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In debt to the time-bank: the manipulation of working time in Indian garment factories and ?working dead horse?
Abstract
In this article we focus on the creation of debt relations between workers and their workplace as a tool of managerial control in the garment factories of Bangalore, India. The currency of indebtedness in this case is working time and our focus is the manipulation of hours of work at the base of the international, buyer-driven, garment supply chain. In illuminating debt relations and worker dependency as an element of managers? repertoire of control, we compare a system known as ?comp-off? in contemporary Indian factories with the historical precedent of a system known as ?working dead horse? in Britain. Our comparison illuminates how value is extracted from workers and how old control systems are updated within the labour process, in a feminized sector where workers? associational power is weak and social downgrading is one means by which employers can offload risk, maximize flexibility and secure their position at the local level.
... The articulation of production relations and wider social structures is most directly manifested in the way the workforce is constructed across different tasks or stages of production. For example, many observers have noted the striking difference in the composition of factory workforces in North and South India (Anner, 2019;Mezzadri, 2017;Jenkins and Blyton, 2017). While the overwhelming part of workers in the national capital region of Delhi is made up of male circular migrants (who migrate, in line with seasonal order fluctuations, between their villages of origin in other states and the industrial centre of Delhi), it is mainly young women from rural contexts that constitute the labour force of factories in places like Bangalore. ...
... Furthermore, production tends to be fundamentally characterized by variation: styles and different tasks inevitably vary, in terms of the time they take or the level of skill and difficulty they require, and therefore have direct implications for workers being able to make a living. Thus, apart from the work pace, targets set, and piece rates, the allocation of specific tasksand the ensuing dependency on the line manager or intermediary for 'good work'is an equally important mechanism of control, both, in a factory context (Jenkins and Blyton, 2017) as well as under putting out practices (Mezzadri, 2017). ...
... On the other hand, these systems are manipulated in such a way as to create a 'debt' relation. Jenkins and Blyton (2017), for example, analyse a 'time bank' system in a Bangalore factory that translates market and production discontinuities into workers' debt to the factory. In this case, employers keep paying workers during factory downtimes that are beyond workers' control (from supply chain issues to electricity outages) but record this time as debt that has to be worked back in the future. ...
... In his case studies, Anner (2015) finds that workers' financial needs necessitate the joining of unions and highlights the relevance of debt as a control mechanism in the labor processes. However, be it money or time, as a form of debt, workers seem to have increased dependency in favor of their line managers (Jenkins and Blyton 2017). This type of docility is a common phenomenon even in mainstream microfinance industries where female borrowers receive credit from microfinance institutions (Hussain 2015). ...
... He revealed that unorganized women workers were more likely to desire union memberships (and leaderships) than their male counterparts (Moore 1986). Jenkins and Blyton (2017) conclude that as a technique, financing workers weakens the workers' agency in associational power, resulting in fewer social relations at the workplace. In Indian factories, the authors show evidence of the deliberate, strategic, and managerially driven forging of worker dependency as a tool of control. ...
... The global value chains can improve or degrade the work environment, but their growing complexity can worsen the challenges of regulating decent work (Wanjiru 2014). The factory management's controlling mechanism of workers has changed to a new form; in some countries, management promotes a feminized factory environment to weaken workers' associational power and offload employers' risk (Jenkins and Blyton 2017). However, this controlling mechanism can only ensure the economic upgrading of factories, not the social upgrading. ...
... Relationships between lead firms and garment factories are often characterised by unequal power relationships, which limit the ability of supplier firms to negotiate with lead firms (Locke and Romis, 2007;Robinson and Rainbird, 2013). Indeed, supplier firms are unlikely to attract contracts unless they can meet tight workflow requirements and lower costs ( Jenkins and Blyton, 2017). The low cost, strategic extraction of labour is a key source of competitiveness, particularly in fast-moving, labour-intensive sectors like the garment industry (Baglione, 2018;Jenkins and Blyton, 2017). ...
... Indeed, supplier firms are unlikely to attract contracts unless they can meet tight workflow requirements and lower costs ( Jenkins and Blyton, 2017). The low cost, strategic extraction of labour is a key source of competitiveness, particularly in fast-moving, labour-intensive sectors like the garment industry (Baglione, 2018;Jenkins and Blyton, 2017). Global supply chain pressures can promote cost-cutting measures, such as increased work intensification and lower investments in health and safety (Soundararajan et al., 2018;Wright and Kaine, 2015). ...
... Global supply chain pressures can promote cost-cutting measures, such as increased work intensification and lower investments in health and safety (Soundararajan et al., 2018;Wright and Kaine, 2015). Researchers have highlighted the vulnerable position of developing economies, and workers within those economies, in global trade networks ( Jenkins and Blyton, 2017;Lopez-Acevedo and Robertson, 2016;Rainnie et al., 2011;Reinecke et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how human resource (HR) managers in garment factories in a Sri Lankan export processing zone (EPZ) navigated the tension between their role as stewards of employee welfare and their role to maximise firm productivity in response to time and production pressures imposed by international buyers. Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of HR managers as liaisons between firms and labour. This omission is significant, given the importance of human resource management in the recruitment and retention of labour and the role of HR managers in organisational performance and regulatory compliance.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach was used based on interviews with 18 HR managers, factory managers and other key informants, and 63 factory workers from 12 firms in the Katunayake EPZ. The interviews and focus groups in English were transcribed and coded into themes arising from the literature and further developed from the transcripts. Initial codes were analysed to identify common themes across the data set.
Findings
HR managers were acutely aware of the competitive pressures facing the EPZ garment factories. While examples of company welfarism were evident, HR practices such as incentive payment systems and the management of employee absences reinforced a workplace environment of long hours, work intensification and occupational injury.
Originality/value
This paper goes some way towards filling the gap in our understanding of the roles played by HR managers in garment factories in the Global South, raising theoretical debates regarding the potential for HR managers in developing countries to distance themselves from the negative consequences of HR practices such as individual and team reward systems.
... In his case studies, Anner (2015) finds that workers' financial needs necessitate the joining of unions and highlights the relevance of debt as a control mechanism in the labour processes. However, be it money or time, as a form of debt, workers seem to have increased dependency in favour of their line managers (Jenkins and Blyton 2017). This type of docility is a common phenomenon even in mainstream microfinance industries where female borrowers receive credit from microfinance institutions (Hussain 2015). ...
... He revealed that unorganized women workers were more likely to desire union memberships (and leaderships) than their male counterparts (Moore 1986). Jenkins and Blyton (2017) conclude that as a technique, financing workers weakens the workers' agency in associational power, resulting in fewer social relations at the workplace. In Indian factories, the authors show evidence of the deliberate, strategic, and managerially-driven forging of worker dependency as a tool of control. ...
... The global value chains can improve or degrade the work environment, but their growing complexity can worsen the challenges of regulating decent work (Wanjiru 2014). The factory management's controlling mechanism of workers has changed to a new form; in some countries, management promotes a feminised factory environment to weaken workers' associational power and offload employers' risk (Jenkins and Blyton 2017). However, this controlling mechanism can only ensure the economic upgrading of factories, not the social upgrading. ...
April 24, 2019 marks the sixth commemoration of the Rana Plaza collapse, which places it among the world’s worst factory disasters. As a response to the catastrophe, which was responsible for the loss of 1,134 workers, most of whom were women, the working conditions of garment (RMG) factories came under global scrutiny concerning their working conditions and occupational health and safety (OHS) issues. The International Labour Organization believes the disaster was not a localized concern. The consumers of apparel products felt the association between workers’ casualties and the products they produce for the global markets were related. Despite more than two decades of private voluntary approaches to address workers’ rights issues in apparel supply chains, workers in the lower production tiers continue to face poor working conditions and chronic violations of labour rights (Anner 2018). Globally, although a significant number of workers are represented in this sector, the level of working conditions, wages, social security, and union activities appear to be meagre and cannot ensure proper protection for the workers. However, studies assert that compliance and social dialogue improve working conditions (Hussain and Endut 2018; Anner 2018).
The working conditions of garment factories in developing countries have been under scrutiny for quite some time (Rossi et al 2014). This attention has further increased as a result of two subsequent factory disasters centred in Bangladesh during 2012 and 2013 (Rossi 2015). Among the remediation programmes, Better Work is the most widely present in many developing countries in partnership with ILO and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). This programme aims to promote structural, social and economic upgrades and fosters a culture of factory and labour compliance, as well as trade competitiveness. Depending on the country-specific requirements, Better Work emphasises the labour standards violation and sufficient stakeholder and donor commitments (Rossi 2015). Since Bangladesh has been a special case for factory and labour compliance, it has received attention from European and North American buyers. However, the ILO-administered Better Work programme does not have transparency reporting in Bangladesh, unlike other countries where the same programme is present. However, the nature and extent of remediation programmes for a better and safe workplace in apparel factories are important. Therefore, this chapter and the following sections will discuss core labour standards and working conditions in selected developing countries.
To understand the remediation programmes that are supposed to promote decent working conditions in apparel supply chain factories, the following discussions present a review of major remediation, corrective and transparency reporting programmes. The sections deal with different national and global remediation programmes and end with a presentation of a workers’ digital helpline facility in Bangladesh. They also show the missing link between the structural upgrading of factories and social upgrading of workers, as well as connect the issues of two sustainable development goals: decent work and gender equality.
... Another supply chain factor, fluctuating or seasonal production orders, considered a normal sourcing practice, can also contribute to manipulation of working hours through a system of "time debt" that workers accumulate during waiting times in production that they have to "repay" in peak periods (resulting in unpaid overtime and bonded labor) (Jenkins & Blyton, 2017). This uncertainty associated with seasonality can also contribute to labor casualization and the increased use of temporary contracts (Mendonça & Ad asc aliei, 2020), or informal employment (Hammer & Plugor, 2019). ...
In global supply chains, subpar working conditions are a critical issue affecting organizations, workers, civil society, and policymakers alike. Our objective is to evaluate the approaches to improve working conditions within global supply chains and their implications. Through a comprehensive review that integrates insights from various social science disciplines, we offer a fresh perspective on this challenge. We begin by identifying factors at multiple levels—supply chain, workplace, individual, and institutional—that contribute to poor working conditions, and explore how these factors, in some configuration, contribute to poor working conditions in different sample archetypes of global supply chains. We then present the factors driving lead organizations to improve working conditions in their global supply chains. Next, we dissect the transactional and relational approaches commonly implemented by lead organizations, assessing their mechanisms and effectiveness. Our review indicates that these approaches have limited success. As an alternative, we synthesize diverse insights to introduce a systemic approach grounded in three pivotal mechanisms: cooperation, recognition, and evolution. This approach aims to tackle the multifaceted factors affecting working conditions. To advance the systemic approach, we propose critical research questions that pave the way for future studies.
... These studies have shown how young girls have developed irregular menstrual cycles once they joined such high-pressure garment factory work in other states in India (Nagaraj, 2019; Asia Floor Wage Alliance Report 2022). Our finding on the gendered hierarchy in the workplace and expressions of social control where the line managers and supervisors are inevitably men have been widely discussed in the literature (Jenkins & Paul, 2017;Salzinger, 2003;Can, 2017, Dedeo glu, 2010. Complaining of pain, headaches or any menstrual related cramps have often been received with sexist remarks (Nagaraj, 2019). ...
... In some cases, workers are compensated for these informal extra working hours in the form of a 'productivity bonus', which is significantly less than the applicable double wage rate. In turn, giving 'comp-offs' is used locally in Bangalore to refer to the practice of giving workers paid leave days during periods with little or no production orders, which must then be recovered through unpaid Sunday work during peak season (INT4,13; see also Jenkins and Blyton 2017). In doing so, workers are cheated out of the double overtime wage for Sunday work that they are legally entitled to, and of the half wages that workers are entitled to receive during lay off periods, i.e. periods when a factory does not have work. ...
This chapter applies a practice-oriented, relational analytical approach to labour control regimes in GPNs to the empirical case of the Bangalore export-garment cluster. It illustrates how the labour control regime in the Bangalore export-garment cluster emerges from the intersection of six different sets of processual relations with the labour process: sourcing relations, wage relations, workplace relations, industrial relations, employment relations and labour market relations. For each set of relations, the chapter reveals the specific exploiting and disciplining practices performed by actors at various levels, which together constitute structural labour control relations. These practices include inter alia Bangalore garment managers’ production targeting, union-busting and wage theft practices, garment retailers’ predatory purchasing practices, and employers’ and state actors’ practices of constructing a complex multi-level training and migration regime to secure adequate labour supply. In the face of this complex mesh of labour control practices, the chapter highlights the various constraints and challenges for local garment unions to build and activate associational and institutional power resources.
... Approximately 50% of the Indian textiles and apparel sector correspond to the ready-made garment industry with one quarter of produced apparels being sold on the global market (CareRatings 2019: 1). Despite the significant contribution of the Asian export-garment industry to economic development and employment creation in the region, the industry has been widely criticised for frequent labour rights violations, low wages and bad working conditions (see, e.g., Hale and Wills 2005;Jenkins and Blyton 2017;Mezzadri 2017;Ruwanpura 2016). Anti-sweatshop movements and consumer organisations from the Global North have attributed these bad conditions to global fashion retailers' and brands' 'predatory purchasing practices' that 'squeeze' suppliers and workers (Anner 2019(Anner , 2020Esbenshade 2004). ...
For newly industrialising countries, the global garment industry is considered a vehicle for economic and social development, especially for increasing women’s participation in the labour market. At the same time, the garment industry has also been widely criticised for frequent labour rights violations, low wages and bad working conditions. Media and public discourses have focussed largely on private regulatory mechanisms and international labour standards as tools for promoting ‘decent work’ in the global garment industry. However, this chapter argues that lasting improvements for workers can only be achieved through the agency of strong local unions in garment producing countries. Against this background, this chapter introduces two central research questions that remain understudied in existing literature on labour in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and Global Production Networks (GPNs): (1) How do labour control regimes at specific nodes of the garment GPN shape and constrain the terrain for worker and union agency in garment producing countries? (2) Which relationships and interactions enable unionists and workers in garment producing countries to develop strategic capacities and power resources that allow them to shift the capital-labour power balance in favour of workers?
... Such practices may not amount to modern slavery if employees can leave freely without threat to themselves or their families. Forced labour is linked to compulsory overtime, debt bondage, informalisation of the workforce, and sub-contracting, which are known to exist in RMG supply chains (Jenkins and Blyton 2016;Barrientos, Kothari, and Phillips 2013). ...
This paper questions if enough is done to tackle modern slavery within the ready-made garments (RMG) supply chains, through the lens of disclosures in improving work practices. Using evidence from Bangladesh, we find how there is a continuum of labour exploitation where the reality of forced labour is not a static one, but a continuum of experiences highlighting the complexity of the exploitative environment within the dominant neoliberal logic of transparency disclosures. It is imperative not only to make disclosures more robust through due diligence, but support capacity to address exploitation at the lower end of the supply chain.
... Thirdly, there are studies of change and continuity as being intertwined. A good example is Jenkins and Blyton's (2017) analysis of clothing factories in Bangladesh. They unearth time debt, that is, the practice of paying workers for work yet to be completed so that they are in debt to managers who can then call on repayment of the debt at will. ...
The concept of a structured antagonism lying at the heart of the employment relationship is widely cited but also commonly misinterpreted. The paper firstly returns to the origin of the concept to locate its approach to workplace industrial relations. It forms part of labour process analysis, within which its distinct emphasis is twofold: a focus on levels of analysis, such that the connections between the underlying antagonism and concrete behaviour can be interrogated; and a preference for comparative analysis, which allows the relevant processes to be identified. In this paper, we apply these themes to contemporary workplaces such as those in the gig economy. Recent research demonstrates substantial empirical and theoretical progress but can be taken further using the above two ideas. A methodological checklist emerges to guide a future programme of research.
... Debt discipline is most commonly documented in relation to debt bondage and exploitative labour relations (Jenkins & Blyton, 2017;LeBaron, 2014;Natarajan et al., 2021Natarajan et al., , 2019, but there is a wider sense in which the lives of borrowers and their households are being disciplined through debts (Han, 2012;Langley, 2009;Soederberg, 2014), including microfinance ones (Paprocki, 2016;Roy, 2012;Schuster, 2014;Taylor, 2012). Such disciplining has a gendered inflection given that it is to women that financial institutions have looked to as archetypically responsible and dependable borrowers globally (Federici, 2014). ...
Drawing on 203 quantitative surveys with women workers in Cambodia and a further set of semi-structured interviews with 60 original participants, this paper is one of the very first to present empirically grounded research from garment workers on the financial challenges of navigating the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show how in the making of clothes to be worn by Western consumers, poorly paid garment workers are reducing their eating to repay long-term debts and those newly taken on to cope with wage reductions resulting from factory closures, suspensions, and cuts in working hours. In its examination of this phenomenon, the paper improves understanding of the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ‘wearing out’ of garment workers through their attempts to reproduce life under (pre-existing) conditions of privation. We argue that the debt-hunger nexus is not new but reflects problems within Cambodia’s capitalist development, and capitalism itself, as the costs of social reproduction and risk are privatised and financialised in the body politic. The COVID-19 pandemic is consolidating relations with financialised life such that they will outlast its duration and have long-lasting implications for workers and their families globally.
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... Advance payments or credit provision may be deployed as a mechanism of labour disciplining and control in order to increase the rate of exploitation. Labourers who accept credit provision from either employers or contractors are attached until repayment, and/or are forced to accept lower rates for their labour during the time in debt (Breman 1996;Jenkins and Blyton 2016). Here, and in many other cases, circulation is not just relevant to exchange, but central to how labour regimes influence the forms and processes of exploitation. ...
... Secondly, a number of novel managerial practices on the shopfloor seem to have further internalised debt as a key time-based functioning mechanism of labour discipline. Jenkins and Blyton's (2017) study of the 'comp-off' system in Bengaluru factories supports this last observation. Similar to a system known as 'working dead horse' in Britain, this system registers the hours of time workers owe the factory against payments. ...
This article explores ‘time’ as a crucial category of analysis shaping and shaped by the dynamics of exploitation and social reproduction across the global assembly line. Focusing on the Indian garment industry, the article develops a feminist political economy of time stressing the productive and reproductive temporalities of exploitation, which give rise to multiple forms of labour circulation, including early exit from industrial work. Then, the study places this early exit under the microscope, and analyses the ‘afterlife’ available to women workers outside the factory, which often involves a transition back to informal occupations. The narrative draws both on extensive knowledge of India’s garment sweatshops, and on the detailed analysis of twenty life histories of women former factory workers in Bengaluru. The investigation of the feminist political economy of time of the global assembly line developed here suggests the presence of a revolving door between industrial and informal work in the lives of the working classes. It disproves linear global industrial development narratives constructing industrial work as ‘better work’ and contributes to feminist IPE debates by illustrating how social reproduction – its rhythms, temporalities, and everyday necessities – concretely co-constitutes the world of work across the global economy.
... The GPNs problematized the role of social and institutional contexts, as well. Social and cultural differences, gender and race, are part and parcel of global processes of accumulation: GPNs build upon and reinforce social differences and segmentation of the workforce in order to amplify workers' vulnerability and extract higher rates of surplus (Bair, 2010;Huws, 2010;Jenkins & Blyton, 2017;Taylor, 2007;Tsing, 2009). ...
In Apulia (Southern Italy), the adverse incorporation of local suppliers within global production networks (GPNs) in the tomato and textile-clothing industries has reinforced the processes of informalization and exploitation of a segmented workforce. In contrast with the literature that identifies the state as a residual regulator, or a mere facilitator of GPNs, we show that the state is called to intervene to ease the social costs of adverse incorporation. Our analysis, however, reveals that public interventions targeting supplier firms and relying only on market mechanisms to foster upgrading, fail to protect workers because they neglect the structure and power relations of the networks as well as the potentially progressive role that labour can play in formalization processes. This paper, therefore, adopts the concept of adverse incorporation and provides novel evidence to investigate the forces that drive the deterioration of working conditions and the structural causes of public policy’s failures within GPNs.
... Scholars can study the role of different actors in enhancing multi-level dialogue, for instance by focusing on how NGOs translate worker interests and bring them to the agendas of global actors, or how NGOs and trade unions work together in campaigns (Egels-Zandén and Merk, 2014;Reinecke and Donaghey, 2015). As formal representation through unions is suppressed in many sourcing countries, more research is also needed to understand representation by non-unionised actors, such as informal labour (Jenkins and Blyton, 2017;Kaine and Josserand, 2018) and marginalised communities (Banerjee, 2018). Recent research documenting differences in MNC's supply chain labour governance (Schüßler, Frenkel and Wright, 2019) suggests that another fertile area for would be to explore how the institutional context of supply chain actors affects dialogue practices. ...
While political CSR scholarship has focused on the role of dialogue between MNCs and civil society actors at the transnational level in creating global governance standards, we seek to understand how political CSR might play out at the “coalface” where labour rights violations occur. We draw on insights from Industrial Democracy to examine how political CSR may be extended to enable democratic processes at the workplace level. Studying the introduction of workplace dialogue in Bangladesh apparel factories, we highlight how MNCs leverage their position as lead actors in the supply chain in three ways: as guarantors, capacity‐builders and enforcers of workplace dialogue. Our findings also show that dialogue reveals dialectical tensions emerging from the structured antagonism of the supply chain relationship. Our contribution focuses on understanding how MNCs may enable deliberative spaces in their supply chain, but also how this is likely to change the nature of pCSR.
... Still, this system is not free of tensions: in the same way as Cunnison's workers could not achieve their target earnings when there was less work 'going around', today's hourly-paid workers often find it difficult to earn above the poverty line if they are told to stay at home whenever their factory is low on orders. Rather than through a debt relation as in Jenkins and Blyton's (2017) and Cunnison's (1966) cases, the extraction of labour in fast fashion is based on the link between precarious employment (mixing formal and informal employment) and welfare payments. ...
This article focuses on the interlinkages between the labour process and global value chains. It draws on the renewed growth in UK apparel manufacturing, specifically within the fast fashion value chain, and asks how value chain requirements are translated into the labour process as well as how the latter enables quick response manufacturing. The case study shows how buyer-lead firms engender accelerated capital circuits of fast fashion which rely on an increased segmentation of manufacturers and workers, the elimination of unproductive spaces in the labour process, and a further rise in the informalisation and precarity of labour. The article demonstrates a strategic disconnection within the fast fashion value chain: upstream manufacturers are only able to satisfy lead firms’ economic and operational standards if they disconnect – informalise – labour from the latter’s ‘ethical’ standards.
Archived at: https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/44290
... However, there are still limitations of GPN approach when it comes to labour (Rainnie et al., 2011), which is embedded in the specific social relations of the labour process. Therefore, the Turkish case is important in exemplifying how value is created by workers and how power dynamics are maintained (Taylor, 2010) through gendered employment relations within the labour process in a garment supplier country, where workers' associational power is very weak and resistance is limited against 'reframed' control regimes (Jenkins and Blyton, 2017). Riisgard and Hammer (2011) emphasize the embedded nature of labour, and they relate the notion of local labour control regimes to the GVC framework. ...
This article explores the organizational characteristics and distinctive settings of the labour process of home-based garment work in the context of embedded control and consent relations in local garment productions in Turkey. Using Turkey as the case example of a garment export country in the global economy, the article explores the nature and organization of home-based piecework at the micro level within a broader global garment production chains perspective. Conducted in two Turkish cities, the study analyses the different cultural backgrounds of female workers and two distinct types of work, namely hand stitching and machine sewing of garments. The findings highlight the relationship between the cultural backgrounds of workers and the different types of work they undertake with control and consent practices as well as the patriarchal societal structure and relations in the context of local labour control regimes.
The Handbook for the Future of Work offers a timely and critical analysis of the transformative forces shaping work and employment in the twenty-first century. Focusing on the past two decades, the handbook explores how technological advancements, automation and a shifting capitalist landscape have fundamentally reshaped work practices and labour relations. Beyond simply outlining the challenges and opportunities of automation, the handbook integrates these emerging realities with established discussions of work. Importantly, it moves beyond dominant technology-centric narratives, probing into broader questions about the nature of capitalism in a time of crisis and the contestation for alternative economic models. With contributions from established and emerging authors, based in institutions around the world, the handbook offers a systematic overview of the developments that have sparked radical shifts in how we live and work, and their multifaceted impacts upon social relations and identities, practices and sectors, politics and environments. The handbook is unique in its exploration of the potential for economic transformations to reshape the centrality of work in our social and political imaginaries. A useful resource for students and researchers, the handbook serves as an essential guide to this new intellectual landscape.
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This chapter reviews literature on labour in GVCs and GPNs. It argues that within the interdisciplinary literature on labour issues in GVCs/GPNs, two parallel research strands have emerged that are characterised by very different conceptual approaches: (1) a ‘Decent Work’ approach underpinned by the institutionalist perspective of the ILO Decent Work Agenda and (2) a ‘Marxist Political Economy’ approach, which is based on the assumption that the exploitation of labour is an inherent structural feature of capitalist production systems. Situating this study within the second research strand, this chapter then reviews the contributions and shortcomings of existing literature on labour control and labour agency in GVCs/GPNs. In doing so, the chapter highlights the limitations of existing scalar approaches for studying labour control and labour agency in GVCs/GPNs, which have not paid enough attention to how dynamics of labour control and labour agency at different levels influence each other. Against this background, this chapter argues that to gain a more nuanced understanding of the ‘architectures of labour control’ underpinning specific GPNs as well as of workers’ and unions’ networked agency strategies, a relational analytical approach can be beneficial.
Transnational labour governance is in urgent need of a new paradigm of democratic participation, with those who are most affected - typically workers - placed at the centre. To achieve this, principles of industrial democracy and transnational governance must come together to inform institutions within global supply chains. This book traces the development of 'transnational industrial democracy', using responses to the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster as the empirical context. A particular focus is placed on the Bangladesh Accord and the JETI Workplace Social Dialogue programme. Drawing on longitudinal field research from 2013–2020, the authors argue that the reality of modern-day supply chain capitalism has neither optimal institutional frameworks nor effective structures of industrial relations. Informed by principles of industrial democracy, the book aims at enhancing emerging forms of private transnational governance as second-best institutions.
This critical reflective paper draws upon my reading, studying and teaching employment relations (ER) and human resource management (HRM) over the years, from a sociological perspective. I make a compelling case for ER as a research activity, an organisational habit and a way of reflexive thinking. There is a false perception that ER is outdated. Indifferent to fads, ER endeavours to see clearly and speak the truth fearlessly and excavate the challenges and possibilities of the socio-economic exchange within any employment relationship. ER’s real strength is its granular holistic, multi-layered understanding of the totality of the wage-effort bargain. It has always been interdisciplinary because it draws from a vast canvas of sociology, economics, political economy and even psychology. Tracing its trajectory, I map the context in which ER evolved from Fordism to Post-Fordism, how HRM tried to take its place, and why it cannot do what ER does. It is only with this critical sceptical inquisitive spirit of ER that an effective emotionally intelligent transparent HR-lifecycle with a well-thought-out employee voice mechanism can craft better workplaces.
ER in India speak for gig workers and other casualised employment and intervenes urgently on their behalf by bringing their concerns to academic discussion and advocating change. In conjunction with critical management studies, the sociology of work and ER in India must go to the nub of inequality. It must reach out to broader constituencies to mitigate workplace inequalities in different situational and longitudinal work contexts.
India presents a rich context for research on work and employment, epitomising the paradox of an ‘emerging economy’ but one where 92.4 percent of the workforce is informal - insecure, unprotected, poor – and women and disadvantaged groups most vulnerable. It displays a wide range of production relations in its formal/informal economy, embedded in diverse social relations, and the related forms of exploitation and resistance. This e-special issue of Work, Employment and Society (WES) aims to review existing WES scholarship on India since 2001, identifying both gaps in scholarship and fruitful avenues for future research on India. The purpose is to showcase some of this scholarship while also advancing the internationalization and expansion of the journal’s presence in countries in the Global South. This effort is timely as decolonisation of scholarship and increased focus on the South is on the intellectual agenda, challenging established structures of power and knowledge in academia.
This article examines the disconnection between promises of labour rights made at the international level and their in accessibility to workers at the local level. Going beyond the concept of a global ‘governance gap’, it draws on a political economy perspective and focuses on the intersecting and competing roles of different forms of capital and the state, in curtailing workers’ paths to remedy in the global apparel (garment) value chain. A longitudinal case study of a campaign by Turkish garment workers, seeking remedy for lost earnings and severance payments due factory closure and wage theft, is the focus for analysis. The workplace is conceptualised as a key ‘arena of disarticulation’ in the apparel value chain, central in simultaneously embedding and dis-embedding commitments by brands, the state and employers, such that even wages for work done may be denied to workers with relative impunity. The article considers to what extent promises made in abstraction at the international level can hope to guarantee conditions at workplace level.
Management is enabled by media, just as media give life to management. Studying the management innovations learned through media uncovers the evolving relationship between workers and employers. With a view to history, Media and Management shows the interdependence of hardware, software, and human experience adjusting to algorithmically defined rhythms.
This article makes a conceptual contribution to the broader literature on unfree labour by challenging the separate treatment of sexual and industrial labour exploitation both by researchers and in law and policy. This article argues that the prevailing focus of the supply chain literature on industrial labour has inadvertently posited sexual labour as the ‘other’ of industrial labour thus obfuscating how the legal blurring of boundaries between industrial and service labour is engendering new modalities of the erosion of workers’ rights that are increasingly resembling those typical of sex work. This article advances the debate on unfree labour both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, it highlights the relevance of social reproduction in understanding forms of labour unfreedom. Empirically, it demonstrates the similarities in forms of control and exploitation between sex work and industrial work by illustrating how debt and housing operate in both settings.
The regulation of employment in global value chains (GVCs) is a story of the interaction of corporation and state in transnational space, where uneven international development has allowed the commodification and exploitation of international labour. Global standards are well articulated by bodies such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UN. We know what ‘decent work’ should look like as well as what all workers should enjoy as basic employment and human rights. Yet, internationally, the different mechanisms of private and public regulation fail at the point of implementation and across the world we see no fundamental shift in the condition of labour in terms of its capacity for social or economic upgrading. This article examines the regulatory mechanisms, and outcomes of regulation, of industrial relations in GVCs. It commends a future research agenda to illuminate the interaction between different sources of standards and rules and the complexities of intersecting private and public regulation, in the pursuit of enforceable, meaningful regulation of work and employment in international supply chains.
This article explores the interrelationship between global production networks (GPNs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) in the South Korean auto industry and its employment relations. It focuses on the production network of the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) — the third biggest automobile manufacturer in the world — and the FTA between the EU and South Korea. This was the first of the EU's ‘new generation’ FTAs, which among other things contained provisions designed to protect and promote labour standards. The article's argument is twofold. First, that HMG's production network and Korea's political economy (of which HMG is a crucial part) limited the possibilities for the FTA's labour provisions to take effect. Second, that the commercial provisions in this same FTA simultaneously eroded HMG's domestic market and corporate profitability, leading to adverse consequences for auto workers in the more insecure and low‐paid jobs. In making this argument, the article advances a multi‐scalar conceptualization of the labour regime as an analytical intermediary between GPNs and FTAs. It also provides one of the first empirical studies of the EU–South Korea FTA in terms of employment relations, drawing on 105 interviews with trade unions, employer associations, automobile companies and state officials across both parties.
Despite expanding literatures on financialization, scholarship exploring its relationship to labour and the labour process remains under-developed. A further obstacle has arisen from arguments that novel financialized modes of value extraction render the labour process and labour process analysis less relevant. This article challenges that view and explores how the labour process is still a vital focal point for value creation and extraction. It sets out what scholars should ‘look for’ to understand the ways in which distinctively financialized mechanisms operate in non-financial corporations and how these dynamics are translated into outcomes for and through labour. The article then provides four key propositions, drawing on labour process theory, which specify how those mechanisms are operationalized and their consequences.
Economic geographers tout social upgrading via economic upgrading as a path that engenders labour conditions, while labour
geographers underscore the inherent contradictions of corporate governance initiatives. They point to the conceptual flaws
of firm-level analysis, given the limited attentiveness to worker actions and labour voice. Others point to the inherent tensions
in global governance initiatives as they traverse along global supply chains, and the absence of labour voice within corporate
codes. This neglect underpins my article, which uses Sri Lanka as a litmus case to critically engage with labour voice around
ethical codes and analyse its efficacy as a form of social upgrading.
On the basis of anthropological fieldwork carried out in South Gujarat in the early 1960s, I described and analyzed a system of bonded labor that dominated the relationship between low-caste farm servants and high-caste landowners (Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India, 1974). More recently, I have gone back to the study of agrarian bondage of the past in order to explore in greater detail the emergence of unfree labor in the precolonial era and comment on its demise as a result of efforts made by the colonial state, the nationalist movement, and peasant activists (Labour Bondage in West India from Past to Present, 2007). A recurrent research theme during my fieldwork in the last few decades has been drawing attention to practices of neo-bondage (neo because the relationship between bosses and workers is less personalized, of shorter duration, more contractual, and monetized) at the bottom of India's informal-sector economy. Additionally, the elements of patronage that offered a modicum of protection and security to bonded clients in the past have disappeared while the transition to a capitalist mode of production accelerated.
A key challenge in promoting decent work worldwide is how to improve the position of both firms and workers in value chains and global production networks driven by lead firms. This article develops a framework for analysing the linkages between the economic upgrading of firms and the social upgrading of workers. Drawing on studies which indicate that firm upgrading does not necessarily lead to improvements for workers, with a particular focus on the Moroccan garment industry, it outlines different trajectories and scenarios to provide a better understanding of the relationship between economic and social upgrading.
The development of a global production networks (GPN) perspective in economic geography has brought valuable insights into
the social and political relations between regional, state and corporate actors in understanding processes of value capture
in the production of commodities. However, to date, little has been said about labour as an active constituent of the global
economy, rather than the passive victim of restructuring processes. In this article, we seek to rectify this situation by,
first, theorizing the agency of labour in GPNs and the continuing role of class struggle in shaping the global economy, and
second, exploring the positionality of unions within this framework. Through a case study of ICEM (the International Chemical,
Energy, Mining and General Workers Federation), we show how union strategies evolve through contested socio–spatial relations
both within unions themselves and with other social actors. Promoting transnational labour rights and improved employment
conditions at the global scale is an aspiration of most union actors, but this is inevitably compromised by different subject
positions in relation to broader processes of capital accumulation.
This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Using unique data (internal audit reports, and access to more than 120 supply chain factories and 700 interviews in 14 countries) from several major global brands, including NIKE, HP, and the International Labor Organization's Factory Improvement Programme in Vietnam, this book examines both the promise and the limitations of different approaches to actually improve working conditions, wages, and working hours for the millions of workers employed in today's global supply chains. Through a careful, empirically grounded analysis of these programs, this book illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.
This paper explores the ethnographic technique of the focused revisit-rare in sociology but common in anthropology-when an ethnographer returns to the site of a previous study. Discrepancies between earlier and later accounts can be attributed to differences in: (1) the relation of observer to participant, (2) theory brought to the field by the ethnographer, (3) internal processes within the field site itself, or (4) forces external to the field site. Focused revisits tend to settle on one or another of these four explanations, giving rise to four types of focused revisits. Using examples, the limits of each type of focused revisit are explored with a view to developing a reflexive ethnography that combines all four approaches. The principles of the focused revisit are then extended to rolling, punctuated, heuristic, archeological, and valedictory revisits. In centering attention on ethnography-as-revisit sociologists directly confront the dilemmas of participating in the world they study-a world that undergoes (real) historical change that can only be grasped using a (constructed) theoretical lens.
As social movements co-evolve with changes in states and markets, it is crucial to examine how they make particular kinds of actors into focal points for the expression of grievances and the demand for rights. But researchers often bracket the question of why some kinds of organizations are more likely than others to become targets of social movement pressure. We theorize the social production of targets by social movements, rejecting a simple reflection model to focus on configurations of power and vulnerability that shape repertoires of contention. Empirically, we extend structural accounts of global commodity chains and cultural accounts of markets to analyze the production of targets in the case of the anti-sweatshop movement of the 1990s. Using a longitudinal, firm-level dataset and unique data on anti-sweatshop activism, we identify factors that attracted social movement pressure to particular companies. Firms' power and positions strongly shaped their likelihood of becoming targets of anti-sweatshop activism. But the likelihood of being a target also depended on the cultural organization of markets, which made some firms more shamable than others. Contrary to suggestions of an anti-globalization backlash, globalization on its own, and related predictions about protectionism, cannot explain the pattern of activism.
Lupton's empirical study used real work groups rather than experimental groups working in post-war factories in Britain to arrive at a more sympathetic and informed appreciation of the reasoning behind the positions adopted by workers in their dealings with management, compared with the more management-oriented view of the American Hawthorne experiments.
Over the last two decades the global commodity chain, global value chain and global production network (GCC/GVC/GPN) frameworks have facilitated valuable research into contemporary global capitalism. However, much of this research has paid insufficient attention to work and workers. Recently, the concept of social upgrading, with a strong emphasis on workers’ conditions, has been advanced by leading GCC/GVC/GPN theorists, as a potential remedy to the previous lacunae. This article welcomes this development, but also argues that the social upgrading concept represents an elite comprehension of relations between capital, the state and labour. It is argued that the concept, derived from the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda, denies the reality of labour’s exploitation by capital and is therefore only partially equipped to explain the existence of indecent work. The Decent Work Agenda and the social upgrading concept expect improvements in work to be delivered by elite actors such as firms, national states and international organizations. It is argued that, through re-visiting Marx’s explication of the capitalist labour process, it is possible to comprehend the nature of capitalist exploitation, the root causes of indecent work and resistance to it, and thus to develop an alternative conception of social upgrading. The article presents evidence from North East Brazilian export horticulture to support these arguments.
This article concerns union formation among female garment workers in Bangalore, in the southern state of Karnataka, India. It analyses a case where a category of workers dismissed by established national unions as impossible to organize came to form their own women's movement and thence their own union. The case highlights the crucial role of a sustained, flexible approach towards organizing at the micro level, in the mobilization of vulnerable workers employed in highly competitive labour markets.
This short introduction to the symposium sets the context for the collection of articles, locating them in debates about labour conditions in the global economy. It outlines the two central questions which animate the symposium. First, what forms do unfree labour take in the contemporary global economy, and what are the implications for the most vulnerable workers in diverse contexts? Second, which processes, conditions and dynamics generate and facilitate unfree labour, and which theoretical and analytical perspectives do we need in order to understand them? It summarises some of responses to these questions which emerge in the collected articles, and highlights their contributions to the task of advancing fresh ways of thinking about unfree labour.
Recent research on regulation and governance suggests that a mixture of public and private interventions is necessary to improve working conditions and environmental standards within global supply chains. Yet, less attention has been directed to how these (potentially) complementary forms of regulation might interact together. The form of these interactions are investigated through a contextualized comparison of suppliers producing for Hewlett Packard, one the world’s leading global electronics firms. Using a unique dataset describing Hewlett Packard’s supplier audits over time, coupled with qualitative fieldwork at a matched pair of suppliers in Mexico and the Czech Republic, this study shows how private and public regulation can interact in different ways – sometimes as complements; other times as substitutes – depending upon both the national contexts and the specific issues being addressed. The paper closes with a discussion of the theoretical implications of these findings.
An investigation of a single plant (a gypsum mine and its surface facilities) is reported in the context of Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy. 3 bureaucratic patterns are identified, and the manner of their development described: the mock bureaucracy (the rules are imposed by 'outsiders'), the representative, (both union and management initiate the rules), and the punishment-centered, (one side initiates and enforces the rules). The study is divided into four parts. Part 1 describes the plant and the original situation, Part 2 the entrance of a new manager, and his problems of succession, Part 3 the organization of the mine and surface, the miners' beliefs and the motivations on top and bottom, and Part 4 an analysis of the functions of bureaucratic roles and of bureaucratic types. 121-item bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
IntroductionWeaving the Web: The Operation of Supply Chains in the Global Garment IndustryCaught in the Web: Supply Chains and Workers' LivesConclusion
Economic development has increasingly become synonymous with “economic upgrading” within global production networks (GPNs). Yet, while there has been much research on connecting economic upgrading with economic growth and international trade, there has been less analysis of the relationship between economic and “social upgrading”, i.e. improvements in the wages, conditions, rights, gender equality and economic security of workers in GPNs. Focusing on developing countries, this article reviews the ways in which economic and social upgrading are measured and scrutinizes the theoretical connection between these two dimensions of upgrading. The authors conclude with a brief discussion of policy implications.
Birnbaum's Global Guide to Winning the Great Garment War
- D Birnbaum
Birnbaum D (2000) Birnbaum's Global Guide to Winning the Great Garment War. Hong Kong:
Third Horizon Press.
Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women's Work in Globalising India (Feminist Fine Print Series)
- J Ghosh
Ghosh J (2009) Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women's Work in Globalising India (Feminist Fine
Print Series). New Delhi: Women Unlimited.
Sourcing Practices in the Apparel Industry: Implications for Garment Exporters in Commonwealth Developing Countries
- M Lezama
- B Webber
- C Dagher
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Implications for Garment Exporters in Commonwealth Developing Countries. London:
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Living wage in Asia 2014 report: Asia floor wage alliance and clean clothes campaign
- J Merk
Merk J (2014) Living wage in Asia 2014 report: Asia floor wage alliance and clean clothes campaign. Available (consulted 15 May 2015) at: https://www.cleanclothes.org
The significance of grass-roots organizing
Rethinking Global Production: A Comparative Analysis of Restructuring in the Clothing Industry
- J Winterton
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Winterton J and Winterton R (1997) Deregulation, division and decline: the UK clothing industry in
transition. In: Taplin IM and Winterton J (eds) Rethinking Global Production: A Comparative
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