Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy

by Richard P. Appelbaum (Editor), Nelson Lichtenstein (Editor)

Overview

The world was shocked in April 2013 when more than 1100 garment workers lost their lives in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka. It was the worst industrial tragedy in the two-hundred-year history of mass apparel manufacture. This so-called accident was, in fact, just waiting to happen, and not merely because of the corruption and exploitation of workers so common in the garment industry. In Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy, Richard P. Appelbaum and Nelson Lichtenstein argue that such tragic events, as well as the low wages, poor working conditions, and voicelessness endemic to the vast majority of workers who labor in the export industries of the global South arise from the very nature of world trade and production.

Given their enormous power to squeeze prices and wages, northern brands and retailers today occupy the commanding heights of global capitalism. Retail-dominated supply chains—such as those with Walmart, Apple, and Nike at their heads—generate at least half of all world trade and include hundreds of millions of workers at thousands of contract manufacturers from Shenzhen and Shanghai to Sao Paulo and San Pedro Sula. This book offers an incisive analysis of this pernicious system along with essays that outline a set of practical guides to its radical reform.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501700040
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	06/14/2016
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard P. Appelbaum is Research Professor and MacArthur Foundation Chair in the Departments of Sociology and Global & International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The author or editor of many books, he is coeditor most recently of Can Emerging Technologies Make a Difference in Development? Nelson Lichtenstein is MacArthur Foundation Chair in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. He is the author or editor of many books, including most recently State of the Union: A Century of American Labor.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy
Richard P. Appelbaum and Nelson Lichtenstein

Part I SELF-GOVERNANCE: THE CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
1. Outsourcing Horror: Why Apparel Workers Are Still Dying, One Hundred Years after Triangle Shirtwaist
Scott Nova and Chris Wegemer
2. From Public Regulation to Private Enforcement: How CSR Became Managerial Orthodoxy
Richard P. Appelbaum
3. Corporate Social Responsibility: Moving from Checklist Monitoring to Contractual Obligation?
Jill Esbenshade
4. The Twilight of CSR: Life and Death Illuminated by Fire
Robert J. S. Ross

Part II GOVERNANCE OF GLOBAL PRODUCTION NETWORKS
5. The Demise of Tripartite Governance and the Rise of the Corporate Social Responsibility Regime
Nelson Lichtenstein
6. Deepening Compliance?: Multistakeholder Communication in Monitoring Labor Standards in the Value Chains of Brazil’s Apparel Industry
Anne Caroline Posthuma and Renato Bignami
7. Law and the Global Sweatshop Problem
Brishen Rogers
8. Assessing the Risks of Participation in Global Value Chains
Gary Gereffi and Xubei Luo

Part III PROSPECTS FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN CHINA
9. Apple, Foxconn, and China’s New Working Class
Jenny Chan, Ngai Pun, and Mark Selden
10. Labor Transformation in China: Voices from the Frontlines
Katie Quan
11. CSR and Trade Union Elections at Foreign-Owned Chinese Factories
Anita Chan

Part IV A WAY FORWARD?
12. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Higg Index: A New Approach for the Apparel and Footwear Industry
Jason Kibbey
13. Learning from the Past: The Relevance of Twentieth-Century New York Jobbers’ Agreements for Twenty-First-Century Global Supply Chains
Mark Anner, Jennifer Bair, and Jeremy Blasi
14. Workers of the World Unite!: The Strategy of the International Union League for Brand Responsibility
Jeff Hermanson

What People are Saying About This

Edna M. Bonacich

This clear-headed analysis of efforts to achieve workers' rights is based on solid research and is particularly welcome because it offers a reasonable way forward. The multiple perspectives yield a rich analysis and realistic suggestions for solutions. Workers in the global supply chains that feed prosperous economies suffer unforgivably precarious working conditions, and I applaud the editors of this fine volume for moving quickly after the Rana Plaza tragedy to mobilize and make a difference.

Gay Seidman

Reflecting the impact of Bangladesh's 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, this volume may be the most significant contribution to transnational labor studies in a decade., The authors, widely respected as researchers and activists, offer critical perspectives on contemporary efforts to protect the world’s workers, in the context of an integrated global economy and stark inequalities. Drawing on the authors’ profound engagement in recent campaigns, the essays summarize current debates, problematize old assumptions, and propose new strategies, Achieving Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy is a must-read for labor advocates and policymakers: its insights and arguments will be central to activist debates and policy initiatives for the next decade and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy seeks to understand why sweatshops continue in the apparel industry despite the 20-year-long investment in private regulation (monitoring corporate codes of conduct) by major brands and retailers.... In sum, Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy is an important book that is particularly useful as a textbook for students learning about the barriers to effective improvements in labor standards, as well as for useful pathways to explore for the future. In addition, practitioners will gain from the discussion of potential avenues forward.

ILR Review - Matthew Fischer-Daly

Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy seeks to understand why sweatshops continue in the apparel industry despite the 20-year-long investment in private regulation (monitoring corporate codes of conduct) by major brands and retailers.... In sum, Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy is an important book that is particularly useful as a textbook for students learning about the barriers to effective improvements in labor standards, as well as for useful pathways to explore for the future. In addition, practitioners will gain from the discussion of potential avenues forward.

--Matthew Fischer-Daly "ILR Review"

Fourteen papers analyze the system of world capitalism under which the majority of workers labor, explaining how corporate social responsibility (CSR) has failed to achieve its professed objectives, different approaches to the governance of global suply chains, the prospects for workers' rights in China, and the way forward for labor rights.

-- "JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE"

From the Publisher

"This clear-headed analysis of efforts to achieve workers' rights is based on solid research and is particularly welcome because it offers a reasonable way forward. The multiple perspectives yield a rich analysis and realistic suggestions for solutions. Workers in the global supply chains that feed prosperous economies suffer unforgivably precarious working conditions, and I applaud the editors of this fine volume for moving quickly after the Rana Plaza tragedy to mobilize and make a difference."

Edna M. Bonacich

"Reflecting the impact of Bangladesh's 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, this volume may be the most significant contribution to transnational labor studies in a decade., The authors, widely respected as researchers and activists, offer critical perspectives on contemporary efforts to protect the world’s workers, in the context of an integrated global economy and stark inequalities. Drawing on the authors’ profound engagement in recent campaigns, the essays summarize current debates, problematize old assumptions, and propose new strategies, Achieving Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy is a must-read for labor advocates and policymakers: its insights and arguments will be central to activist debates and policy initiatives for the next decade and beyond."

Gay Seidman

"Fourteen papers analyze the system of world capitalism under which the majority of workers labor, explaining how corporate social responsibility (CSR) has failed to achieve its professed objectives, different approaches to the governance of global suply chains, the prospects for workers' rights in China, and the way forward for labor rights."

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE