Local worker struggles in the Global South: Reconsidering northern impacts on international labour standards

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 567-579

  Wells, Don ^a  

^a MCMASTER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GLOBALIZATION; LABOR MARKET; LABOR STANDARD; MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE; OUTSOURCING; POLITICAL ECONOMY;

EID: 67650751834     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590902742339     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. The distinction between managerialist and participatory monitoring models is developed in M Barenberg, 'Toward a democratic model of transnational labour monitoring?', in B Bercusson & C Estlund (eds), Regulating Labour in the Wake of Globalization, Oxford: Hart, 2008, pp 37-65.
2. While the term NGO is not normally applied to for-profit organisations, the blurring of lines between for-profit firms and non-profit NGOs in this case suggests this definitional restriction is not suitable for the present analysis.
3. See, for example, R Pearson & G Seyfang, 'New hope or false dawn?', Global Social Policy, 1 (1), 2001, pp 49-78
4. S Zadek, 'The path of corporate social responsibility', Harvard Business Review, 82 (12), 2004, pp 125-132
5. and J Ruggie, 'How to marry civic politics to global governance', in A Kuper (ed), The Impact of Corporations on Global Governance, New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 2004, pp 10-23.
6. R Locke, 'Does monitoring improve labor standards?', paper presented at the Workshop on Research in Corporate Social Responsibility, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 12-14 January 2007, at www.environment.yale.edu/topics/page-10/4066/ csr_workshop_agenda_jan_12-14, accessed 29 June 2008.
7. A Vasil, 'When truth doesn't pay', International Labor Rights Forum 1 June 2006, at http://www.whrnet.org/doc/ issue-big-label-0607.html.
8. M Kauffman & I Chedekel, 'As colleges profit, sweatshops worsen', Hartford Courant, 12 December 2004, A1.
9. This section of the paper is based on my articles 'Too weak for the job', Global Social Policy, 7 (1), 2007, pp 51-73
10. 'How credible are international corporate labour codes?', in J Stanford & L Vosko (eds), Challenging the Market, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004, pp 365-383
11. and 'How ethical are ethical purchasing policies?', Journal of Business Ethics, 2, 2004, pp 119-140.
12. D Miller, 'Preparing for the long haul', Global Social Policy, 4 (2), 2004, p 218
13. and P Utting, 'Beyond social auditing', paper presented at an EU Conference on Responsible Sourcing, Brussels, 2005, p 4.
14. N Ascoly & I Zeldenrust, Considering Complaints Mechanisms, Amsterdam: Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, 2003.
15. The 20 largest garment retailers account for only 17% of global sales. Little is known about the sourcing patterns of the other 83%.MFlanagan, 'How retailers source apparel', Management Briefing, Clothesource, 2005, at http:www.just-style.com.
16. According to a Nike code compliance executive, the combined sales revenue of the brands actively involved in multi-stakeholder code monitoring constitutes only 10% of the total sales revenue of the apparel and footwear industries. R Casey, Meaningful Change, Working Paper 29, Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2006, p 31.
17. H Jorgensen, P Pruzan-Jorgensen, M Jungk & A Cramer, Strengthening Implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility in Global Supply Chains, Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2001
18. and I Mamic, Implementing Codes of Conduct, Geneva: ILO, 2004.
19. S Barrientos & S Smith, 'Do workers benefit from ethical trade?', Third World Quarterly, 28 (4), 2007, p 725. These findings are strengthened because they are mainly based on suppliers who gave a certain priority to code implementation and who had long-term relations with major corporate brands and retailers who belong to the Ethical Trading Initiative. Since these suppliers would, on the face of it, be more likely than other suppliers to implement code labour standards, it would be logical to conclude that compliance would be even weaker in other supply plants.
20. S Nova, Memo Concerning MFA Phase-Out, Washington, DC: WRC, 24 September 2004
21. and Crisis re Russell Factory in Honduras, Washington, DC: WRC, 10 October 2008.
22. J Brecher et al, Globalization from Below, Boston, MA: South End Press, 2000
23. K Moody, Workers in a Lean World, London: Verso, 1997
24. and P Evans, 'Fighting marginalisation with transnational networks', Contemporary Sociology, 29 (1), 2000, pp 230-241.
25. M Keck & K Sikkink, 'Transnational advocacy networks in the movement society', in D Meyer & S Tarrow (eds), The Social Movement Society Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997, pp 217-218.
26. M Keck & K Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998, pp 12-13. In much of the literature on TANs, the emphasis on states as a source of blockage and boomerang pressures is usually amended to include civil society actors, such as private firms and employer federations, labour organisations and other NGOs.
27. K Bronfenbrenner (ed), Global Unions, Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2007, p 215.
28. Cf V Carty, 'Transnational labor mobilizing in two Mexican maquiladoras', Mobilization, 9, 2004, pp 295-310
29. J Bandy, 'So what is to be done?', in K Kopinak (ed), Social Costs of Industrial Growth in Northern Mexico, La Jolla, CA: Center for US-Mexican Studies, 2004, pp 405-445
30. and J Hermanson, 'Global corporations, global campaigns', mimeo, American Center for International Labor Solidarity, Washington, DC, 2005.
31. In the USA, the United Students Against Sweatshops, a student coalition, and the Worker Rights Consortium, a labour rights organisation, are among the most notable; in Canada, the Ethical Trade Action Group, Maquila Solidarity Network, and Coalition qué becoise contre les ateliers de misère, are prominent; in Europe the Clean Clothes Campaign is the premier such TAN; and in Australia the Fair Wear coalition is the main network targeting sweatshops in the South.
32. M Micheletti & D Stolle, 'Mobilizing consumers to take responsibility for global justice', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611, 2007, p 161.
33. Cf A Fung et al, Can We Put an End to Sweatshops?, Boston, MA: Beacon, 2001, at http://bostonreview.net?BR26.1/fung.html
34. R DeWinter, 'The anti-sweatshop movement', Ethics and International Affairs, 15 (2), 2001, pp 99-115
35. and A Harrison & J Scorse, 'Improving the conditions of workers?', California Management Review, 48 (2), 2006, pp 40-160.
36. This, despite the fact that it was not until the late 1970s that most Northern activists began to mobilise around the 'race to the bottom' in global labour standards, whereas activists in much of the South have been engaged in anti-colonial struggles against TNCs since the 1600s.
37. This case study is based on the author's and G Knight's research, published in Knight & Wells, 'Bringing the local back in', Social Movement Studies, 6 (1), 2007, pp 83-103.
38. Most Mexican apparel factories have 'protection contracts' with 'official' unions linked to a political party. Contracts are usually negotiated without workers' knowledge and provide few if any benefits or rights that are not already provided by law.
39. G Thompson, 'Mexican labor protest gets results', New York Times, 8 October 2002, A3.
40. Carty, 'Transnational labor mobilizing in two Mexican maquiladoras', p 301.
41. Author's interview, Atlixco, Mexico, 6 December 2003.
42. C Quintero Ramirez, 'La solidaridad internacional en maquiladoras', paper presented at the Conference of the Latin American Studies Association, Dallas, TX, 27-29 March 2003
43. and Barenberg, 'Toward a democratic model of transnational labour monitoring?', p 54. Similar conclusions about the autonomy of the Kukdong workers' struggles may be found in Bandy, 'So what is to be done?'
44. and Hermanson, 'Global corporations, global campaigns'.
45. See, for example, G Seidman, Beyond the Boycott, NY: Sage, 2007, especially ch 5
46. E Brooks, Unraveling the Garment Industry, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007
47. H Frundt, 'Cross-border organizing in the apparel industry', Labor Studies Journal, 24 (1), 1999, pp 89-101
48. J Lee, 'Export processing zones in South Korea', We In the Zone, Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Hong Kong, 1998, pp 7-26
49. and M Rock, 'Rise of the Bangladesh independent garment-workers' union', in J Hutchinson & A Brown (eds), Organizing Labor in Globalizing Asia New York: Routledge, 2001, pp 27-47.
50. Soon afterwards, however, Kimi shut down the plant and moved its operations to a non-union site in Guatemala.
51. R Armbruster-Sandoval, 'Globalization and transnational labor organizing', Social Science History, 27 (4), 2003, pp 562, 565-566, 570.
52. S Gunawardana, 'Struggle, perseverance and organization in Sri Lanka's export processing zones', in Bronfenbrenner (ed), Global Unions, p 98.
53. Author's interview with Anton Marcus, General Secretary of the Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees Union, Sri Lanka, at Labor Notes Conference, Dearborn, MI, 13 April 2008. At the same conference I asked the same question of leaders of unions and labour NGOs in Vietnam and China, and received similar answers. Chao Ngat Binh, from the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour replied: 'International solidarity is important but in order to build strong unions we must rely on self-organising first and rely on international solidarity later'. Diana Beaumont from Asia Monitor Research Centre in Hong Kong replied: 'If you aren't democratically organised on the ground, at local level, whatever is achieved is not going to be sustainable. The brands and buyers carry a lot of weight in helping to achieve better working conditions but what they achieve may not be as significant in the longer run as local power that is built by workers. Sometimes changes are initiated from the top down through CSR are not what workers want but what Northern buyers want. [For example] a Western buyer came to a factory in China and was very concerned about excessive overtime. So the buyer was able to obtain a change to a three-shift system in the plant, but this led the workers to leave the plant because they weren't getting enough pay.'
54. S McKay, 'The squeaky wheel's dilemma', Labor Studies Journal, 30 (4), 2006, pp 42, 43, 52, 60, emphasis in the original.
55. In most cases where workers have been able to make significant gains in labour standards implementation in their workplaces, there appears to be a pattern in which workers initiate the struggle and are 'in motion' before Northern TANs become engaged.
56. P Robertson & S Plaiyoowong, The Struggle of Gina Workers in Thailand Working Paper 75, Hong Kong: Southeast Asia Research Centre, City University of Hong Kong, 2004, pp 1, 3-6. This victory was followed, however, by a final defeat in 2006 when the Gina factory closed.
57. On the development of Southern-focused transnational labour solidarity in the context of labour in Canada, the USA and Mexico, see D Wells, 'Building transnational coordinative unionism', in S Babson & H Juarez Nunez (eds), Confronting Change, Detroit, MI/Puebla: Wayne State University Press and Puebla University Press, 1998, pp 487-505.