Decent Work and the development process Flashcards
Decent Work
ILO 1999
Good Work
Taylor (2017)
Deabtes on decent work and quality of employment
* Methodological difficulties
* Lack of agreement
* DW has not been v successful
Burchell et al (2014)
Paradoxes of DW in context: a CPE perspective
Hauf (2015)
Decent Work reflects an evolving hegemonic order in ILO
Vosko (2002)
Gender, Decent Work and SDGs
Rai et al (2019)
Critique of the social clause
* Moral politics of representation and 1-D portraits of the third world victim
* Bangladesh case study
* Women know they are not in the ideal situation but make calculations
Argues instead for a universal social floor
Kabeer (2004)
Do factory workers need saving?
* Perspective is key
* Iconic emblem of third world sweatshop worker - global moralism
* We should think about lived experiences, cultural practices and modes of resistance
* Issue is that job insecurity is structurally interwoven into workers’ lives - this will not be fixed by global labour standards
* Discourse of workers’ rights have been co-opted into obfuscation of structural inequality
Siddiqi (2009)
To link or not to link world trade and workers’ rights?
* Developing govts against this because they are not getting a fair deal and trade liberalisation is in their interests
* Unclear how standards would be implemented
Hensman (2000)
Compliance regimes in GPNs and the Bangladeshi garment industry.
* Rana Plaza led to 2 MSIs related to fire and building safety
* Agreements provide legitimacy, reputation and image management
* Improvements only carried out if they don’t affect profit margins
* State also reconfigures its power to meet demands of global supply chains e.g. special economic zones
* Graduated sovereignty - the differential treatment of populations e.g. female migrants based on their ability to serve global markets
Production networks are economic, political and discursive systems intertwining market and political power.
Alamgir & Banerjee (2019)
Examination of CSR codes across 29 companies.
* CSR as part of a broader movement to universal labour standards
* Resources given to monitroing and auditing
* Tension between commercial imperatives and workers’ rights means that codes become outcome standards rather than process rights
* Minimum compliance approach does not challenge labour relations
* Buyers’ demands directly undermining compliance with their own code of labour practice
* Codes become another management tool like other technical standards
* No significant material improvements
Barrientos & Smith (2007)
Garments without guilt, Sri Lanka
* SL govt has adopted ethical production to shift to higher value apparel production in response to retail unease
* State has not mandated wage increases to keep pace with inflation
* Ethical consumption as frontier and state-industry nexus
Ruwanpura (2016)
Differing perspectives from companies, managers and workers post-Rana Plaza
* Dependent on position in hierarchy of GVCs
* Contradictory accounts are symptomatic of piecemeal pespectives of stakeholders and the piecemeal nature of regulation itself
Ashwin et al (2020)
Rana Plaza Arrangement as technocratic fix
* More than 1100 workers killed, demonstrating a structural reliance on cheap labour
* Bangladeshi government supports industry with an anti-regulation stance
* Rana Plaza Arrangement: a $30m MSI agreement providing work-injury compensation benefits to survivors and families
* Argued to be a technocratic fix to a systemic problem which leaves untouched unjust relations of domination
* Discourse of ‘labour rights’ used to develop consent
* ILO compensation formula used that did not account for pain and suffering
* Convergence of varying stakeholders’ interests but not of the workers
* ILO had a broader mission of using this event as an experiment to push a permanent system of Employment Injury Insurance - RP seen as no different to any other workplace incident
Unless regulation is underpinned by worker power, transnational social protection will not fix crises. Inherent paradox of attempting to integrate precarious labour into social protection
Social policies used instrumentally to quell labour unrest and reinforce state/corporate legitimacy
Political and economic context will impact the kinds of social policies that are accepted. The garment industry accounts for 76% of Bangladesh’s export earnings so raising labour costs would damage competitiveness
Prentice & Simon (2023)
Labour unions in Bangladesh.
* Have played key role in global initatives wilst local unions are more engaged on the ground
* Militant protests increasingly delegitimised and subject to violent crackdowns
* ‘Labour reform’? Workers have historically secured change only after direct action
* Precarity is profitable. The garment industry depends on cheap, labouring bodies
Vulnerability is key to extracting value at an intensity and speed undermining worker ability to rest and restore. Low manufacturing costs draw in manufacturers - but this is a function of lack of labour voice, as evidenced by co-optation of global unions. Will lead to further unsafe conditions
Ashraf & Prentice (2019)
