Julie Ward (S&D). – Mr President, the life and death of 23-year-old Taslima Aktar, a Bangladeshi garment worker, reads like something out of Charles Dickens. Yet she died on our watch last year on 13 October 2016 after collapsing exhausted at work. Paid a pittance, forced by grinding poverty and poor education to labour in a sweatshop making clothes for the western fashion market, Taslima was consistently denied a break when she felt unwell. After being pronounced dead later that day, her employer left her body outside the factory for her family to collect.

Taslima’s death sparked mass strikes, which were met with repression and punitive measures. Union organisers have subsequently been harassed and arrested and activists have been blacklisted. We must ask ourselves: what price, fashion? For Taslima’s sake, and in memory of all garment workers who suffer injury or who have died at work, I urge the Commission to do everything in its power to put people before profit.