Overview

The authors examine developments in labor standards in global supply chains over the past thirty years, analyzing factors that create challenges and opportunities for improving working conditions. They illustrate the complex dynamics within and among key groups, including brands, suppliers, governments, workers and consumers.Using extended examples from China, Honduras, Bangladesh and the United States, as well as new quantitative evidence, the authors analyze stakeholders and mechanisms that create or obstruct opportunities for improving labor rights. They evaluate key clusters of actors and their interests in order to comprehensively map the complex interactions and relationships that make up global supply chains. Original data and analyses, including four in-depth case studies, present a systematic evaluation of the points of leverage for changing labor standards in sectors including apparel, footwear, and electronics. This exciting new contribution to a burgeoning field of study will benefit scholars of labor rights and human rights, as well as students with an interest in labor and working conditions. It also presents critical information for political scientists, NGOs, and practitioners looking to effect change in working conditions and learn more about key players in the global economy.

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9781783470358

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Reviews

' ... this book constitutes a valuable contribution to a growing and increasingly important scholarly field and will prove to be useful for anyone interested in learning more about factors that contribute to the shaping of working conditions in global supply chains, whether they are academics, students, campaigners or practitioners.' -- Journal of Industrial Relations 'Exhibiting a refreshing disregard for industry-approved narratives about labor rights, in which progress flows from the spigot of an espresso machine at a corporate social responsibility seminar, the authors focus with precision on the factors that actually determine labor rights outcomes: the economic interests of global brands, and their suppliers, and how these are mediated by governments' regulatory choices and by the efforts of workers and allied groups to make brands pay a reputational price for the labor abuses they help create. Readers will better understand why early 20th century working conditions still exist in the 21st - and what might be done about it.' -- Scott Nova, Executive Director, Worker Rights Consortium

Author Information

Daniel Berliner, Arizona State University, Anne Regan Greenleaf, University of Washington, Milli Lake, Arizona State University, Margaret Levi, Stanford University, Jennifer Noveck, University of Washington, US

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