The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in 1911 forever made workplaces safer in the United States. The Rana Plaza factory tragedy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, must be this generation's equivalent.

When the eight-story building that housed at least five garment factories collapsed last month, information revealed in the aftermath about the slave-labor working conditions was appalling.

The building's owner, described in the Bangladeshi news media as a 35-year-old thug involved in illegal drugs and guns, had ordered the garment workers back into the building the day after an engineer found cracks in the building, declared the structure unsafe and ordered that it be closed immediately.

Such is the garment industry in Bangladesh, where workers earn as little as $40 a month to make clothes for retailers like J.C. Penney, Walmart, H&M and Benetton. They trooped back into the building the following morning.

Many of them didn't make it out that night. The collapse killed 1,127 people, about half of them women and many of their children. An estimated 3,000 people were working in the five factories.

While the companies listed above have been linked to clothing manufacturing in Bangladesh, they are by no means the only ones. The garment industry in the impoverished South Asian country is so complex that many of the retailers themselves don't know where the clothes they sell are being made.

Industry watchers say orders pass from supplier to supplier. It's not uncommon for importers to lose track of where the garments are stitched and under what sort of conditions.

The Workers Rights Consortium, which investigates working conditions in factories around the world, says it would cost about 10 cents more a garment to prevent disasters like the one that happened at Rana Plaza.

The figure is based on an analysis that it would cost $3 billion over five years to bring the nation's 4,500 factories in line with safety standards in the West.

The collapse is believed to be the deadliest garment-factory accident and the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern history. While the scope was greater, it was part of a pattern of factory tragedies.

It followed a fire in November at the Tazreen Fashions garment factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. At least 117 people were confirmed dead and at least 200 were injured in that catastrophe.

The Rana Plaza disaster was followed by a fire in an 11-story building in Dhaka on May 8. That one killed another eight garment industry workers.

Conditions are so bad in Bangladesh that the workers there look up to those in the Cambodian garment manufacturing industry, which has undergone stringent reforms since the 1990s. The Better Factories Cambodia program, administered by the International Labour Organization in conjunction with the Cambodian government, has improved working conditions and workers' rights. Dire warnings that reforms would undermine the national economy did not come true. Recent studies show the nation's exports have increased.

The Rana Plaza collapse brought calls for boycotts of the retailers whose merchandise is made in Bangladesh. That might salve our consciences, but it would be unlikely to actually reform the industry. Boycotts would almost surely ruin the industry, creating the unwanted consequence of harming the very workers it would be intended to help.

Most of the problems in the industry are not being blamed on greedy factory owners, the Rana Plaza case notwithstanding. The culprit is a system devised to satisfy Western consumers' insatiable demand for the newest product at all times.

Such demands require flexible supply chains so retailers are not left with shelves of outdated inventory. That means the garment workers can be pressed into service at all times so production immediately can be either ramped up or halted, depending on the whims of consumers.

Should we feel guilty? Yes, Western consumers are part of the problem. But, in one sense, we are also victims. We are one link in a long chain of tactics that inspire greed and deny the value of frugality.

The government of Bangladesh has announced that it will work with the ILO to create and enforce minimum labor standards. That's a good start. Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization, is suggesting reforms that would include "a drastic overhaul of the government's system of labor inspections and an end to government efforts to thwart the right of workers to unionize."

That would help. So would stepped-up efforts by the retailers who profit from the cheap labor in Bangladesh to improve basic working conditions.

This must not be one of those situations where awareness is raised for a brief time, followed by no action. The legacy of the dead demands better, more humane working conditions. A dime more per garment is a small price to pay.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH