News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed - and a common need for unionized resistance.

"It was like a nuclear bomb went off," said the mayor as a mushroom cloud soared above his tiny Texas town. The explosion "ripped through three feet of concrete floor slab and then tore apart 10 additional feet of earth," scattering the wreckage more than 1,000 feet and leaving a blast crater is 93 feet wide.

This was the second mushroom cloud to be seen over Texas in recent years. The first was also a workplace explosion, at an oil refinery.

Bystanders weren't safe in Bangladesh, either. The Savar building collapsed during rush hour, hurling debris through the air while crushing and killing hundreds of the workers inside.The Whole StoryNews reports offer information, but don't tell the whole story. There's an underlying theme behind the barrage of words and images from the fertilizer plant explosion and the collapse of a textile factory, and it's this: When one worker is unsafe anywhere, we're all unsafe everywhere.

One word that's conspicuously absent from these news account is "union." Without it this story of death and disaster will be repeated, again and again and again.

These aren't just stories about strangers. The Texas plant endangered us all with lax security which failed to safeguard highly explosive materials used by terrorists like Tim McVeigh, and permitted the repeated theft of chemicals used to make methamphetamines.

The Texas plant was surrounded by a school, a retirement home, and private residences. The explosion ripped the roofs from some of those homes and the elementary school, and lawsuits are already being filed by the plant's newly-homeless neighbors.

And the Savar story is as close to us as the clothes on our backs. The factory manufactured clothing for American distributors that included Benetton, Joe Fresh, The Children's Place, Primark, Monsoon, and DressBarn.

Godless

The Texas Attorney General's Office brags about its "Right to Work" laws, which became "Right to Die" laws last week. Union membership in Texas is roughly half the national average, and the national figure has been declining precipitously for far too long.

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This is quite the ethical dilemma. So many of the people who shop at Wal-Mart quite literally have no other options, so how do you effectively boycott a company for such questionable standards? Wal-Mart has driven competition out of business in so many places, there is literally no place else to shop:

A 2011 inspection conducted for a supplier to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. found serious fire-safety concerns at a clothing factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, that burned down last month, killing 112 people, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Yet just weeks before the fire, a majority of the factory's assembly lines were devoted to production for Wal-Mart, according to documents found by the Journal at the wrecked factory. Sand-colored girls' shorts bearing Wal-Mart's Faded Glory label also were found at the charred factory by the Journal.

Wal-Mart declined to comment about fire-safety concerns at the factory, Tazreen Fashions Ltd. A Wal-Mart spokesman said Tazreen was removed from the retailer's list of authorized factories "months ago" but declined to be more precise or say if the retailer notified its suppliers. Wal-Mart said a supplier sent garments to Tazreen without authorization and that the retailer is investigating if others did.

Uh huh. Because Wal-Mart has been such an ethical beacon, we have no reason to question their statement, right?

The factory's owner, Delwar Hossain, couldn't be reached for comment about the deauthorization. He has said before that audits carried out for Wal-Mart didn't raise fire-safety issues at the factory.

The fire has focused attention on apparent lapses in efforts by Western retailers over the last several years to improve conditions for workers that make clothing in emerging-market factories.

In Bangladesh and elsewhere, Wal-Mart and other major retailers have mechanisms to audit and approve factories to ensure that their suppliers obtain clothing from manufacturers that are safe and don't employ child labor.

But the nature of the system means warning signs often are overlooked, experts and labor groups said. The retailers' monitoring typically is conducted by third parties and paid for by suppliers, rather than by the retailers. Wal-Mart's Standards for Suppliers manual says suppliers are required to disclose which factories they use.

When problems are identified or a factory is removed from a supplier's approved list, the news might not be communicated to other suppliers or to the factories themselves, according to interviews with executives in the industry.

Since we already know Wal-Mart Inc. refused to sign a pact with other major retailers to raise prices to pay for safety improvements, it seems the Wall Street Journal is not telling us the complete story. But this part also explains quite a bit:

In the past, the government had been reluctant to push for safety improvements because of the political clout of the garment industry, according to industry analysts. More than two dozen garment-factory owners are members of Bangladesh's Parliament.