rights experts. Cecile Buhlmann is the former member of the National Council (Parliament) of Switzerland and is also the president of the foundation board of Greenpeace Switzerland since 2006. Previous winners of the jury's prize include Goldman Sachs and Barclays. The jury justified the award to Gap saying that the company "steadfastly refuses to contribute to effective reforms in the textile industry."
Bangladeshi labour activist and Executive Director of the Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity Kalpona Akter collected Gap’s award, saying Gap still refuses to make a contractual commitment to work with their suppliers and local and international trade unions to ensure that repairs are made and workers have the right to refuse dangerous work.
After the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 people, mainly female garment workers, over a million people around the world demanded brands change to make sure such a preventable catastrophe could never happen again.
As a result, over 100 companies joined the Bangladesh Safety Accord - a landmark project, bringing together brands, supplier factories, trade unions and NGOs to end the appallingly unsafe factory conditions and ensure decent working conditions.
However, Gap did not join this agreement; instead they launched their own rival plan, which they call the "Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety."
