Bangladesh is second only to China in garment exports to the West, but unsafe conditions have plagued its factories where thousands of workers have died in preventable tragedies over the years. In response, a consortium of Western retailers founded The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety in 2013 as a way to improve fire and life safety for Bangladesh’s roughly 4 million garment workers.

On today’s podcast, Jesse speaks with Randy Tucker, a board member on the Alliance, about the ongoing effort to improve factory safety. Jesse also speaks with Kathleen Almand, the vice president of Research at NFPA, who just returned from Bangladesh as part of an NFPA mission to help the Alliance assess the work that has been done so far.