scholarly journals Legal Interventions and Transnational Alliances in the Ali Enterprises Case: Struggles for Workers’ Rights in Global Supply Chains

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-58
Author(s):  
Miriam Saage-Maaß
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chains ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Global Value Chains ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Dominant Class ◽  
Considerable Potential ◽  
Global North ◽  
Legal Interventions

AbstractThis article highlights the persistence of exploitative working conditions in global supply chains resulting from the constant need to externalise costs and increase consumption with a view to sustaining the “imperial lifestyle” of people in the Global North. While the law structures today’s global value chains and is designed to secure the economic interests of Global North companies that sit at the top of most of such chains, it also bears considerable potential for transformation and empowerment. The different legal interventions around the 2012 Ali Enterprises factory fire demonstrate that law is not only a direct product of dominant class interests, but that it can also open up opportunities for resistance and emancipatory struggle. Written from the perspective of one of the actors closely involved in the legal struggle for justice that followed the Ali Enterprises factory fire, both in terms of building transnational alliances as well as in the litigation itself, this chapter critically reflects on the achievements of the legal interventions carried out and also attempts to develop criteria for a holistic approach to what is often called strategic litigation.

scholarly journals Mind the gap: Grass roots ‘brokering’ to improve labour standards in global supply chains

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 584-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J Kaine ◽  
Emmanuel Josserand
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Whistle Blowing ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Labour Standards ◽  
Implementation Gaps

While governance and regulation are a first step in addressing worsening working conditions in global supply chains, improving implementation is also key to reversing this trend. In this article, after examining the nature of the existing governance and implementation gaps in labour standards in global supply chains, we explore how Viet Labor, an emerging grass-roots organization, has developed practices to help close them. This involves playing brokering roles between different workers and between workers and existing governance mechanisms. We identify an initial typology of six such roles: educating, organizing, supporting, collective action, whistle-blowing and documenting. This marks a significant shift in the way action to improve labour standards along the supply chain is analysed. Our case explores how predominantly top-down approaches can be supplemented by bottom-up ones centred on workers’ agency.

scholarly journals Ethical Issues in Global Supply Chains

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bodo B. Schlegelmilch ◽  
Magdalena Öberseder
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Unethical Conduct ◽  
Production Methods ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Consumer Demands

Despite all technological advances, global supply chains are always based on the interaction of people. And wherever people interact, a kaleidoscope of ethical issues emerges. While consumer demands and concerns have undoubtedly led to an increased awareness of unethical conduct in the supply chain, contravening forces, such as the relentless pressures for low cost products and the ease by which consumers are purchasing non-deceptive counterfeits, should also not be ignored. Many retailers are now embracing ethical issues by emphasising, for example, that they take care of the production methods and working conditions pertaining to the goods they offer.

scholarly journals Are Multinational Companies Responsible for Working Conditions in Their Supply Chains? From Intuition to Argument

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Dänzer
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Global Value Chains ◽  
Multinational Companies ◽  
Support Programs ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Promising Strategy ◽  
Supply Chain Governance ◽  
Prospective Responsibility

AbstractAlthough many people seem to share the intuition that multinational companies (MNEs) carry a responsibility for the working conditions in their supply chains, the justification offered for this assumption is usually rather unclear. This article explores a promising strategy for grounding the relevant intuition and for rendering its content more precise. It applies the criteria of David Miller's connection theory of remedial responsibility to different forms of supply chain governance as characterized by the Global Value Chains (GVC) framework. The analysis suggests that the criteria for identifying MNEs as remedially responsible for bad working conditions in their direct suppliers are fulfilled in many cases, even though differentiations are required with regard to the different supply chain governance structures. MNEs thus have a duty to make sure currently bad working conditions in their suppliers are changed for the better. Moreover, since production in supply chains for structural reasons continuously generates remedial responsibility of MNEs for bad working conditions in their suppliers, it puts the prospective responsibility on them to make sure that their suppliers offer acceptable working conditions. Further, it is suggested that the remedial responsibility of MNEs might require them to make financial compensation to victims of bad working conditions and in grave cases initiate or support programs to mitigate disastrous effects suffered by them.

Comment on Sonja Dänzer. Structural Injustice in Global Production Networks: Shared Responsibility for Working Conditions

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Starmanns
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chains ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Corporate Responsibility ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Structural Injustice ◽  
Discursive Approach

AbstractThis commentary's claim is that Dänzer's argument does not sufficiently take into account the complexities of the global production of goods, the current corporate responsibility practices and the problems of attributing responsibility to single actors. I argue in favour of a shared responsibility and briefly present a discursive approach for attributing MNE's share of responsibility in global supply chains, which requires obligatory transparency.

Causal Complexity

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
Chunyun Li
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chains ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Private Regulation ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Incentive Effects ◽  
Regulation Model ◽  
International Conventions ◽  
Causal Complexity

This chapter examines causal complexity. The determinants of improvement in working conditions in supplier factories in global supply chains are complex. The complexity arises from the interaction between heterogeneous actors (companies, auditing firms, suppliers) following a multiplicity of practices, combined with the effect of local institutional conditions and industry and workplace context. Along with the general lack of transparency in private regulation, this combination of causal factors leads to uncertainty with respect to cause–effect relationships. The central assumption of the private regulation model is that if standards are set by codes of conduct (whether based on international conventions or local laws), and if supplier factories comply with the codes, sweatshop conditions will be avoided and improvements will be made in the lives of workers in global supply chains. But this assumption may not be warranted; buyers and brands may not have the power to force suppliers to compel compliance. And within the businesses of most global buyers and retailers, sourcing may not be sufficiently well integrated with compliance, so the incentive effects of rewarding good factories that are making improvements in compliance are not realized in practice — even though such incentives are the very basis for the model of private regulation of first-tier supplier factories.

Reimagining the Unimaginable: Law and the Ongoing Transformation of Global Value Chains into Integrated Legal Entities

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-185
Author(s):  
Kevin B. Sobel-Read
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chains ◽  
Global Value Chains ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Global Commerce ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Single Category ◽  
Made In

AbstractThere is a growing push to reduce the labour and environmental harms caused throughout the supply chains of large corporations. But very little progress has been made in holding these corporations legally responsible for such harms. This corporate immunity is not caused by shortcomings in the law itself but rather by the limits of the categories through which we make sense of the world. For voters and policymakers alike, regulation is only appropriate for entities that fall into the same category of classification. And so far in our collective understanding, the firms in global supply chains have each inhabited separate legal categories and so each is deemed to have separate legal responsibility. As a result, the chains as a whole have remained free from regulation. But as global commerce becomes more systematised, global value chains are becoming more intimately integrated. This practical integration is likewise transforming our thinking: we are coming to understand chains as discrete entities within a single category. As this transformation solidifies, the regulation of entire chains will no longer be unthinkable but rather inevitable. Drawing on the insight of Mary Douglas and Benedict Anderson, I substantiate these assertions with evidence from corporate accounts, legislation and popular media.

scholarly journals Pivoting technology: understanding working conditions in the time of COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-215
Author(s):  
Hannah Thinyane ◽  
Michael Gallo
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
Travel Restrictions

State lockdowns and travel restrictions introduced in response to COVID-19 have limited the ability of frontline responders to conduct on-site visits and inhibited their efforts to assess working conditions and monitor for labour exploitation within global supply chains. These challenges have increased multinational corporations’ reliance on remote technologies to assist in their supply chain due diligence processes. Our research investigates the use of one such example, Apprise Audit, which is a digital solution used for worker interviews in social compliance auditing that was modified to enable remote data collection. Based on a series of interviews with implementing partners and industry experts, our research finds that Apprise Audit Remote helps to overcome the difficulties of gathering worker feedback in the presence of COVID related constraints. Using this work as a case study, we then further elaborate on the practical opportunities and limitations associated with ICT-enabled remote auditing.

Subpolitics and sustainability reporting boundaries. The case of working conditions in global supply chains

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 1535-1567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Antonini ◽  
Cornelia Beck ◽  
Carlos Larrinaga
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Sustainability Reporting ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Sustainability Reports

PurposeThis paper explores the subpolitical role and main characteristics of a specific accounting technique, sustainability reporting boundaries. Its focus is on how the sett2ing of sustainability reporting boundaries affects the definition and distribution of social risks along the supply chain, particularly the risks related to working condition and human rights.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on Beck's (1986) exploration of the ways in which techno-economic spheres offer opportunities for the politicisation of new areas. It is argued that the sphere of sustainability reporting offers that opportunity for the politicisation of supply chains. Using the case of Inditex, the historical context of initiatives relating to the ready-made garment (RMG) industry at global, European and industry level as well as media coverage on the entity are analysed; this is correlated with the analysis of boundary setting in relation to sustainability reports, focusing specifically on working conditions.FindingsThe analysis suggests that accounting technologies that set contested boundaries are subpolitical, that is, defined outside traditional political processes. The paper finds that the way social risks are framed along the supply chain renders them invisible and impersonal and that the framing of these risks becomes endless as they are contested by different groups of experts. Setting sustainability reporting boundaries has subpolitical properties in producing and framing those risks, whilst is simultaneously limited by the inherent politicisation of such an exercise. The questionable legitimacy of sustainability reporting boundaries calls for the construction not only of discursive justifications but also of new possibilities for political participation.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis is limited to working conditions along one organisation's supply chain.Originality/valueThe contribution of this paper is threefold: (1) It studies in-depth how working conditions in global supply chains are portrayed in sustainability reports. (2) It answers the call to study accounting technologies themselves, in this case sustainability reporting boundaries. (3) It extends Beck's work on global ecological dangers to working conditions in global supply chains to explore how sustainability reporting boundaries are subpolitically involved in the definition and distribution of social risks along the supply chain.

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