Corporate social responsibility and freedom of association rights: The precarious quest for legitimacy and control in global supply chains

Politics and Society

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 609-644

  Anner, Mark ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Apparel industry; Corporate social responsibility; Global supply chains; Voluntary governance; Workers' rights

Indexed keywords

EID: 84869481695     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: 15527514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329212460983     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. Richard M. Locke, Fei Qin, and Alberto Brause, "Does Monitoring Improve Labor Standards? Lessons from Nike," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61, no. 1 (2007): 3-31.
2. Gay W. Seidman, Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007).
3. Archon Fung, Dara O'Rourke, and Charles Sabel, eds., Can We Put an End to Sweatshops? (Boston, MA: Beacon, 2001).
4. César A. Rodríguez-Garavito, "Global Governance and Labor Rights: Codes of Conduct and Anti-sweatshop Struggles in Global Apparel Factories in Mexico and Guatemala," Politics & Society 33, no. 2 (2005): 203-233.
5. Archon Fung, Dara O'Rourke, and Charles Sabel, "Realizing Labor Standards," in Can We Put an End to Sweatshops? ed. Archon Fung et al.
6. Layna Mosley, Labor Rights and Multinational Production (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
7. Kimberly Ann Elliott and Richard B. Freeman, Can Labor Standards Improve under Globalization? (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2003).
8. Don Wells, "Too Weak for the Job: Corporate Codes of Conduct, Non-Governmental Organizations and the Regulation of International Labour Standards," Global Social Policy 7, no. 1 (2007): 51-74.
9. Mark Levinson, "Wishful Thinking," in Can We Put an End to Sweatshops? ed. Archon Fung et al.
10. Dwight W. Justice, "Corporate Social Responsibility and Society's Expectations of Business," Perspectives on Work, Winter (2006): 14-16.
11. Research has shown that effectiveness is also dependent on state enforcement capabilities or, more generally, the quality of governance. Where governance is strong, CSR works better. And where governance is weak, CSR-instead of filling the void-is also weak.
12. Locke, Qin, and Brause, "Does Monitoring Improve Labor Standards? Lessons from Nike."
13. For the International Labour Organization (ILO), freedom of association conventions are considered so integral to proper employment relations that all member states are obliged to comply with them regardless of whether they ratified the corresponding conventions, C87 and C98.
14. Of course, unscrupulous companies can alter their books complicating the auditing of wages and hours, but this can be verified through worker interviews.
15. Respect for freedom of association and trade union rights is also largely dependent upon governments and states. Governments decide whether independent unions are allowed to exist, how much resources can be dedicated to workplace inspections, etc. CSR programs, however, are largely set up to monitor the conduct of factories and not governments and states.
16. Ernesto Dal Bó, "Regulatory Capture: A Review," Oxford Review of Economic Policy 22, no. 2 (2006): 203-225.
17. It is still understood this way by many corporations. For example, when Hershey is asked about its CSR program, it refers to its support for an orphanage in Mexico.
18. Archie B. Carroll, "Corporate Social Responsibility: Evolution of a Definitional Construct," Business and Society 38, no. 3 (1999): 268-295.
19. Keith Davis, 1973, cited in ibid., 277.
20. Keith Davis, 1973, cited in ibid., 277.
21. Presentation by Robert Reich at the annual meeting of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), San Francisco, CA, January 2-5, 2009.
22. Gare Smith and Dan Feldman, Company Codes of Conduct and International Standards: An Analytical Comparison, Part I, Apparel, Footwear and Light Manufacturing, Agribusiness, Tourism (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2003), 2.
23. United States General Accounting Office, GOA-09-962T, Washington, DC.
24. Mark Anner, "Meeting the Challenges of Industrial Restructuring: Labor Reform and Enforcement in Latin America," Latin American Politics and Society 50, no. 2 (2008): 33-65.
25. Rhys Jenkins, "The Political Economy of Codes of Conduct," in Corporate Responsibility & Labour Rights: Codes of Conduct in the Global Economy, ed. Rhys Jenkins, Ruth Pearson, and Gill Seyfang (London: Earthscan, 2002).
26. Jill Esbenshade, Monitoring Sweatshops: Workers, Consumers, and the Global Apparel Industry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004).
27. Jenkins, "The Political Economy of Codes of Conduct."
28. Fung, O'Rourke, and Sabel, "Realizing Labor Standards," 6.
29. Fung, O'Rourke, and Sabel, "Realizing Labor Standards," 6.
30. Elliott and Freeman, Can Labor Standards Improve under Globalization? 2.
31. Justice, "Corporate Social Responsibility and Society's Expectations of Business."
32. Levinson, "Wishful Thinking."
33. Wells, "Too Weak for the Job."
34. Seidman, Beyond the Boycott.
35. European-based programs are more likely to include a few labor representatives on their boards of directors, but corporate participation remains strong.
36. Luc Fransen, Corporate Social Responsibility and Global Labor Standards: Firms and Activists in the Making of Private Regulation (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).
37. http://www.wrapcompliance.org/ (accessed September 12, 2011).
38. Miguel Martínez Lucio and Robert MacKenzie, "'Unstable Boundaries?' Evaluating the 'New Regulation' within Employment Relations," Economy and Society 3, no. 1 (2004): 77-97.
39. Giandomenico Majone, "The Rise of the Regulatory State in Europe," West European Politics 17, no. 3 (1994): 77-101.
40. Dal Bó, "Regulatory Capture."
41. Dara O'Rourke, "Citizen Consumer" (and responses), Boston Review, November/ December 2011.
42. Philip Hunter and Michael Urminsky, "Social Auditing, Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining," Labour Education 130, no. 1 (2003): 47-53.
43. NGO participation included the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, the National Consumers League, the International Labor Rights Fund, and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.
44. Alan Howard, "Why Unions Can't Support the Apparel Industry Sweatshop Code: Labor Pulled Out of the Apparel Industry Partnership Because Its Plan Does Too Little to Empower Workers," Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society 3, no. 2 (1999): 34-50.
45. Alan Howard, "Why Unions Can't Support the Apparel Industry Sweatshop Code: Labor Pulled Out of the Apparel Industry Partnership Because Its Plan Does Too Little to Empower Workers," Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society 3, no. 2 (1999): 34-50.
46. Alan Howard, "Why Unions Can't Support the Apparel Industry Sweatshop Code: Labor Pulled Out of the Apparel Industry Partnership Because Its Plan Does Too Little to Empower Workers," Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society 3, no. 2 (1999): 34-50.
47. The FLA's CEO concludes by noting, 'I hate the idea that governments are not protecting human rights around the world.... I've been at this for 30 years, and during that time I've seen the ability, the will, the commitment of governments to do this decline. And I don't see them making a comeback right now. So we started out thinking this was a stopgap measure. We are now thinking that in fact this is probably the start of a new way of regulating and addressing international challenges. Call it networked governance, call it what you will. The private actors-companies and NGOs-are going to have to get together to face the major challenges.'.
48. Auret van Heerden, President and CEO of the Fair Labor Association, "Making Global Labor Fair," July 2010, http://www.ted.com/talks/auret_van_heerden_making_global_labor_fair.html (accessed August 9, 2011).
49. FLA, "Fair Labor Association 2008 Annual Report: January 1, 2007 - December 31, 2008," (Washington, DC: Fair Labor Association, 2009), 6.
50. FLA, "Fair Labor Association 2008 Annual Report: January 1, 2007 - December 31, 2008," (Washington, DC: Fair Labor Association, 2009), 6.
51. http://www2.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2010/522/183/2010-522183112-07de4c88-9.pdf (accessed March 25, 2012).
52. https://www.fairlabor.org/fla/go.asp?u=/pub/zTr4.
53. The author thanks graduate student research assistants Dong Fang and Katherine Cornejo for their work in coding these audits. The coding took place between September 2009 and April 2011. It is important to note that the FLA is constantly revising audits, removing some and adding new ones, sometimes going back several years. The data presented here reflect the audits that were posted online at the time of the coding. I have titled the database 'AnnerCF.'.
54. U.S. Department of State, "Human Rights Reports, El Salvador (2004)," http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41760.htm.
55. U.S. Department of State, "Human Rights Reports, Honduras (2004)," http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41765.htm.
56. David Kucera codes thirty-seven evaluation criteria of trade union rights by country.
57. David Kucera, "Measuring Trade Union Rights: A Country-Level Indicator Constructed from Coding Violations Recorded in Textual Sources" (Working Paper, Policy Integration Department Statistical Development and Analysis Unit, International Labour Office, Geneva, Switzerland, 2004).
58. The Kucera scores do not correspond to the exact period of FLA data, but the calculation is very detailed, ranging from 0.00 (worst violators) to 10.00 (best cases), and it can be expected that countries do not radically alter their freedom of association practices in a relatively short period of time. However, to control for the possibility of annual changes, I use a second dataset, the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset (http://www.humanrightsdata.org), which is available for matching years with my FLA data (2002-2009). This dataset employs a simpler three level 'workers' rights' scale-0 (worst), 1 (medium), and 2 (best). The CIRI definition of 'workers' rights' focuses on freedom of association and right to collective bargaining. See http://ciri.binghamton.edu/myciri/my_ciri_variable_definition.asp.
59. Since Kucera and CIRI rank countries with a high level of respect for labor standards with higher scores, I inverted my FLA scores so that my high scores reflected countries with low levels of FoA violations per factory.
60. There are forty countries in our dataset. However, we have removed from the graph countries with four or fewer audits since the findings of the audits may reflect chance findings (outliers) and not reflect the general trend in the country.
61. FLA, "Fair Labor Association 2008 Annual Report," 28.
62. Moreover, what is not clear from the FLA reporting system is how many third party complaints are presented each year, what percentage of them are accepted, and what are the criteria for selection.
63. In 2007 and 2008, the 'success rate' for remediation of FoA violations was extremely low (10 percent) and in 2009 it was comparable to other issue areas at 72 percent. It will take data from additional years before we know if this is a trend. It is also important to note that the FLA counts as 'successful' remediation cases that are pending or for which there is only partial remediation.
64. FLA, "2010 Annual Report January 1, 2010 - December 31, 2010," (Washington, DC: Fair Labor Association, 2011), 22.
65. Richard Locke, Matthew Amengual, and Akshay Mangla, "Virtue out of Necessity? Compliance, Commitment, and the Improvement of Labor Conditions in Global Supply Chains," Politics & Society 37, no. 3 (2009): 319-351.
66. FLA, "Fair Labor Association First Public Report: Towards Improving Workers' Lives," (Washington, DC: Fair Labor Association, 2003).
67. WRC, "Worker Rights Consortium Assessment: Jerzees De Honduras (Russell Corporation) Findings and Recommendations" (Washington, DC: Worker Rights Consortium, 2008).
68. The plant ceased operations on January 30, 2009.
69. Doug Cahn, Report to the Fair Labor Association: Financial Rationale for Decision to Close Jerzees De Honduras Factory by Russell Corporation-Headquarters Investigation (Newton, MA: The Cahn Group, LLC, 2008), 7.
70. FLA, "FLA Report on the Closure of Jerzees De Honduras," (Washington, DC: Fair Labor Association, 2009), 12.
71. Emphasis added. In fact, the original ALGI report noted that its monitors 'did not gather any tangible evidence to show without the benefit of a doubt that JDH has performed or encouraged actions that can be regarded as discriminatory,'.
72. ALGI, "Fact Finding Independent Investigation: Honduras-November 10th-14th, 2008" (New York, NY: A. & L. Group Inc., 2009), 17.
73. Emphasis added. The FLA report appears to have added the 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' language. That is, the FLA added a higher burden of proof than the original text of the ALGI report.
74. For example, Philip Hunter and Michael Urminsky of the ILO Multinational Enterprise Programme suggest that a realistic approach would be for organizations auditing violations of freedom of association, 'to obtain indicators that this may be happening-through interviews with workers or stakeholders-and then to place upon the employer the burden of proving that this is not the case.'.
75. Hunter and Urminsky, "Social Auditing, Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining," 49, emphasis added.
76. FLA, "FLA Report on the Closure of Jerzees De Honduras."
77. Adrián Goldin, "Mission Report: The Closure Process of Jerzees De Honduras, Previous Investigations, and the Right of Freedom of Association," (San Pedro Sula and Buenos Aires, 2009), 2, available at http://www.fairlabor.org/sites/default/files/documents/reports/jdh_hq_01.28.09.pdf.
78. Adrián Goldin, "Mission Report: The Closure Process of Jerzees De Honduras, Previous Investigations, and the Right of Freedom of Association," (San Pedro Sula and Buenos Aires, 2009), 2, available at http://www.fairlabor.org/sites/default/files/documents/reports/jdh_hq_01.28.09.pdf.
79. Adrián Goldin, "Mission Report: The Closure Process of Jerzees De Honduras, Previous Investigations, and the Right of Freedom of Association," (San Pedro Sula and Buenos Aires, 2009), 20.
80. Adrián Goldin, "Mission Report: The Closure Process of Jerzees De Honduras, Previous Investigations, and the Right of Freedom of Association," (San Pedro Sula and Buenos Aires, 2009).
81. FLA, "FLA Report on the Closure of Jerzees De Honduras," 15.
82. Mark Anner, "Workers' Power in Global Value Chains: Ending Sweatshop Practices at Russell, Nike and Knights Apparel," in Transnational Trade Unionism: New Capabilities and Prospects, ed. Peter Fairbrother, Marc-Antonin Hennebert, and Christian Lévesque (New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, forthcoming).
83. FLA. Independent External Monitoring Report: Nordstrom, Vietnam, 080084973G (Washington, DC: Fair Labor Association, 2008), 11.
84. According to Better Work, 'Each assessment consists of four onsite person days and includes management interviews, union and worker interviews, document reviews, and factory observation.'.
85. Better Work Vietnam, Better Work Vietnam: Garment Industry 2nd Compliance Synthesis Report (Washington, DC: International Labour Office and International Finance Corporation, World Bank, 2011), 4.
86. David Barboza, "After Suicides, Scrutiny of China's Grim Factories," The New York Times, June 6, 2010.
87. David Barboza, "Explosion at Apple Supplier Caused by Dust, China Says," The New York Times, May 24, 2011.
88. FLA, Independent Investigation of Apple Supplier, Foxconn (Washington, DC: Fair Labor Association, 2012), 3.
89. Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, "How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work," The New York Times, January 21, 2012.
90. Julianne Pepitone, "Apple Supplier Audit Finds Major Wage and Overtime Violations," CNN Money, March 29, 2012, http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/29/technology/applefoxconn-report/index.htm.
91. At the same time, the costs of compliance are largely shifted on to the suppliers, who are encouraged to cover these costs by increasing their productivity.
92. Mark Anner, Solidarity Transformed: Labor's Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2011).