After over 15,000 of us spoke out, River Island announced that they would be signing the Bangladesh Safety Accord, protecting Bangladeshi workers from unsafe conditions. This was a direct response to our pressure -- it's a huge victory for people power!

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news. There are still UK brands that haven’t yet signed the Accord -- Edinburgh Woollen Mill is one of them. It owns some big high street names like Peacocks and Jane Norman and is now one of the few remaining big UK retailers not to have signed.

Getting River Island to sign the Accord shows we can influence and change big corporations. Now we need to make sure one of the last holdouts in the UK steps up and signs on.

Edinburgh Woollen Mill: Put people’s lives before your profits.

Edinburgh Woollen Mill was featured heavily in this week's BBC Panorama programme. According to the BBC, Edinburgh Woollen Mill were customers of the Tazreen factory where over 100 people were burned alive in a factory fire. Edinburgh Woollen Mill claim that its clothes were ‘scattered around’ at the Tazreen factory and paperwork proving they had big orders at the company were “fabricated”. 

While we savour the River Island victory we should be focused and make sure that other retailers like Edinburgh Woollen Mill step up and sign the Accord. There is a long way to go until we can be sure that people making the clothes we buy are treated with decency, respect, earn a living wage and work in safe environments. 

We were one part of a bigger campaign to get River Island to sign -- our friends at the TUC, goingtowork, Labour Behind the Label and the Global Poverty Project have all been working hard. We’ve proved what can be achieved when we come together and demand change. But now we need to make sure that companies like Edinburgh Woollen Mill are held to account for its failure to sign the Bangladesh Safety Accord.

Can you tell Edinburgh Woollen Mill to sign the Bangladesh Safety Accord?

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More Information: 

Bangladeshi factory workers locked in on 19-hour shifts, BBC News Online, 23 September 2013.