Models walked down the runway to chants of “Target – blood on your hands!” at Melbourne’s Spring Fashion festival on Saturday 7 September. Red handprints covered the marquee as protestors smeared Target’s catwalk event with paint symbolising the blood of Bangladeshi garment workers.

Days earlier, the New York fashion week launch of Nautica’s spring collection was also disrupted by picketers. Activists are angry at the label’s refusal to acknowledge the dangerous conditions in the factories where its clothes are produced. With placards that read “No one should die for fashion” and “Don’t throw workers overboard” protesters called on Nautica to improve standards.

Public outrage over appalling sweatshop conditions has been growing in the wake of the Rana Plaza tragedy in April this year. In that incident, 1,129 workers died when their workplace collapsed around them.

Under pressure, 100 major retailers have been forced to sign an Accord on Fire and Building Safety that restricts investment in the very worst Bangladeshi factories for the next five years. However, the Accord fails to address the ongoing extreme exploitation of unskilled workers in labour intensive industries like textiles and footwear.

Garment workers in Bangladesh are paid as little at US$40 per month while the global retail apparel industry is worth an estimated US$1.1 trillion per year.

A number of Australian companies such as Big W and Just Jeans have refused even to sign the limited safety Accord. Moreover, none of the corporations implicated in the nearly 2,000 industrial deaths in Bangladesh in the last five years have ever paid compensation to the families of their victims.

Tragedies like the Rana Plaza factory collapse are the logical conclusion of a system in which companies, motivated by profits, deliberately and consistently degrade working conditions. The Australian corporations involved are guilty of industrial murder.

Solidarity with Bangladeshi workers!