Is Bangladesh's deadly building collapse already leading to reform?

Bangladesh's government decided Monday to let garment workers unionize without their employers' permission. The reform is one of many the South Asian leaders have promised as they face a global outcry over factory conditions following the April collapse of an eight-story manufacturing complex, which killed more than 1,100 people. The government also said over the weekend that it would raise its minimum wage — which, at $37 per month, is among the lowest in the world. In another sign demands for reform are paying off, retailing giant H&M — the largest purchaser of garments from Bangladesh — agreed to sign a retailers' pact to help finance factory fire- and building-safety improvements.

That's a start, but not everyone has faith the Bangladeshi government will follow through with its pledge to improve the lives of the people who supply the labor for its $19 billion-a-year garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of the country's exports. In addition to wages and unionization, the government temporarily shut 18 unsafe factories last week. It also vowed to inspect thousands more, and hire 200 occupational safety inspectors by year's end. Unfortunately, says The New York Times in an editorial, nothing the government has said or done so far guarantees conditions will improve.

Bangladesh certainly has a long way to go before satisfying the demands of local and global labor leaders. "Garment wages in Bangladesh are half of those in India or Cambodia, and a third of those in China," say Canadian union activists John Cartwright and Victor Gomes in the Toronto Star. "That's the only reason businesses have moved their operations there." And new laws are just part of the solution — the collapsed Rana Plaza complex, which was making inexpensive clothes for wealthy shoppers in the U.S. and Europe, was also plagued by the kind of safety violations that must be addressed to prevent such catastrophes.

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Some worker advocates, however, are reminding critics of Bangladesh's government and clothing manufacturers that the factories have also done the country a lot of good. While one large foreign buyer, Disney, has even decided to pull out of Bangladesh, says Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus in Britain's Guardian, we can't forget that the garment industry has transformed the lives of the Bangladeshis, mostly women, who work in these factories, lifting them and their families out of abject poverty. "We cannot allow it to be destroyed," says Yunus: