Meet Sohel Rana, the tycoon who owned Rana Plaza, the Bangladeshi factory tower that collapsed last week in the worst industrial disaster in the nation’s history:

SAVAR, Bangladesh — Barely 20 miles from the national capital, this gritty suburb is now a dusty, chaotic industrial center littered with factories that produce clothes for leading Western brands. Building codes are often unenforced, regulatory oversight is flimsy and the men wielding power often travel with armed guards.

And perhaps no one wielded power more brazenly than Sohel Rana. He traveled by motorcycle, as untouchable as a mafia don, trailed by his own biker gang. Local officials and the Bangladeshi news media say he was involved in illegal drugs and guns, but he also had a building, Rana Plaza, that housed five factories.

Upstairs, workers earned as little as $40 a month making clothes for retailers like J. C. Penney. Downstairs, Mr. Rana hosted local politicians, playing pool, drinking and, the officials say, indulging in drugs.

Now Mr. Rana, 35, is under arrest, the most reviled man in Bangladesh after the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza last week left nearly 400 people dead, with many others still missing. On Tuesday, a top Bangladeshi court seized his assets, as the public bayed for his execution, especially as it appears that the tragedy could have been averted if the frantic warnings of an engineer who examined the building the day before had been heeded. [NYT]

Rana is part of a new class of wealthy and ruthless men who have ridden Bangladesh’s apparel boom to riches. Until his arrest, he lived outside the law. He and his father even seized property by force to build Rana Plaza: 

Rabindranath Sarkar, who had bought land in partnership with Mr. Rana’s father, said the family sent thugs to seize part of his share of the land and then retaliated when he filed a complaint with the local police.

“Rana chased me through Savar with weapons,” he said. “The police wouldn’t even dare to protect me. The police were always scared of them.” [NYT]

The day before Rana Plaza collapsed, an engineer told Rana that the building was critically compromised, but he waved off the engineer and told journalists everything was okay. His arrogance cost over 400 lives. 

On May 7th, the Sidney Hillman Foundation will present a special Officers’ Award for Public Service to the garment workers of Bangladesh struggling for safety and justice at work in memory of the late Aminul Islam, a garment worker and trade unionist with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. Mr. Islam was kidnapped, tortured, and killed, presumably for his tireless activism on behalf of apparel workers. 

The Hillman judges had decided to honor Mr. Islam’s memory weeks before the most recent building collapse in Bangladesh, the worst industrial accident in the nation’s history. We hope that by drawing attention to violence against labor activists like Mr. Islam and to the dangerous working conditions he opposed, we can help make the garment trade safer in Bangladesh. 

Our namesake, Sidney Hillman came to prominence by leading a garment workers’ strike in Chicago in the early 20th Century. The work of Aminul Islam and his brothers and sisters in Bangladesh represents the values that Hillman himself held dear. 

The 2013 Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism goes to an outstanding investigative team from the Chicago Tribune for “Playing With Fire,” an expose of the machinations of the chemical industry and Big Tobacco to put ineffective and potentially hazardous flame-retardant chemicals in mattresses, couch cushions, and other soft furnishings. The dogged reporting of Patricia Callahan, Sam Roe, and Michael Hawthorne revealed falsified fire tests, a successful bid to infiltrate the ranks of state fire marshalls, and much more. 

A building that housed several garment factories has collapsed in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, killing at least 70 people, injuring about 600, and leaving others trapped in the wreckage:. 

NEW DELHI – An eight-story building in Bangladesh that housed several garment factories collapsed on Wednesday morning, killing at least 70 people, injuring hundreds of others, and leaving an unknown number of people trapped in the rubble, according to Bangladeshi officials and media outlets.

The building collapse occurred in Savar, a suburb of the national capital of Dhaka, and is the latest tragic accident to afflict Bangladesh’s garment industry. Bangladesh is the world’s second-leading garment exporter, trailing only China, but the industry has been beleaguered with safety concerns, angry protests over rock-bottom wages and other problems.

This latest fatal accident, coming five months after a fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory killed at least 112 garment workers, is likely to again raise questions about work conditions in Bangladesh: workers told Bangladeshi news outlets that supervisors had ordered them to attend work on Wednesday, even though cracks were discovered in the building on Tuesday. 

Brian Williams and his investigative team won the 2013 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism for their coverage of appalling safety conditions in the Bangladeshi garment industry. Thy found that leading U.S. firms including Walmart, Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, Sears and even ABC’s own parent company, Disney, manufacture clothing in Bangladesh, home of the world’s lowest minimum wage, just $37 a month.

These low wages come at a high price. As a result of grossly substandard safety practices, lax government enforcement, and ineffectual “audits” by industry groups that purport to self-police working conditions, more than 500 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in fires and building collapses in the last few years.

This week’s building collapse underscores the urgency of the Bangladeshi garment workers’ fight for decent working conditions. The Hillman Foundation presents its Officers’ Award for Public Service to these workers, in memory of Aminul Islam, a garment worker activist who fought tirelessly for better working conditions until he was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, likely for his activism.