Towards Better Work: Understanding Labour in Apparel Global Value Chains(Advances in Labour Studies)

The manufacture of apparel is an exemplar of global production. Since the 1970s, multinational brands have increasingly outsourced their manufacturing activities to lower cost production locations in developing countries. The low entry barriers and minimal investments needed in apparel led to booming employment in apparel factories in regions where formal employment was limited and where new opportunities were created especially for young, unskilled women and migrant workers who had access to waged labour for the first time. While this translated into higher labour force participation rates and new empowerment opportunities for these previously marginalised groups, it also appeared increasingly clear that workers were often exploited in order to keep production costs competitive in the global marketplace. This volume provides solutions-oriented approaches for promoting improved working conditions and labour rights in the apparel industry, by analysing how workers, governments and business can strive to collaborate in order to confront some of the key opportunities and challenges pertaining to labour in global apparel value chains.

Table of Contents:
Introduction PART I 1. Re-embedding the Market: Global Apparel Value Chains, Governance and Decent Work; Frederick Mayer and John Pickles 2. Economic and Social Upgrading of Developing Countries in the Global Apparel Sector: Insights from Using a Parsimonious Measurement Approach; Thomas Bernhardt 3. How 'Fair' Are Wage Practices along the Supply Chain? A Global Assessment; Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead 4. Regulating the 'Wage Effort Bargain' in Outsourced Apparel Production: Towards a Model; Doug Miller PART II 5. What Does 'Fast Fashion' Mean for Workers?Apparel Production in Morocco and Romania; Leonhard Plank, Arianna Rossi and Cornelia Staritz 6. Voting with Their Feet? Explaining High Turnover and Low Productivity in the Lao Garment Sector; Richard Record, Stephanie Kuttner and Kabmanivanh Phouxay 7. Vulnerable Workers and Labour Standards (Non-)Compliance in Global Production Networks: Home-Based Child Labour in Delhi's Garment Sector; Resmi Bhaskaran, Dev Nathan, Nicola Phillips and C. Upendranadh 8. Workers' Perceptions of Compliance with Labour Standards: Assessing Opportunities and Challenges for Better Work in Lesotho's Apparel Sector; Kelly Pike and Shane Godfrey 9. Workers' Agency and Power Relations in Cambodia's Garment Industry; Dennis Arnold 10.Factory Decisions to Become Noncompliant with Labor Standards: Evidence from Better Factories Cambodia; Drusilla Brown, Rajeev Dehejia and Raymond Robertson 11.Towards Better Work in Central America: Nicaragua and the CAFTA Context; Jennifer Bair and Gary Gereffi Conclusions

About the Author :
Arianna Rossi is the Research and Policy Officer for the ILO/IFC Better Work Programme. Prior to that, she was Research Officer for the Capturing the Gains research network at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research and work focus on labour rights in global production networks, corporate social responsibility, gender, and the impact of multi-stakeholder initiatives on workers' wellbeing and firms' competitiveness. She received her PhD from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University with a dissertation on social upgrading in global production networks, analysing the garment industry in Morocco. Amy Luinstra is a senior Program Officer in the IFC's Sustainable Business Advisory department where she primarily works on the Better Work programme. Ms. Luinstra serves on the management team of Better Work and leads the team responsible for policy and research. She was on secondment from the World Bank to the ILO to help launch Better Work in 2007 through early 2011. Prior to Better Work, she was a Social Protection Specialist in the World Bank Social Protection and Labor unit, where she worked on labour market policy and coordinated the Bank's dialogue with the international trade union movement. John Pickles is the Earl N Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He received his BA degree from Oxford University and holds PhD degrees from the University of Natal and the Pennsylvania State University. He has published numerous books and articles, including: Globalization and Regionalization in Post-socialist Economies (2009), State and Society in Post-Socialist and Post-Soviet Economies (2008), and A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Coded World (2004). He directed the apparel research for Capturing the Gains and is currently working on European global production networks and Euro-Med migration and border policies.