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Shameful, monumentally shameful! As a worker in the garment centre for over 35 years in New York, I'm furious at the needless brutality to the workers at the Bangladesh textile factory, which killed more than 400 and injured 2,500 (Letters, 29 April). As building owners, manufacturers, stores – including some in America – point fingers and blame each other, everyone needs to look straight at themselves, deep into their own hearts.
They will see that this tragedy, like too many others before it, has to do with two words: "cheap labour" – putting their thirst for profits over the living, breathing people who do the work, paying the lowest wages possible and skimping on workplace safety. With working men and women – and even children – so systematically exploited worldwide, there is nothing more important than for us to ask and answer this essential question, first asked by educator and founder of aesthetic realism, Eli Siegel: "What does a person deserve by being a person?"
Bruce Blaustein
New York, USA